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God's given you a vision to plant a church. You're gifted and maybe have the team ready to go. However, there are thousands of details and hundreds of questions that you have. In this podcast we will answer some of the common questions and answer listener submitted questions to help you fulfill the call the Lord's given you.
Welcome back to 101 questions that Church Planters ask. I'm your host, Danny Parmalee, And today, we're answering the questions, do mailers still work? And to even help us, we've got a special guest with us today. Tim, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, and let us know a little bit about yourself?
Tim Speweik:Yeah. Sure. Say, my name is Tim Spiewyke. Work for a company called Outreach, based out of Colorado Springs, Colorado. I work remotely out of Toledo, Ohio, so on the East Coast side of things.
Tim Speweik:Married. We have 12 children. Married just 30 years, this July. 12 children, and we have 8 grandchildren. So we've been producing like rabbits.
Tim Speweik:It's been a lot of fun. And in the church world, I've been a children's pastor, youth pastor in the past, and I've been in church marketing for probably about 27 years now, and, I've assisted in over 1200 church plants in the US.
Danny Parmelee:Wow. That's amazing. Well, we are so thankful, to you to have you joining us today. And those of you that are regular listeners might be like, well, wait a minute. I recognize that name, outreach dot com.
Danny Parmelee:They're one of your sponsors of the podcast. And so full disclaimer, they are, but understand that this is not a a sales pitch. Tim's actually joining us to just kind of give us a little bit of a behind the scenes, look. And, of course, as we mentioned, outreach.com all the time as a sponsor, they actually give our listeners things. So if you haven't heard about that yet or this is your first one that you're listening to, you can head over to churchplantersask.com backslash free stuff, and you can get over a $1,000 worth of free marketing, things, no strings attached, and, Tim or someone from his team will be able to do that.
Danny Parmelee:But today, you know, it's not a sales pitch. We're gonna be talking about mailers, which in a world dominated by digital communication, you know, the idea of using physical mailers, might seem a bit antiquated to many, you know, pastors and church leaders. There's actually a prevalent belief that, you know, maybe mailers don't work anymore and they're a relic of the past and kind of, you know, overshadowed by the immediacy of of digital marketing. However, I'm here to challenge that notion and, to show how mailers work, you know, when they're when they're done right, type type of thing. So, Tim, just in your, you know, in your conversations, have you heard that sentiment as well?
Danny Parmelee:Like, hey. Just this concern, that mailers, no longer work.
Tim Speweik:Yeah. That's a great statement. You know, I've been in the industry, like I said, for over 20 years, and and so back in the day, back, you know, 20, 25 years ago, that was the only real form of marketing that was really used. Social media didn't exist back then. The Internet really wasn't even around back then.
Tim Speweik:So mailers were a great, great way and a most effective way to reach people. And, but over time, yeah, we see different types of marketing hit and it comes and goes. Mailers have kinda hit a peak then it kinda tail back and they hit a peak. And then when social media came on, it was like everybody's like abandoned mailers. Hey.
Tim Speweik:We're all doing social media all in, you know, and so and and that is a super effective tool, and mailers did take a back seat for quite a while. But, yes, you know, mailers are still very very effective today. I mean, you can even think of fortune 500 companies that are using it if you're familiar with Kroger or shoot the NFL FanDuel. I get these in my mailbox. Yeah.
Tim Speweik:Kohl's, you know, bed back in the end before they went out, you know, but, yeah. So yeah. So super effective yet and, and we can go into some more of those details
Danny Parmelee:as well. Yeah. And and I think this is this is my critical point because I have pastors that say mailers don't work, and I'm like, you know what? I absolutely agree with you. Bad mailers don't work.
Danny Parmelee:And, unfortunately, I see so many bad mailers out there. I actually, collect them. Chris Heifel, our other cohost, also, collects these bad mailers that we get even from churches. And when we do our workshops, we use them as examples and kinda say like, okay. This this person or this church just wasted money because they're not communicating, you know, what they think that they're communicating.
Danny Parmelee:And so so what makes an effective mailer? I would say, 1st and foremost, creativity is key. So a good mailer, it stands out, it captures attention, it piques interest. It's not about putting information on paper. It's about telling a story, evoking an emotion, providing a clear call to action.
Danny Parmelee:So think of of the mailer almost like this mini sermon that reaches people right where they are in their homes. It should reflect really like the heart and the soul of the church, you know, showcasing, you know, unique community and inviting others to be part of it. So consider this when when someone receives a beautifully designed mailer that speaks, you know, to their needs and interests it makes an impression. So maybe it's a heartfelt message, a captivating image, preferably both. Whatever it is, it should resonate with the recipient on a on a personal level.
Danny Parmelee:So this kind of connection is the one that kind of like trans, you know, transforms it from, like, a piece of junk mail into a valuable message. So I'll I'll go as far as to say to kind of, like, think of your mailer almost as a as a piece of art. So don't use up that precious space and attention, you know, with, with information. So one of the little, secrets that I say, you know, is the purpose of your mailer isn't to get them to walk through the doors of the church. So rarely does someone, you know, get a mailer and and then all of a sudden they go to church, but you're trying to just get enough intriguing interest to take them to the next step, which is usually the website.
Danny Parmelee:Now the reason why I say that that's important is then you feel this less pressure. Here's the sermon series. Here's, you every service time. Here's, you know, the address and the map and the instead, if you can just capture their attention with, you know, again, a creative bold picture, bold message, question, you know, that that, creativity part of it just enough that they take it and they take that next step to go to the website, to be able to do it. So but beyond creativity, and this is Tim where I'm gonna want you to chime in quite a bit is the area of kind of targeting and timing.
Danny Parmelee:So speak to me a little bit, especially for those that have never done mailers before and they might think, well, how does this work? Do I just, you know, select my city and that's the option, like, mail these to the city or yeah. Talk about carrier routes, saturation targeting, those types of things as it as it deals with mailers.
Tim Speweik:Sure. Sure. Thanks, Danny. And I think that you absolutely nailed it to begin with. You've gotta have an effective piece in order to get a good response off of it.
Tim Speweik:Right? And I wanted to also quickly mention that, you know, there's less competition in our mailbox box than there ever has been before. If you think about it, everybody's doing their bills online. So there's less competition now, so your piece is gonna stand out a lot more. But like you said, that piece has to be effective.
Tim Speweik:It's gotta have right pieces on it. You just don't throw something out there. Make sure you have your website on there. You have to use some bullet points, a quick felt need like you mentioned, and then that will gain and you wanna have oversized piece so that you're gaining attention in the mailbox. So for timing and all all of that, yeah, and choosing where is that reach going to be, all determined by about a few different things.
Tim Speweik:One is how far of a reach do you wanna go out? You wanna be within a 20 minute drive. You don't if you go out beyond that, then you're you're gonna lose effectiveness. Right? So the other thing is budget, obviously, and then how many can your venue hold?
Tim Speweik:You know? So the skies and scope of the mailer totally depends on those things. Obviously, your budget, your size, the the scope that you wanna do with that with your money, and then how far that reaches. But then the list that you're going after also comes into play there. So 90% of what we do with mailers is usually a saturation.
Tim Speweik:So what that means is that is everybody will typically go out from a venue and go out 5 miles, 10 miles, whatever it might be to reach the number in the budget effectively. We all show everybody an aerial view map so they'll know exactly where they're gonna go. And it's customizable too so that you you can take away from some areas here if you know maybe there's a perceived barrier that won't come over from that side of the expressway or maybe there's a physical barrier like a lake that you can bounce around or something like that. But in a saturation, you do get demographic information like when you're looking at it. You get household income, home values, percentage of homes with children in it so that you can go in and select or deselect a postal carrier route.
Tim Speweik:A postal carrier route carries about 500 roughly give or take on how many postal carrier routes, numbers, about how many routes he's doing. And so you can select and deselect by postal carrier route. That's saturation. The other formal way of doing it is called was demographic mailing, where if you went in and you said, hey. I need households with young families with children ages 0 through 10, whatever it may be, you can select those, or if I need them to own a pet, it's unbelievable the amount of demographics that we can go after and capture.
Tim Speweik:But that list is gonna cost you more money because you're getting a more specified list, and it's gonna drive your postage rate up a little bit more because you are no longer saturating. When you saturate, you are driving your postage level to the lowest level possible. When you are, doing demographic, you're kinda doing a little bit more shotgun, but you're being more specific with whom the target that you're going after.
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. Do you, suggest one of those, over the other? So, like, with saturation, like you said, you're gonna get more, but you're gonna have more that, you know, maybe aren't aren't aren't gonna end up ever showing up at your at your church type of thing? Or or when when when do you kind of make that decision to say, hey. You know what?
Danny Parmelee:Pay a little extra money so more of them go in the trash, but you're still reaching as many.
Tim Speweik:Yeah. So good question. So typically, certainly, when you're launching a church, you want the whole community to know that you're there. Right? So you are casting a wide net and capturing and gaining as much attention as possible because guess what?
Tim Speweik:You're right. Maybe that person isn't gonna come, but maybe they know somebody that needs that card that could come. Could be a grandparent that wants to get a grandson or something like that into the church. So, anyways, when you're doing a launch, you typically are doing this large saturation mailer and just getting everybody in the community to know that you are a church for that community. So that's why it's important.
Tim Speweik:Once you get established and you're going along and say you have a certain message series, maybe you wanna just target maybe a single mom
Danny Parmelee:or something like that. Right?
Tim Speweik:Somebody yes. So yeah. So that's the difference between the 2.
Danny Parmelee:I know this is getting really granular, but, with saturation, can you still deselect, businesses so that you're not just sending it to business, but that it's only hitting residential homes.
Tim Speweik:Yeah. Absolutely. Actually, all the lists we do, they never include businesses. And then some passengers will opt in or out of multifamily dwelling units, meaning apartments, those kind of things can be pulled out, campers could be pulled out, and if you just want single family home units, you can just go after that. Yeah.
Danny Parmelee:Yep. Okay. That's great. One of the things I think, too with with marketing even as we're discussing this today is, you know, I'm I'm definitely not against using social media and digital marketing. As a matter of fact, I think that there are tons of advantages.
Danny Parmelee:So it's not an either or, but instead, it's seeing that mailers are part of it as kind of a larger you know, as you back up and look at your larger strategy that you're doing both physical print and digital, together. So in marketing, there's the, you know, the rule of 7, which suggests, you know, that a prospect needs to hear or see your message at least 7 times before they take action. You know? So integrating a mailer with other marketing channels, you create these multiple touch points that, you know, reinforce your message and increase the likelihood of engagement. And I know that, you know, for for us, that was kind of, you know, that was a learning experience.
Danny Parmelee:I was excited when we did our first mailer. And, you know, I I had the team, I can't remember, set out, like, you know, extra 50 or a 100 chairs, and I don't think we got one person, after our mailer. And so I was like, oh my goodness. This this didn't work. But what I found is is that people trickled in over time, and, like, our best story was that someone 18 months after we sent out a mailer physically walked into the church because, you know, it was it was one of those creative ones where it was like you're going through a hard time, yada yada.
Danny Parmelee:And they had put it up on their fridge, pinned it up there, and it took them 18 months to be able to walk through the door. The other thing is we would have people on our connect cards. How did you hear about you know, how'd you hear about the church? I would say 80% of our people wrote on there a friend. So everyone will say, oh, see, it's only word-of-mouth.
Danny Parmelee:Word-of-mouth is really the only but you ask a couple follow-up questions, and they'll be like, oh, well, you know, I heard it from my neighbor who invited me, but I also saw the billboard. You know, I, you know, I I had the opportunity to get the postcard, you know, saw it on social media or whatever. So there's these multiple things. And this is really helpful as you, talk to your to your church and your church plant to say marketing never replaces evangelism. Marketing never replaces the invitation, but instead, it's really setting you up so that by the time you invite, they've already been, you know, you know, ex exposed in a number of times.
Danny Parmelee:So, bringing this back, Tim, one of the questions I wanna ask you because I know there are different schools of thought on it. If someone has a specific budget, are they better to do a 100000 mailers one time or to do 3 mailers of 33,000 a piece? Now I know it's kind of I but you kind of get the question that I'm asking. Do you do you go for this massive one, or are you better at doing multiple?
Tim Speweik:Great question. I'll back up just a second, Danny. Yep. I think I wanted to agree with you that, you know, one thing that mailers have that social media does not have and what you said was shelf life, they'll hang around. It's a it's a piece that, can hang out and at some point, they come in.
Tim Speweik:I've heard so many testimonies about people coming in, like you said, a year, 6 months, couple months later coming in. So, you know, mailers are not a silver bullet, but like you said, they need to be tied in with the social media. They need to be tied in with the community involvement, serve in evangelism. The mailer is what hits right before the event. So everything else that you did to create awareness helps that mailer become way more effective because you have invested in your community.
Tim Speweik:So when you say, hey. Well, how many should I do? Should I do 1, 2, 3, or 4? Well, it depends always I always go back to the pastor and say, what kind of push did you get into the community? What kind of awareness did you create for this event?
Tim Speweik:If you feel that you didn't do very good, then maybe a couple mailers make sense. You know? We typically, you know, even though I'm a handle a lot of mailings and that you'd think I'd say, hey. I need you to be doing 3 or 4 mailings, but I don't say that at all. Only because if you've done your work and your leg work and your meaning, your air campaign, your ground campaign leading up to that, you did that well.
Tim Speweik:You really only need one mailer in order to kinda solidify everything and bring it in. But, again, if you feel like you didn't get quite that push you needed to, you know, and say, hey. We're lacking some errors, then a couple mailers could be very important to help create more awareness and see a higher result. But, again, tied in with other forms of marketing in with that. So
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. That's great. Okay. If you can speak a little bit, to ballpark how much it costs because I'm sure, people that have never done mailers before, they're thinking, okay. Actually, I don't even know what the postal rates are now.
Danny Parmelee:50¢.
Tim Speweik:I I
Danny Parmelee:don't know how much it cost to mail something. But how much is it for a mailer? I know it depends on, you know, quantity in those, but speak to some of those different, kind of price point just to just to at least kind of ballpark it, so that they know what they're looking at.
Tim Speweik:Yeah. Absolutely. And when you mention you don't know postage rates, most everybody does not know what the postage rate is today. We had an increase. Believe it or not, if you wanted to go buy a postage stamp today, it's gonna cost you 73¢ for postage stamp for you to mail a letter to your mom.
Tim Speweik:Alright? Now listen. You know what the rate is for the church? It's about 12 to 13¢ per piece. So do you think there's a tool in the back pocket that we have with mails?
Tim Speweik:You absolutely do. No other country offers nonprofit status like the post office does. So a key the key to the cost of the mails is having and holding nonprofit status with the United States Postal Service. Any mailer can help you achieve that if you don't already have that. Even if you don't hold 501c3 status, you can still get nonprofit status with the United States Postal Service.
Tim Speweik:There's a way to go about it. So as for overall cost, when you're talking when and the rates I'm gonna give you are based on owning that nonprofit status with the United States Postal Service. So if you were doing a small mailer, now I would say don't even do a mailing unless you're above 5,000 pieces. Right? Because it doesn't make sense.
Tim Speweik:We are looking for results here. So 5,000 all in for from Outreach anyways will cost you about $1500. Now 10,000, roughly 2 grand. If you did 25,000 mailers around your venue, you're talking about 7 grand. Yeah.
Tim Speweik:50,000 would be in the $12,000 range. Now this is all inclusive and then a 100,000 you say, hey, I'm going big, man. A 100,000 be right around 22 to $23,000. I just did a church, that did 400,000 piece mailer. You know?
Tim Speweik:Wow. So they're doing and they have, like, 7 campuses. They're doing around each campus in that. So and and when you look for results, okay, what am I gonna get off of that? Well, we base everything off of a quarter to a half of a percent response rate.
Tim Speweik:And you say, well, man, I thought you'd at least get 1%. No. You don't. But the more awareness you create, the higher results end up being with mailers. So if you did a 10,000 piece mailer, you'd hope to see around 25 people off of that or you did 25,000 piece mailer, maybe around 60 people.
Tim Speweik:So and 50,000, you know, maybe see 80 people or so. So it it it depends on a lot of variables there, but that's kinda what we're shooting for.
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. And that's good. And I I'm not, you know, I'm not very good at math, but let's take for example so you said 10,000 mailers is how much and so how much is that per piece?
Tim Speweik:You should say. So 10, yeah, 10,000 mailers will run around 2 grand, and you can hopefully see, you know, 25, 30, 25, 30 people come off of that.
Danny Parmelee:And and when you say that, that's that's, that's the cost, that's the the postage, the printing, the Yep. Mail list, the saturation, whatever.
Tim Speweik:So that's inclusive. Yep. All inclusive price. I would also add that when you're talking about timing, when you do a mailer, you have to be planning about 6 to 7 weeks out. A mail house is going to need your design and your payment about a month ahead of time because if you think about it, we we would any mail is gonna need a couple weeks to get them printed, and then we ship them 2 weeks prior to the event so that they hit kind of that 5 to 10 day window prior to that event that we've kinda found that to be the sweet spot.
Tim Speweik:Now you may be in a part of the country that says, you know, I need them to hit closer or I need them to plan a little bit more. And sometimes like Christmas and Easter, we will send them a little earlier because people are planning that a little bit more. But typically on a launch or a typical mailer for church, people around your community, they're not planning on coming into your church that Sunday. So we always want to be a, oh, that's this weekend kind of a gig is to be top of mind and have and and have a call to action right away.
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. Alright. So I said that this was not going to be a plug, per se, for outreach. So in order to be completely fair, if someone wanted, they could go to USPS and do this all themselves. Right?
Danny Parmelee:And actually, didn't didn't and maybe they don't even have it anymore. I I remember when I was pastoring, they did that they had, like, some sort of special program Yes. For that. Yes. Advantages of
Tim Speweik:doing that, disadvantages. I mean, I know a couple of the disadvantages just because we
Danny Parmelee:chose chose not to go that route. Yeah. But, I mean, if someone really wanted to, they could go ahead and do that. So talk a little bit about that process, and I know that there's some extra requirements of then what the person has to do in order to
Tim Speweik:do that. Yeah. That is called EDD, every door direct mail, and you can do it yourself. You'd have to get it. You do still have you still have to get nonprofit status through the post office, which is an application.
Tim Speweik:Tell you what to allow local post office do not have a clue as to what to do, but EDDM mail, yeah, you still have to get it printed obviously. You have to get a permit through them, which it can be free through them, and then all the mailers have to have, you know, a carryout sort on them. So, basically, you have to handle they won't get addressed, but you have to do all the manual work, meaning after they get printed, they have to be a certain size. You have to get them. You have to sort them in bundles of so much.
Tim Speweik:You have to have all the carryout information, how to sort them, how to put them in trays. You have to have the correct paperwork. It is a mountain of work. I don't tell anybody this. I I mean, I'm honest about it, and I say, listen.
Tim Speweik:That is a mountain of work. Unless you've got somebody that works for the post office or has experience with it, you don't have the time, the energy to mess with it. The extra few bucks that you get for a mail house to produce that is well beyond worth it. I've had Yeah. Somebody tell me, hey.
Tim Speweik:I ran a fortune 500 company. The post office brought me to my knees in tears because I had they rejected it three times. They had to go back. You're only allowed to submit so many per post office. You have to run them around to different post offices and drop them off as well.
Tim Speweik:So, yes, it is a handful of of to do, and and I tell pastors, hey. Even if you didn't wanna use Outreach, I would go somewhere else. I would not do it yourself. You know?
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. That that's that's kind of where we landed on it, and I am I am cheap. I'm a cheap guy. I wanna save every and I'm like, hey. You know what?
Danny Parmelee:We could get this army of volunteers. And then when they started listing out how to do the carrier routes and the bundling and all that, I said, you know what? For you know, I'll call a donor, and they can probably take care of this for a couple $100 and save, you know, save save the headache, to be able to do this. Now one thing, and I'm sure, you know, other mail houses may have this as well too, but I do know that outreach.com and we never use this, but you do have a special program that's different than saturation and different than just demographic that you guys have one, that's an ongoing one that if someone new moves into the area now I know it's not as cheap as the 20¢ because it's you know, you're only just sending it out, but, speak to that and who, you know, who uses that, who's found that to be, ineffective.
Tim Speweik:Yeah. That's it's a fantastic program. It's called a new mover program, and and the cards through outreach are 79¢ per card. So each church can determine the amount of budget they actually wanna do with it. So what it is is we get utility we get the names off utility hookups around any church and, and then we automatically send them a mailer inviting them to your church.
Tim Speweik:And so we the names are all there, so it is it's all targeted with their names on it. It's got a demographic information on it. So it's like, hey, Williams family, so glad you moved in. Moving can be hard, but finding a new church is not. Bring this card in for a free $5 Starbucks gift card.
Tim Speweik:Or so you can track it, you can trace it, you can put a QR code under to send them to a landing page, a video of you. We have free texting program that they can scan and and get engaged with a free texting, program as well. And then here's the thing with new movers, to me, you could get your investment back based on the national average of $1,000 tied per person, which is low, But if you got 1 or 2 people off an entire year of doing new movers, you will recoup your funding. But to me, outside of that, is that it sets up all your other marketing efforts because when somebody moves in and they receive a mailer from you, welcome into community, you've then given them a warm invite. Now if they don't come in, but they see, an Easter card or a personal invite from somebody or you're doing something in the community, hey.
Tim Speweik:That's a church that reached out to me when I first moved in. So it sets up their heart for that. And here's the thing. We have 3 natural church growth rhythms in our countries when you ought to be doing the outreach, which is Easter, Christmas, and fall. Well, new movers is going all year around and always inviting somebody into your church.
Tim Speweik:So it's a powerful, powerful program that you set up. You actually get that database every month too so you could actually do a follow-up if you like to. And, it's just it just sets up all your other marketing efforts, and you don't need high results, and and yet it is a very, very effective tool to reach those who just moved in your community, introduce them to your church.
Danny Parmelee:Yeah. Yep. So for me, I just think, mailers are an are an absolute at least part of your marketing strategy. So not saying again that they're the only thing that works or even the best thing, but they do play, you know, an important role in the overall strategy. And when done right, they complement, you know, your digital efforts and and enhance your church's, you know, presence, in the community.
Danny Parmelee:Tim, any concluding thoughts that you kind of have, in in regards to to mailers?
Tim Speweik:Yeah. Just that it is can be a very effective tool. Did they cost money? Yes. They do.
Tim Speweik:But anybody when we work with any church, we're taking into consideration their budget and helping them to reach and take that budget as far as we can to reach as many people we can. Understanding again that the mailer is not a silver bullet, but it is awesome when it works in combination with the other forms of marketing. So I would say, if you haven't tried a mailer, you need to try a mailer. If you you know, and and does it work in all areas? Sometimes it doesn't.
Tim Speweik:You know, sometimes when you're in a hardcore downtown, area like a New York City or Chicago, they see so much marketing. It can be tight, but does it work there? Yes. It can still work there. It just may not see as high results.
Tim Speweik:Certainly in the, in the Bible Belt areas, rural areas, it seems to be very effective. So, you know, if you haven't tried it, try it. All kinds of marketing, you have to give it kind of a go a go, a show at, and then also, you know, take a look at your results and say how did it affect it. Just don't throw something out there, but then measure your results when you're done with it. And before you do any marketing, make sure your house is in order.
Tim Speweik:Make sure you smell good, you look clean, and you're ready to receive some visitors.
Danny Parmelee:That's awesome. Well, Tim, thank you so much, and, of course, outreach.com for your sponsorship, of the podcast. And a special reminder, if some of you want some free marketing materials, you can head over to churchplantersask.com backslash free stuff, and someone from Outreach will get in touch with you. And until next time, keep asking those questions.