Episcopal Church Foundation Vital Practices

One of the most successful methods in gathering e-mail addresses has been a new business partnership with Constant Contact, an online e-mail marketing tool. The diocese established a non-profit business account through which congregations can register.

It’s win-win: the diocese gets a free account as well as receives a portion of the monthly fees generated by new users. We decided to return all of the revenue-sharing portion to congregations. As more congregations signed up, we reached the second tier – so we’re now receiving back 30% of the revenue. In other terms, congregations receive nearly four months a year for free, all while adding another important communication method to their toolbox.

To sweeten the pot – and this is how we have built our e-mail lists, we offered congregations a free year of Constant Contact in exchange for sharing their e-mail addresses. This way we could send parishioners diocesan news and help connect them to the wider church. There's a investment for the diocese of $130-$150 per congregation -- but the return is priceless.

We send everyone an e-mail explaining that the congregation is practicing good stewardship and engaging in new(er) media through the diocesan partnership. And we show them how to unsubscribe to the diocesan news, if they’d like. So far, we’ve had about 30 unsubscribes and one complaint. And that's out of 2,000 new e-mail addresses.

This isn’t a promotion for Constant Contact – we happen to like the company, but there are lots of great e-mail marketing tools out there. It is a push for congregations and dioceses to find creative ways to tap into e-mail address gold.