Personalize Your Ministry for Deeper Connections
The Secret to Deeper Connections
Personalization has become an essential digital marketing practice for many organizations, and digital ministry is no exception. At MII, our coaches constantly encourage ministries to “Begin With The End in Mind.” With digital ministry, personalization is not only about reaching more people but also about deepening the connection with them and guiding them into a deeper connection with follow-up teams and the local church.
Personalization of content and messaging can help digital ministries build deeper connections with their followers by increasing engagement, creating relationships of trust, and allowing for more targeted digital ministry strategies. Personalized content can include content specifically designed for your target persona or campaigns that address your users and contacts by name and include other personal information that your team has gathered and stored in a follow-up tool or CRM. Many tools exist to automate the personalization of content. If you’re wondering how to create deeper engagement through personalization, here are three practical steps you can take to get started:
First, segment your digital ministry followers into various groups based on your target persona. Consider the interests, digital activity, and demographics of your persona. This will help you to better understand your digital ministry followers and create personalized content for each segment. (Learn more about creating a persona through MII University, our free training on social media marketing. https://mii-university.teachable.com/p/mii-university).
Second, with a better understanding of the wants and needs of your audience segments, create content tailored to the interests of each group (mentioned above). For example, create a newsletter that shares links to articles discussing the authenticity of the Bible for a segment of users that first engaged with your ministry with questions about scripture. Your content will address an expressed need of your audience, and when matched with a strong call to action to connect for further discussion, your team will be able to more deeply engage those ready to take the next step in their faith journey.
Third, personalization tools to address explorers directly. Personalization tools such as Google Optimize (free) can plug into your website and allow your team to conduct experiments, build A/B testing, and personalize your pages to gain higher quality scores. You can ensure that website messages are tailored to the right persona and are sent at the right time for maximum engagement.
Through these three practical steps, your ministry will see deeper connections with your followers, leading to more engaging conversations and resulting in more ministry conversions.
