Local Church Adds News Members Faster With Printed Newsletter

Case Study

Challenge

A local church was seeking a way to reach new homeowners in their rapidly growing community. For several years they had used a door-to-door campaign to invite people to their church, but were now unable to keep up with all of the new housing with the limited volunteers they had. They also had a limited budget for both the gas needed and flyers handed out during this approach.

Solution

PIP’s solution was the implementation of a direct mail campaign to the whole community. We showed the outreach ministries director a cost comparison of a direct mail campaign versus the door-to-door approach. Our suggestion included using the same newsletter the church was already sending to their current members, increasing the quantity and using it as their new prospecting tool. By developing it into a full-colour newsletter shell as a self-mailer and printing a one-year supply, we were able to help the church keep their printing costs down. Quarterly, the newsletter shells could be overprinted as a one-colour job. We also obtained the rural route numbers for the customer’s community, which reduced the cost of purchasing a mailing list.

Results

By using full-colour shells the church reduced their costs without affecting the integrity of the newsletter. They averaged 20 new members from each of the mailings; a 700% increase in response over their previous door-to-door approach. And, their volunteers now have more time to spend doing home visits with the new members.