CCV wrapped up it's U2 Ticket Giveaway this week. The promotion had 844 participants with 6162 entries (each partcipant could register up to once a day). After surveying the partcipants CCV found that roughly 20% were unchurched. For the full details on the results see the full U2 Giveaway Deconstructed link.
Win U2 Tickets
CCV has just released it's most recent, and perhaps most unconventional, Easter Outreach idea: Win U2 Tickets. The church hopes this will draw unchurched to CCV website by giving away 2 tickets to a sold out U2 concert. While filling out form and after submission, the entrant will be viewing a special promo for our Easter services as well as a U2 ‘friendly’ link to answers to common questions asked about Christianity (i.e. “Why does evil exists?”). Entrants can increase their odds of winning by entering once a day (when they register the first time they can opt to receive a daily e-mail reminding them to enter).
Some of the church's thoughts behind this outreach tool are:
- U2 Tickets are a hot commodity. They sold out 2 showings at the Glendale Arena in 20 minutes. Current prices on the street for similar tickets range from $500 - $800 per seat.
- U2 Fans hit our target market (males between the ages of 25-45). The average U2 fan is a male between 28 - 40.
- Pointing a friend to U2 tickets is a pretty low risk outreach for our members. There is little to no opportunity for rejection. This could open the avenue for further discussion of our church.
- U2 is the closest thing to a secular / Christian band (Especially with their latest album which is infused with Christian themes and lyrics.)
To see this promotion first hand travel to http://www.ccvonline.com/u2contest
CCV Annual Survey
Every year CCV takes a congregation wide marketing and communications survey. The survey is taken during the service and is made up of 17 short multiple choice questions. This year our coordinator was a little short on questions so I was able to sneak a few web / technical questions in. Below are some of the results that I thought I would be of interest.
Q: What's the best way to tell you about CCV events?
Phone - 4%
Bulletin - 40%
E-mail - 40%
Website - 8%
Mail - 9%
Other - 0%
Q: How often do you check e-mail?
Everyday - 51%
A few times a week - 25%
Once a week - 8%
Less than once a week - 8%
Don't have an e-mail account - 8%
Q: How often do you visit the CCV website?
Everyday - 2%
A few times a week - 12%
Once a week - 22%
Less than once a week - 33%
Don't visit the website - 24%
CCV has a website? - 7% (where have these people been...)
A few thoughts from the results:
- Definitely should have had a option of "Visits website once a month". Going from once a week to less than once a week probably wasn't the best break-out.
- Overall, I'm impressed that 36% visit our website once a week (many more actually do visit but don't know it by reading or Fusion newsletter).
- We do need to get into the head of those 24% who don't use it to find out why (is it a lack of content, lack of communicating, or do they just not use the web?)
- Impressed that 84% of our attendees check their e-mail at least once a week.
Appling the Purple Cow
I just finished Seth Godin's book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. I must say this is an awesome book. The last few days I've been pondering how his concepts can be applied to churches. One thing that struck me is his concept of sneezers. Sneezers are individuals who are so excited by your product that they market it for you to everyone they come into contact with. In a church I imagine there are several categories of sneezers. Often the most excitable are those who recently started coming to church and are on fire for what God is doing in their life. So how to find and focus on these people???
At CCV we can find these people in our Class 100, Introduction to Christianity and the Church. Better yet we could use our membership system to find those who have been recently added to the system, taken Class 100 and soon after were baptized. The close proximity of these three events speaks to someone who is excited about making changes in their life. At this stage they are most likely to share their faith and church experience with others. I think of it as a burning match. They're on fire. Our job is to provide tools and opportunities for them to ignite those around them. This burning desire to tell others about their changed lives often dissipates over time (like a match). It's not that they 'lose their religion', but rather they get more comfortable in their new lives. It's therefore important to get them outreach tools and ideas in their burning phase.
These are just some initial perspectives...
Lessons from U2
Kevin Henricks writes a great article on the marketing lessons of U2. He ends the article with some great application ideas for churches. READ THIS! (I'm not just saying that because I'm a huge U2 fan).
The Decline of Branding
November's issue of Wired Magazine has a great article entitled 'The Decline of Brands'. If you haven't read it you’re missing a very interesting read (even if you’re not in the whole marketing thing). The premise is that consumer's loyalty to brands is declining at a rapid pace due to the vast numbers of high quality, low cost alternatives. In addition, consumers also have much more information at their finger tips to make changing brands less risky.
Another interesting point brought up in the article is the over importance given to branding in the past. "Marketers looked at these companies (Pillsbury, Disney, Morton, Gillette, etc) and said they were succeeding because their brands were strong. In reality, the brands were strong because the companies were succeeding."
The same trends can also me seen in the Church. Today's members and attendees are less and less loyal to a particular church or denomination. I know this was certainly true for me, especially in my early Christian years. As church leaders our first temptation to this trend might be to increase the entertainment value of our services to ensure higher return rates. But that's a losing proposition in two ways. The first is you'll never be able to stay ahead of every church in town. The second and more important problem with that logic is that it misses our true purpose, which is to help people build their relationships with God. Instead, we should focus on creating services and ministries that help foster relationships between attendees and God and each other. If you do that right you're guaranteed success as a church (especially in God's eyes).
All of this is not to say that branding is dead. It's still important that an organization builds a solid and cohesive image in the community. But perhaps we are spending too much time creating a brand of who we want to be and not enough time on actually fulfilling those goals.
Church Marketing Sucks
Another great site found thanks to Chris Busch's blog, ChurchMarketingSucks.com. A few great quotes fromthe site are below.
If church marketing sucks, we should do our best to make it better. Not to be better than other churches, not to impress design-savvy visitors, but because we're doing this for God and we want to reach people.
Amen! And another...
We're not here to impress. We're here to help the church bring people to God. That might happen through helping churches avoid cheesy clipart and bad design decisions. But it also might happen when churches drop the facade and embrace the fact that we're all broken. Church marketing sucks. But church marketing that acknowledges we suck might be on the right track.
Recent Reads
Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Susan Scott: Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time
Seth Godin: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
Bill Hybels: The Volunteer Revolution: Unleashing the Power of Everybody
