Soda fountains not fire hoses

Some churches and ministries look at email as a fire hose it is either on or it’s off. For the most part this is going to get people soaked, but not satisfied.

What you need is a soda fountain. Your constituents deserve the kind of control you have at any fast-food restaurant. They should be able to mix and match the communication they want to meet their needs. I recently came upon two ideas to think about as you setup your email soda fountain.

Melinda Krueger writes about negative preferences, an interesting way to control the flow of information when someone subscribes. Normally the subscription process includes some check boxes where a site visitor can select what they are interested in. This is all well and good, but it also implies that your church or ministry can provide content for each of those checkboxes.

What if instead new subscribers would choose what information they don’t want. In other words an opt-out mindset that says, “I want all communication from your organization except for X, Y and Z.” From the get go the constituent understands that you value their time. This also helps you to target just the people who give you the best ROI on your email initiatives.

This might do the trick for initial signup, but another method suggested by Mark Brownlow on Email Marketing Reports provides a great way to maintain the system. Mark recommends you have two opt-out links in your emails. Two links you say, that means it will get clicked on twice as much, we can’t have this!

It’s ok go to your happy place, assuming we’ve calmed down, let’s look at Mark’s idea more closely. He suggests to have one global opt-out and one opt-out for “this type of email.” This is a simple but brilliant suggestion. To go back to our fire hose analogy, if all you offer is a global opt-out your fire hose only as two positions: either on or off. People may not like the “on” position so their only option is to turn off the entire communication stream.

This may mean lower subscription numbers for some of your communications, but that is better than lower subscription numbers for your entire organization.

All of this takes work. It would be a lot easier for McDonalds or Burger King to offer just water, but customers would not be happy. Most soda fountains have five or more different options. All five need syrup from time to time, and it is five times the nozzles and hoses to break.

Setting up a soda fountain also takes subtle balance. If you have ever spent time to observe a good fountain you might notice that there are two Coke nozzles at either end (I’m assuming of course Coke products are better than Pepsi, which of course they are). The fast-food joint knows that the flagship drink is going to be most popular so they have more of that flavor, but they don’t put them side by side that would create traffic flow problems.

So when your constituents ask for a drink are you opening the fire hose or pointing them towards a soda fountain. It’s hot here in Washington, DC but given those two options, I’m headed for the fountain.