Introducing Planning Center and Subsplash Giving Integration

Every day, church and ministry leaders like you rely on countless digital tools to carry out your mission. From sending emails to scheduling volunteers, processing donations to projecting slides… technology supports so much of what you do. And when great tools work together, you can do even more!

We’re excited to announce our new integration between Subsplash Giving and Planning Center Giving! 

Now, your organization can enjoy the benefits of Subsplash Giving—secure and simple, with the low rates of GrowCurve—while easily managing your donors in Planning Center Giving, one of the premier ChMS providers. Any gifts that are submitted in your app, on your website, or through text-to-give will be automatically recorded in Planning Center and linked to the corresponding donor record.

Subsplash Giving also includes Simple Sync, by which you can easily export data for use with any ChMS. We hope that as you take advantage of these features (and other integrations that we’re continuing to develop) your team becomes even more equipped to streamline its processes and advance the Kingdom.

To learn more about the integration with Subsplash Giving and Planning Center Giving, reach out to your Client Success Manager today or, if you’re new to the Subsplash Platform, let’s chat!

Boost Engagement With Location-Based Push Notifications

Do you struggle to keep your church community engaged? It turns out you’re not alone. In the average church, anywhere from half to less than 20% of churchgoers are actively engaged.

When you research strategies for church engagement, you’ll come across all kinds of tips and tricks - some that can be effective and others that are much less so.

We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and creating more ways to help you increase engagement and make more and better disciples. We are excited to share that we will soon be releasing a new feature enhancement that we believe will help solve this problem!

Introducing GeoEngage™ - Coming Soon!

We are on a mission to help bridge the divide between digital and real-life communication. And that’s why we’re thrilled to announce Push Notifications with GeoEngage! This new feature will allow churches to engage with location-based push notifications as well as complement person-to-person interactions that help connect your community right where they are.

Maybe you’re already utilizing the power of push notifications to drive engagement, that’s great! Push notifications are a feature that is available to all current Subsplash clients within the Subsplash Dashboard. What makes GeoEngage so unique is that you can take those notifications one step further by creating geographic fences around a set location, which triggers the notifications when app users enter, exit, are currently within or are outside that set location. 

That sounds like a lot of tech talk, right? For the user-friendly version, this basically means that GeoEngage will allow churches to send notifications to a user based on a set geographic location in addition to the app users action of entering, exiting, already being within or being outside the predetermined location. For example, you could send a notification to those who enter your main church building, when people leave the children’s building on the other side of your campus, or even send event information to users at a location within your community.

Research shows that location-based push notifications get higher click-through rates than other kinds of notifications - as high as 45% in many cases (that’s an enormous number)!

To keep people actively engaged, both normal and location-based push notifications turn your app into a communications center where users can find the most recent updates and announcements.

Ok, but how would my church use it?

At first glance, you may be thinking, “My community is already at church. Why would I need to send out a notification?”

If you’re like many churches, around 20% of your community is highly engaged while the other 80% is lightly engaged or only spectates. Push Notifications with GeoEngage helps you reach out to them when they enter your building or campus to drive more meaningful engagement.

We’re going to deep dive into use cases in a later post, but for starters, GeoEngage is going to allow you to engage your community the minute they walk in the door.

It won’t take the place of your welcome team, but it means that each and every app user who walks through your doors can receive a personalized greeting, a reminder about small group studies, and any resources relevant to the day’s worship service.

You can also schedule a time and date for a location-based notification to send. For instance, you may only want to send greeting messages for 30 minutes before the service starts to 10 minutes after it begins. Or perhaps you want to send out an event reminder to everyone in the service 5 minutes after it’s been announced. With GeoEngage, your app can now do all of this and more!

Here are a few use cases to get your creative wheels churning

Like we said before, we’ve got plenty more use cases coming your way soon, but for now, here are a few ideas of the types of messages you can send with GeoEngage.

• Welcome, we’re so glad you’re here! Don’t forget to get your coffee before worship.

• Don't forget, all children 5+ will be joining their parents for worship in the main service today!

• Check out these resources that go along with this morning’s message.

• Happy Father’s Day! All dads, head to the welcome center to get a special gift.

• Interested in our upcoming trip to Kenya? Come learn more at our informational meeting right after the service.

• Keep the Gospel front and center all week long! Read these devotionals each morning in preparation for next week’s worship.

Are you excited yet? Because we are and we can't wait to see how you will use GeoEngage to drive engagement in your community!

Not currently a Subsplash Client? Let's chat! 

If you're already a Subsplash Client, reach out to your Client Success Manager to find out if your account is ready for GeoEngage.

2018 Keynote

What's been happening at Subsplash? What new features are available? What's coming next?

We're glad you asked, and we're excited to share with you! We're taking digital engagement to the next level, and we can't wait for you to experience what we've been working on. In our 2018 Keynote, Chris Sharpe (Vice President of Business Development) and Tim Turner (Founder and CEO) dive into some of the details behind what we've been up to here at Subsplash. We have lots of exciting news to share, including highlights from 2017, an inside look at how our company is growing, and a sneak peek at some upcoming features. 

We've been dreaming about creating innovative ways to help you expand your reach, engage on a deeper level, and spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. And now we're going to make it a reality! Check out our Keynote to learn more, and if you have questions about any of the features discussed in the video, feel free to drop us a line at hello@subsplash.com. 

We’re Making Exciting Changes to Grow with You

This past year has been incredible. Our clients hit record breaking engagement with over 166 million app launches, 79 million media plays, hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, and billions of page views. We are seeing more and more people engage with their church at a level we have never experienced before. This is a testament to all of the effort, time and prayer you put into creating authentic Gospel-centered experiences for your community, and for that we thank you.  

With your growth, the demand for Subsplash services has continued to increase at an exponential rate, and we have exciting new plans in regards to leveling-up our infrastructure to ensure that you get the best technology and service.

We are honored to serve you along with our team of passionate, dedicated, and gifted innovators. Our team drives for excellence and have come from companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Rackspace, and Expedia. What truly makes our team best in class, is a heart to serve churches and advance the Kingdom.

All of us at Subsplash are focused on bringing you delight and committed to growing along with you as partners in ministry. To that end, we have created the Subsplash platform with:

• Microservices infrastructure with service-oriented architecture
• Load balancing
• Geographically distributed data centers
• Servers in data centers across multiple geographic regions
• Global CDNs
• Cloud computing infrastructure via Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, etc.

We are excited about enhancing these technologies and expanding upon them so that we can continue to help you serve your communities and share the Good News. We look forward to growing with you as you experience the direct impact of increased engagement in your communities. If you’re new to the Subsplash Platform and want to learn more about our platform and services contact us at hello@subsplash.com

Looking forward!

Tim Turner

Founder + CEO

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.