St Mary Case Study-Every Echo Project-
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Current Situation
The great majority of all Catholics are disengaged from active involvement in the life of their home parish.
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Every Echo Project Approach
There are opportunities in the life of every Catholic where they cross the doors of the Church. These are touch points like weddings, funeral, confirmations, baptisms and the like. Every Echo proposes to seize upon these touch points in ways that re-engage lapsed and disengaged parishioners.
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Case Study - St Mary Gloucester City NJ
St Mary is a poor small parish in southern New Jersey. The had an aging pastor and an ancient website. We proposed to update the parish communications packages to include a website make over. The following describes what happened.
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The Echo Project Components
An integrated website with video, email marketing, analytics, social media links and ancillary supporting websites describe the new communication package called an echoSite.
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The First New echoSite
Colorful, responsive and functional - with rich multi media to engage, contact forms to gather information and relevant content to encourage a longer look.
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New Branded Parish Social Media Accounts
Using social media to build community where parishioners already were. We built the following and linked followers back to the parish website to get a fuller discussion going and to demonstrate the wealth of resources now available to them.
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Monthly Newsletter Email Marketing Campagin
Building an email list of the parish was a novel idea for St Mary. We used the idea of a monthly newsletter in two essential ways. 1. To gather a solid list for later donation campaigns. 2. Elicit Ads from local business that regularly partnered with the parish.
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Initial Results
There was rapid acceptance because there actually was a pent up demand for community. Every Catholic has a home parish, even those who moved away. In the early days, parishioners shared the website address far and wide. New and return visitors flourished. Also emails were opened and social media followers grew.
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Demographics - The Right Audience for Growth.
The actual people who used the communication methods surprised the leadership. Using data from Google Analytics, we found they were older than anticipate. They were gender neutral - both women and men also regularly visited the site. Most importantly, most of the visitors were local. These results made it easier to get local business sponsors to sign up for ads.
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Parish Fund Raising Platform
An advertising campaign followed with various levels of sponsorship. This help defray the cost to the third party vendors and to actually raise money on an ongoing basis for the parish.
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Sponsor Level
Placement in ancillary website called Parish Partners that contained a full description of business, contact information, and other relevant offers for parishioners. Also placement on parish website on the Sponsor page.
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Page Partner Level
250 x 250 ad placed on relevant interior page of parish website. Additionally, placement in Funeral alert website NJ Catholic Obits. This site was especially relevant to funeral homes, florist, and local hotels.
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Network Partner Level
Growing from the previous level, included silver framing, and ads in the ancillary websites as well that went beyond the parish boundaries.
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Premiere Partner Level
Gold framing on all ads and inclusion on all outgoing communications were the perks of this level of sponsorship.
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Duplication at Other Parish
The St Mary Model works at any parish. In fact, the more adjacent parishes that are involved in the program, the greater bang for buck, local businesses get from the program. Everyone wins with Every Echo.