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The Best Church Subject Lines You Aren’t Using

LPi • January 7, 2021

As technology advances, and parishes become more and more reliant on electronic communications, it’s necessary to become more creative when writing and sending out important (and not-so-important!) emails to parishioners, visitors and potential members. As firewalls become sturdier, and people become choosier in what kind of mail they want to receive, parishes need to convey that the messages that come from the office — whether that be from the pastor, deacon, leader of a ministry or the parish secretary — are important to receive.

According to the Radicati Group , the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day exceeds 293 billion in 2019 — and is only expected to grow. What does that mean for parishes that rely on email to get their message out? That they have a lot of competition.

Luckily, if you have a church member’s email address, chances are they are already invested. They are involved in a ministry that sends them updates, or they receive their financial statements on the regular from the parish administrator. Maybe they even receive semi-regular updates from the pastor. But … do you know if these people are actually opening the email you send them? Until you know for sure it’s worth it to spend the time you spend writing, editing and sending email communications, it’s important to know who is opening what.

A Case Study

St. Michael Parish has been sending out a blog from the deacon to all registered parishioners each Wednesday. It takes nearly four hours for the deacon to write his reflection, the parish secretary to edit it, and then send it off using an email platform. However, when they checked email statistics, they noticed that of the 600 emails they’ve been sending to, only 40-50 actually open it. This naturally leads to many questions: is this reflection worth it to send? Is there an issue with the firewall? Could it get a better reception using a different delivery method?

After checking the stats and seeing no issue with addressee firewalls, the parish staff started to look at ways to better entice people to open the emails, and the subject line became front and center. According to Oberlo , the average email open rate is 20.81%. But if you personalize your emails, you’ll start to see the incredible impact that personalization can have.

Emails with customized subject lines generate 50% higher open rates, according to Yes Lifecycle Marketing. A great email marketing tip would be to customize your subject lines to include individual names when you send out emails. Depending on the type of email platform you subscribe to, you may already have the ability to do this. It’s also beneficial to customize your inside copy, too, like adding a personalized salutation to your messages.

50 Best Email Subject Lines for Churches

The next time you must send out an email to members, visitors and prospective parishioners, considering using one of these unique subject lines to increase your open rate.

Personalized