How does a church get the word out and attract new people to a Tuesday night worship service for single adults, called Day Three?

Our initial idea was to send out a direct mail postcard, targeting single adults in a 3-mile radius around our church.

[We are located next to a major mall in OKC, and have a lot of apartment complexes around us. From demographic research, we know there are many young professionals living in them who we think would enjoy the music and message of "Day Three."]

Through the postcard, we wanted them to take a first step -- logging onto a specially-themed Web site, where we would try to lower the barriers for them taking the next step -- attending a Day Three Tuesday night service.

Another objective was to introduce them, through the postcard, to a "face," a person -- our singles minister, who wrote a short letter on the back inviting them to the Tuesday services. We personalized it even more with a signature and offered his email address and phone number.

Here's the promotional tools we used:

• Direct mail postcard [front, back] -- sent to this about 4,800 people in this area.
• Web site -- since our hosting service gives us unlimited domain management, this cost less than $10. I bought the domain name, uploaded a folder for it, and pointed the domain to it. I also planted tracking code in the site too using Google's Analytics.
• Word of mouth -- our singles minister asked our members to invite others.
  

Things I wish we had done differently:

1. Got the direct-mail postcard out faster -- seems like in ministry we're always on a tight deadline
2. Offered something for free -- I've talked about this before [in 1, 2, 3, 4 posts]
3. Sent a coordinated email to all our singles asking them to invite others -- Word of mouth spreads easier if it's ... easy as pushing the "forward" button on an email
4. It takes work and good planning to do something like this

Ingredients I used for this:

• Watercooler photo -- from IStockPhoto
• BargainPrinting -- for the postcards; one of the best online printers I've found
• PreSort First Class -- OKC direct mail company
  
• Google Maps -- they beat MapQuest every day!
  
• Google Analytics -- site tracking
  

Weigh in on this ... give me some constructive critiques ... comment on this post or send me an email.

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