Tips for Sending Your Weekly Church Bulletin

1. Import your folks: If you haven’t already, you need to import every email address you have from all ministry databases of members. Simply put them on your “Everyone” group in Flocknote (or any other group…which will then automatically include them in your “Everyone” group). That way they’ll receive this important, short, relevant weekly info from you.
2. Send consistently once a week: It should come as a weekly email (many churches send on Friday for the coming Sunday).
3. Stay top of mind with your people: Getting a short, relevant, weekly email out to everyone in the church is a great way to stay regularly top-of-mind during the middle of your members’ busy weeks.
4. Measure engagement: While this regular communication keeps your folks in the loop and gives them a dependable way to know the most important things happening at your church, it also gives you, the admin, Unolytics (statistics) on who is opening emails and how engaged your overall congregation is week to week.
5. What “group” to use: For most churches, it will make sense to send it out using your “Everyone” group on Flocknote.
6. Don’t simply insert an image of your bulletin into your email (that will be frustrating to read on a mobile device).
7. Mobile consideration: Keep in mind that about 50% of your members will be reading it (like all your emails) on their mobile devices. 
8. Unique subject line: Don’t simply title the email “Weekly Bulletin.” Instead, make every subject unique and highlight something happening that week (ex: Weekly Bulletin – Easter schedule and new service opportunities). You’ll get a much better open rate (and be communicating relevant info before they even open the email).
9. Don’t just link to it: Within the email, don’t only link to the bulletin somewhere else (that’s a waste of an opportunity and too many steps for some readers!).
10. Give the headlines: Within the email, write a short bit of intro text followed by a few bullet points of the most important things going on that week (i.e. give them the headlines first!).
11. What about the details: Link or attach (easy to do in Flocknote) the full bulletin to the email for more info and details so they can read the full thing as they like. If you have time, you could include more details within the email itself down below, but make sure to still put the headlines and highlights at the top first.
12. Don’t do this -> Some bulletin services will offer to email out your bulletin automatically for you from their system. This is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. The three main reasons are:
    1. You want to track these emails with all your other communication stats in Flocknote (who is opening it, what are they clicking, etc.). Flocknote will track which links are getting clicked the most so you know which things people really cared about!
    2. Flocknote lets everyone reply back with questions or engage in discussion when necessary.
    3. You want all your communications to be consistent (come from same place, use same system, same way to reply, and consistent branding).
13. Listen to your members: This weekly email will give your members a regular way to ask questions and give feedback to you via Flocknote replies and comments (which are super easy for you to track and reply back to now when needed).
14. From the pastor: When possible, the best results often come when the note is sent from the pastor. It’s more personal and simultaneously gives him a way to personally communicate to the flock each week.

We hope these were helpful! Remember, your friendly Flocknote Happiness Engineers are an email away if you have any questions about sending your church bulletin each week – and we’re happy to help!