St Mary
SAINT MARY'S PARISH
Saint Mary is located in Gloucester City, NJ. It is the cornerstone of a close knit community. However, the lay leadership desired a renewed spirit of evangelism in the parish to attract the local parishioners who had fallen away. The parish desired a 24 hour virtual parish where folks could start or continue the conversation necessary to get them back to mass.
The Challenge
St Mary is one of the smaller parishes in the Camden Diocese. However, the people have a deep love of the church and the community of Gloucester City. The challenge is to energize the parish to become more of a vital part of the lives of the community at large. Also the larger challenge is to bring the lapsed Catholic back to the online church in route to a fuller practice of their faith at the physical church itself.
What We Did
We talked to the parish council about taking a course of action that included a new multimedia website with blog, originating a monthly newsletter, and starting a social media conversation.
What We Achieved
Demographics: Surprisingly, the users of the website are not just the "kids". In fact, 64% of the users are over the age of 45 years. 67% are local residents. 54% are women.
Website: Within the fist four months, the website achieved 56K impressions. Since the introduction over 21K unique visitors have joined conversation with the parish online. 47% of users came to site from desktop platforms, while the majority, 53% came by use of tablet or mobile phone.
Social media: We started a Facebook campaign from scratch. With an entirely organic approach, we grew the page to 500 likes within the first 3 quarters.
Email: Compared to normal non-profits open rates of 25%, St Mary email campaigns average 64% open rates. Additionally, the click rates, indicating engagement, far exceeded the non-profit average of 8% with an average of 33%.