Mobile Giving Can Help Your Church This Summer!

During the summer months the landscape at your church likely changes. While people travel, host friends and family, and spend more time out in the sun instead of in the pews, churches don't generally see the same levels of attendance and tithing.

As more people continue to adopt mobile, mobile giving is also becoming a regular part of people's digital lives - in fact, mobile donations increased by 45% from 2014 to 2015. What if giving at your church increased during the summer instead of dipped? 

Mobile Giving can be a huge benefit to churches who are wanting to keep their congregation engaged during the summer, despite people's hectic summer schedules. Here are a few ways Subsplash Giving can help: 

Making Giving Simple and Automatic

When users spend a few brief minutes setting up an account with Subsplash Giving they have the option to set up a recurring gift that will automatically withdraw funds on a fixed  day every month. This allows members of your church to continue to give faithfully even if their summer schedule clashes with regular life rhythms.

Making Giving Accessible

Creating an app for your organization gives you an incredible opportunity to meet your community where they are at. Whether your users are coming to your app to hear weekly sermons or read a blog post, putting your content side by side with Subsplash Giving encourages even more engagement in your app. 

Because mobile giving makes it easy to give at anytime and from anywhere, your church doesn't have to suffer the usual summer giving woes. 

Let's chat about helping you see the benefits of mobile giving for your community! 

3 Reasons Mobile Giving Increases Donations

Generosity thrives when relationship is prioritized. Our passion is to create technology that will help organizations build a stronger connection with their community, which is why the Subsplash Platform is designed with deeper engagement in mind.

Push Notifications, Connect tabs, and Bible Reading Plans, are all features that help your community feel connected to your church or ministry and they are extremely accessible, making it simple for your content to integrate easily into user's daily lives.

Here are 3 reasons why the accessibility, ease, and convenience of mobile giving can increase donations for your organization:

1. Everyone has a phone. 74% of Americans say they write no more than one check per month, and about 80% of Americans carry $50 or less in cash. It's hard to deny that mobile payment is the way of the future. Cultural and societal trends show that mobile technology is the primary way that people are becoming more efficient and streamlined in their day to day activities. 
2. Recurring gifts bring consistency. Subsplash Giving provides users with the option to set up a recurring gift. Church attendance can drop up to 70%+ during the summer, (July 4-Aug 15) which usually means a drop in tithing for those months as well. Recurring giving allows people to continue to tithe even when attendance is impacted by travel or other unexpected circumstances.
3. Apps increase engagement, and engaged audiences are more likely to give. At Subsplash, we know that engaged communities lead to giving communities. When people are engaged and it’s easy to give, people are more likely to give! With Subsplash Giving we’ve made giving in your app simple and effortless.

The Subsplash Giving Dashboard provides a clear picture of where money is going and when. Having one place to access information about all past transactions allows people to easily manage and track their transactions, making them feel more secure and confident in their giving.

We would love to get you started with Subsplash Giving! Let us know how we can serve your church or ministry by getting in touch with us!

Ways To Encourage Your Pastor To Go Mobile

Whether you're just an attendee or a staff member, it can be challenging to push for new ideas and initiatives at your church when time and resources are limited. And let's face it, change is scary!

While churches are increasingly embracing technology and influential church leaders are inviting pastors to consider how they can utilize technology to reach their congregation, it can still take some convincing for church leaders to get on board with the switch from more traditional methods, to adopting newer ones. 

To help you out, we've put together a list of a few tips on how to convince your pastor that it's time to go mobile!

Show them the facts

With 2.2 million mobile device users globally, developing a mobile app strategy is the most effective way to reach people with the good news of the Gospel. Not only that, but mobile users spend nearly 3 hours every day on their smartphones, and a staggering 89% of time spent by users on mobile is in an app. 

These numbers speak loud and clear: if you want to reach people, the best way to do it is on their mobile devices. With all of the great content your church creates, developing a mobile strategy will get your sermons, music, and blog posts in the hands of more people.

Share the benefits

We like to talk about five main benefits of creating a customized mobile app:

• Deeper engagement from your community with content that is easy to add in the Subsplash Dashboard
• Enhanced presence by having your app available in every app store, and on all devices
• Saved time and resources by providing a quick, secure mobile giving solution with Subsplash Giving
• Simplify your process by housing all of your content in the Subsplash Dashboard, and tracking your analytics in one place
• Showcase your brand by presenting your media in a beautifully designed app and unparalleled mobile experience.

We have some other tips for you that will involve your active participation in setting up an app for your church or ministry. Stay tuned for part two of this series!

6 Benefits of Going Mobile

The mobile industry has revolutionized the way we interact with digital media, and mobile growth isn’t slowing down. How is your mobile strategy going? Here are six specific benefits of going mobile: 

1. Audiences spend 20% more time on mobile than desktop

With the majority of people spending their time on mobile versus desktop, building out a mobile strategy for your organization is no longer a luxury. The first step towards going mobile is a mobile-friendly website. By creating a website optimized for mobile you won’t only reach your audience where they spend their time, but you’ll also return higher in Google searches because of Google’s latest ranking signal based on mobile.

Your website is often your organization’s first shot at making a good impression. If resources are limited, consider only optimizing the most important pages of your site first, and then expanding from there.

2. Millennials Love Mobile

With millennials spending so much of their time on their mobile devices and making up 25% of the U.S. population, targeting this group as part of your mobile strategy will help you to increase your impact and help deepen the relationship between your brand and upcoming generations.

3. Access to your Audience 24X7

Mobile phones are no longer a practical accessory, they are planner, cell phone, email inbox, and entertainment source wrapped into one. With mobile phones always being in reach, you can access your audience with ease.

By adding a mobile app to your communication strategy, you can reach your audience with push notifications and connect with them anytime, anywhere.

4. Personalized Content

With all of the personalization opportunities on mobile, you can tailor your content to fit your audience’s needs. Using the information you already have about your audience, you can personalize your audience’s experience with your brand from their first interactions with your content.

Personalizing content for your audience increases customer satisfaction and causes people to want to interact with your media for longer periods of time.

5. Drive Brand Loyalty

Mobile app users tend to revisit the apps that they love frequently. By continually improving your content for mobile, you can grab your audience’s attention and keep them coming back for more, reinforcing your brand’s trustworthiness.

6. Delight Your Audience

Part of the draw of mobile is the ability to get information quickly and easily. Having easy access to content is no longer a luxury, but an expectation for audiences. Creating high-quality content that delights your audience and is easily accessible, is sure to create a stronger bond between you and your community.

Are you Maximizing the Potential of your App? (Part 2)

After reviewing some ways that you can engage with your community during Sunday services, it’s time to look at how you can keep your congregation connected to your church and each other throughout the week.

1. Push Notifications

Quickly becoming one of our clients’ most useful features, push notifications is an incredibly effective way to communicate with your community at any point in time. Just create your notification and schedule it for the optimal time to reach your audience.

You can instantly get your messages to your congregation by sending event reminders, updating your congregation about meeting times and locations, and more.

2. Bible Reading Plan

Lead your community through the Bible each week with a Bible Reading Plan feature. Whether you’re wanting to guide your congregation through the whole Bible, or wanting to focus in on a specific book, this feature can be a supremely helpful tool to keep your community rooted in the scriptures during the week.

3. Prayer Wall

Creating a Prayer Wall for your app will help foster community and encourage your congregation throughout the week. The customizable nature of this feature allows you to address the needs of your church, even when circumstances don’t allow for face-to-face interactions.

4. Media: Sermons, Podcasts, and Music

Showcasing your media in your app is one of the best ways to communicate your vision and mission in a clear and creative way. Is there any type of media that you haven’t been sharing with your community yet?

Whether it’s weekly sermons, podcasts, recordings of other events, or music, including your media content in your app will take your audience engagement to a new level.

What are some of the ways you’ve refreshed your app lately? Let us know about it in the comments below! For more tips on maximizing the potential of your app, check out part 1 in this series.