5 Ways to Maximize Engagement After Easter

Easter Sunday brings people to church in numbers that exceed any other day of the year, and there’s no better reason to celebrate than the resurrection of Jesus! Perhaps your church had record-breaking attendance or saw dozens of people meet Christ for the very first time. That’s amazing! But now that Easter is over, how do you maximize the engagement that you experienced last Sunday?

The answer: push notifications!

With so many opportunities to stay connected in a digital age, push notifications are one of the best ways to reach your community instantly. With push notifications, you don’t have to wait until next weekend to engage your audience. In fact, with one click you can send an invitation to weekend services, an event reminder, or your connect card straight to their mobile devices.

Let’s get started! Here are five ways to maximize engagement after Easter.

1. Share the Easter Message

Sending a push notification with the weekend message is a great way to engage your community with meaningful content. You can share an audio or video file via push notifications and give those who attended church an opportunity to revisit the message. It’s also possible that people were traveling over the weekend and may have missed the sermon entirely — not anymore! 

Try something like this: “Missed last weekend’s Easter message or want to listen again? Find it here!”

Pro tip: When building push notifications that include links or large amounts of text (such as scriptures, connect cards, event details, bulletins, etc.), add these elements to the “More Information” section of your new notification. In doing so, you can still serve up robust content without exceeding the notification text limit of 110 characters.

2. Remind Them to Give an Easter Gift

You may have seen a handful of first-time visitors on Easter Sunday, which resulted in more visits to your website or new downloads of your app. These users may not know that they can easily give within seconds via your app or on your website. Now is the perfect time to introduce this feature to them by sending a push notification. 

Here’s an example: “If you didn’t have a chance to give on Easter, you can give in our app. It takes less than 10 seconds!”

3. Send a Reminder About Service Times

It’s not uncommon for churches to deviate from their standard weekend service times on Easter to accommodate an influx of attendance. Push notifications are a great way to remind those within your community that it’s back to business as usual or help first-time guests know your regular services times and locations. 

Send an invitation like this: “We can’t wait to see you this weekend! Join us for our services at 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.!”

Pro tip: Add your location details or any other additional information to the “More Information” section when building your new notification.

4. Stay Connected with First-time Visitors

With Easter being one of the primary events of the year for churches to see an increase in first-time guests, push notifications can help facilitate engagement with not only your current community but also with those who may have attended your church for the first time. Sending a simple reminder such as, “We hope you are having a blessed week, and we look forward to seeing you this weekend,” could be the extra touch those first-timers need to jump in and start engaging with your church.

5. Ongoing Encouragement

Push notifications are a great way to foster engagement all week long. Simply send words of encouragement, uplifting scripture references, or excerpts from the weekend message to make a quick connection with your community during the week. The good news doesn’t have to end on the weekend! 

You might simply say, “Be encouraged this week! Jesus loves you!”

These are just a few ideas for how you can use push notifications to maximize engagement after Easter. Our team would love to help you get the most out of tool. If you would like to have one of our Client Success Managers walk you through strategies for your ministry, give us a call at 206-965-8090 or send an email to hello@subsplash.com.

The Best Number for Your Church

How many people are attending Sunday services? How much money are people giving? How many people are serving? For many churches, these types of numbers are commonly used to measure success. But maybe the best number in your community is actually zero. Dave Gibbons shares that when Jesus shows up in our churches and neighborhoods, he doesn't just bring about inflation of crowds, but real, systemic transformation. 

About Dave Gibbons

Dave is the Lead Pastor and Chief Visionary at Newsong Church in Santa Ana, CA. He is also the Founder and Chief Vision Officer at Xealots, a human development group focusing on helping Creatives, Innovators, and Artists find their destiny. Subsplash has been blessed to partner with Dave and Newsong over the last handful of years, and we have been deeply impacted by his perspectives on training up leaders and engaging with culture. We hope his insight in the video above is encouraging to you as you seek the welfare of your cities (Jeremiah 29:7). To learn more about Newsong, download their app here. You can also check out Dave's books by following this link. 

About the video

We had the privilege of visiting with Dave during one of our trips to Southern California last year. We were so encouraged by our conversation with him that we asked midway through if we could record some of his thoughts, and he kindly agreed. So there we were, sitting in Dave's living room discussing church and culture, with Dave speaking into the mic. We couldn't keep the conversation to ourselves, though, so we decided to create a visual representation to go along with Dave's thoughts. The laundromat in the video represents the process of renewal and transformation, as clothes change from dirty to clean. 

Is there something God has placed on your heart that you'd like to share as an encouragement to fellow pastors and church leaders? We'd love to hear about it! Let us know at hello@subsplash.com. 

4 Engagement Tips for Easter Sunday

Easter is right around the corner! You've probably spent the last weeks (or months!) planning for how to engage with your community on this momentous weekend. Did you know that your app can play a huge part in those plans? We're not here to throw a wrench into the hard work your team has already completed, but we wanted to share a few ways you can use the Subsplash Platform to come alongside the strategies you already have in place. Let's take a look:

Announce your app from the stage.

Want people to engage with your content post-Easter weekend? Let them know about your app! It's very likely that most people coming through your doors own a smart phone...77% of American adults do, according to Pew Research. A simple plug from the stage allows every person to know where they can go to stay connected. It's quick, easy, and provides a great on ramp to keeping your gospel content in front of your community. We've found that churches that announce the app from the stage tend to see better engagement on mobile, including both Church of the City and Hillside Community Church - click the links to learn more about each church's experience.

 

Go digital.

Want to go green AND enable people to connect with your church, even after your services? Add your connect card and bulletin to the app! Visitors can submit information via the app at any point, and now their notes will live on their phone. Our friends at Calvary Chapel Worship Center in Portland went completely digital with their bulletins and connect cards, and were able to save thousands of dollars in the process. Even better, they saw engagement increase with digital bulletins! Learn more about their story here.

 

Use push notifications.

Push notifications are easy to schedule, and they receive a significantly higher open rate than your email blasts. Tap into this tool to keep more people in the loop during Holy Week and the weeks following. Here are just a few ideas of push notifications you can send to your community in the coming weeks:

• Reminder of service times and weekend event schedules
• Share a Bible verse/devotion to prepare people's hearts for your service
• Encouragement to invite a friend to church
• Share your Sunday bulletin
• Share Sunday's sermon and any other follow-up materials after your service

 

Refresh your app.

Keep both members and visitors coming back to your app by adding a fresh new look! If you haven't already, make sure to check out our new custom app layouts, which are available to all Subsplash clients. You can now customize your app on a deeper level than ever before, even down to adjusting the margins on each page! Contact your Client Success Manager to learn more about new layouts.

We are praying that God would use all of your hard work and preparation to draw people to himself, and we can’t wait to hear stories of all the amazing things he does through your ministry! Happy Easter to all! 

The Village Church: Multiply

Sometimes, "faith" can be spelled "r-i-s-k." But that hasn't kept Matt Chandler and the team at The Village Church from leaning into the Holy Spirit and trusting in God as they seek to transition their five campuses to autonomous churches. We sat down with Matt to hear more about this vision and what his team has learned through the process. "We're just believing through a lot of prayer and God revealing some things to us that tomorrow is going to be better than today," he said. We loved hearing the story behind Multiply, and we can't wait to see how God will use each of these new churches to impact his kingdom. 

Check out the video to hear more about The Village Church's transition and Matt's encouragement to other pastors (trust us, you're not going to want to miss that part). And to hear more from Matt Chandler, download The Village Church's app here. 

Remembering Billy Graham

We were deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Billy Graham this morning. Rev. Graham was a faithful teacher, pastor, and friend to countless people. He preached the good news of Jesus to more people than anyone else in history. It is estimated that nearly 215 million people in more than 185 countries heard the gospel through his public meetings and crusades, and hundreds of millions more through television, radio, and the internet. 

There are few people who haven't been impacted by Billy Graham's teaching. Glenn Reph gave his life to Jesus at a Billy Graham Crusade in 1963. Glenn would go on to faithfully lead major companies in the payment processing industry, pastor multiple churches, and join us here at Subsplash as the Vice President of Finance, all with Jesus at the center of his life. "My one purpose in life is to help people find a personal relationship with God," said Rev. Graham. The ripple effect of his faithful work is unquantifiable.  

As his health was fading, Billy Graham gave the exhortation, “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.” While we mourn the passing of a faithful leader, teacher, and friend, we rejoice knowing that he is now face to face with the one he loved so deeply, free from pain, suffering, and strife. His legacy will impact and inspire many generations to come.

To listen to some of Rev. Graham's sermons, check out the Billy Graham Association app.