“How Often Should I Send Stuff Out?” (S4Ep07)

This is perhaps one of the most common questions we get from church leaders at Flocknote: “How frequently should I be sending out information? Once a month? Once a week? Every day? How often should my people hear from me? And how much is too much?” Today, we’ll not only give you an answer, but we’ll give you a much better question to be asking in the first place.

Instead of asking — How often should I send stuff out?

Try asking — How much have we earned the right to send this out?

“Sending messages that you haven’t earned the right to send is called spam.”

When your members give you their contact info, they give you implicit permission to a certain amount of communication but not necessarily unlimited communication.

If you feel like you’re begging your people to listen to you, that is a good sign you haven’t yet earned the right to speak to them yet (on that topic, with that frequency, or just in general).

Extremes

Churches can often fall into two extremes – not communicating enough because they’re too afraid, or communicating too much when they haven’t earned the right to do so.

How often should a spammer communicate with you? Zero-often! Never. They haven’t earned the right.

How often should your mom communicate with you? As often as she’d like! She’s your mom and has more than earned it.

How much permission have you earned?

What did your people give you their email address/phone number for? What did they sign up for? That will tell you the implicit permission they have given you to communicate with them.

If they signed up for a daily reflection, you’ve earned the right to a daily message.

If they signed up for a weekly Bible study, you’ve earned the right to a weekly note and maybe one or two extra messages.

It is important to respect the permission that your people have given you and communicate accordingly.

How to gain more permission

Intentionality is key to earning permission to communicate with your people.

1. Send good, quality communications. Make your emails and texts worth your people’s time.
2. Segment your communications. Different people give different permission, so instead of saying more to everyone, say more to the groups that want you to say more.
3. Enrollment vs. Enforcement. Don’t use your authority to force people to listen, do something meaningful that your people will want to sign up to learn more about.

If you’re afraid to communicate, you might not have earned permission to communicate yet. When your members are enrolled, engaged, and excited there should be no fear in communicating with them.

Links from the show

• Do you feel like you’re begging your people to listen? If so, check out this post on the Flocknote Blog: Stop Begging Your Members to Listen.
• Matt Warner mentions our daily emails on the Catechism and the Popes. Learn more about these projects and join our Catechism in a Year and Popes in a Year groups!
• Matt Warner talks about the importance of segmenting your communications. Learn more in this previous episode of The Finding Uno Show: Why Segmenting Lists is So Important.
• Matt Sewell mentions using a Flocknote Smart Button to help your members enroll in groups to hear more from you. Learn more about that feature HERE.
• Did you find Uno? Send us a photo at howdy@findinguno.com.
• Have a general question about church communication? Submit it to our hotline at Findinguno.com/ask-a-question.