Results of Small Group Funnel 2022

Results from the marketing method described in my previous post.

I created some segments of people in our church database so that I could more effectively reach out to them about Small Group Bible Studies. Here are some of the results… I should say that my funnel worked, but not quite in the way I was hoping. More details on that in the conclusion.

Email Results

Well email marketing exists because it works folks. I’ll describe each segment and the results from it.

People with No Kids

This segment included 123 sent email messages. 82 messages were opened, for an open rate of 67%. Only 6 clicked through to the form to get more info, a rate of nearly 5%. Of those, I think one actually signed up for a group.

Parents Who Have Kids in Student Ministry

This segment included 342 sent email messages. 261 messages were opened, for an open rate of 76.6%. 22 clicked through to the info form, for a rate of 6.4%. Again, I think one signed up for a group (so far).

Parents Who Have Kids in Children’s Ministry (grade 1-5)

This segment included 398 sent email messages and 315 of those were opened. That translates into an open rate of 79%. In this segment, 45 clicked through for information, and I can’t see any who actually completed the form. The click through rate was 11.3%.

Parents Who Have Kids in Preschool Ministry (up to Kinder)

This segment included 254 sent email messages. 204 were opened, for an open rate of 80%. But none of these people clicked through to get more information, so 0% click through rate.

Email Conclusions

I spoke with our Content Coordinator about the low response rate on the form to request more information about a specific group. She told me that when we advertise women’s groups (they have their stuff together and advertise each new study - I just do whole-church advertisements 2x a year) they only get a handful who sign-up, even though several dozen will show up. She has a theory that people are wary of committing to something, even with as low of a bar as signing up for information.

Social Media Post Results

We posted about Small Groups on Social Media (Facebook and Instagram). I did not collect any results for this because our social media coordinator used a different link than the one I created to count statistics. I’m sorry.

SMS to Members Results

I sent an SMS to our church members also a few days before groups began. 41 clicks on our link were recorded from this text message to 674 people.

Old School In Room Announcement

I should point out that we did an announcement in our Worship Service for Small Group Bible studies, and pointed people to a table in our foyer to give them further information. It’s really hard to quantify something like this but I’ll try. The first week that we did an in-service announcement, 661 adults were in the room (we have someone count heads each week). I passed out 30 information cards, and talked with 10 people about a specific group.

I also made a quick speech about small group Bible studies at a Night of Worship event and talked with 4 couples about small groups after it was over.

The second week of announcing in the service was predictably less effective. I think we passed out about 12 information cards, and I talked with 3 people about groups.

Overall Conclusions

Overall I was very pleased with the results of this communication strategy. We were able to launch 3 new small groups - one of which was unplanned, but the result of stronger than expected demand. My existing groups all gained some new people as a result of the church-wide campaign.

Looking ahead, I’m planning to implement something similar in launching 4 classes in September, and then aim even higher for launching another round of groups in January. That January launch will include a church-wide sermon based small group study, which will make another post at that time!