The unsubscribe that should worry you
A children's ministry director at a growing church told us she unsubscribed from her own church's email list. Not because she didn't care -- because she was getting 11 emails a week from different ministries, and she couldn't find the ones that mattered to her.
If your own staff is overwhelmed by your communication volume, your congregation is drowning. The impulse when churches grow is to communicate more. More emails, more text blasts, more social posts, more app notifications. But more isn't better. More is noise.
The churches that communicate effectively in 2026 aren't the loudest ones. They're the most relevant ones. They send fewer messages to better-targeted audiences and get higher engagement on everything they send.
Consolidate your channels
If your church uses email, texting, a Facebook group, a church app, AND printed bulletins -- you're fragmenting attention. Your congregation doesn't know where to look, so they stop looking at all of them.
The fix isn't adding another channel. It's picking two primary channels and committing to them. For most churches, that's email for detailed announcements and texting for time-sensitive updates. Everything else is supplementary.
Think about it from the perspective of a busy parent in your church. They have a full-time job, two kids in activities, and they're trying to stay connected to their faith community. They don't have the bandwidth to check five different apps and inboxes. They need one reliable place for the details and one reliable way to get urgent updates. Everything else is noise.
The two-channel rule
Pick one channel for detailed information (email or app) and one channel for urgency (text). Train your congregation to expect important things there. Everything else -- social media, bulletin, website -- is backup, not primary.
How to pick your primary channels
Survey your congregation. Not a lengthy questionnaire -- three questions: Where do you prefer to receive church updates? How often is too often? What information do you actually need from us? The answers might surprise you. Many churches assume everyone wants the app. In practice, most members over 40 prefer email, and most members under 30 prefer text. Meet people where they already are.
Relius centralizes communications so your team doesn't duplicate work. Send an email, text, or push notification from the same dashboard. Write the message once, choose your channels, and send. No copying and pasting between five different tools.
Segment your audience
Youth parents don't need senior adult ministry updates. Singles don't need marriage retreat reminders. Men's ministry leaders don't need women's event logistics. Stop sending everything to everyone --relevance beats frequency every time.
When people receive irrelevant messages, they tune out. Open rates drop. Unsubscribes climb. Eventually, they miss the messages that actually matter to them because they've trained themselves to ignore your emails.
Smart segments that work
- Parents of middle schoolers -- only receive middle school ministry updates
- First-time guests (last 30 days) -- receive the welcome sequence, not the capital campaign ask
- Volunteers by ministry -- kids team gets kids schedule changes, not worship team updates
- Recurring givers -- receive impact stories and financial updates (not giving appeals)
- Inactive members (60+ days absent) -- receive a personal check-in, not event spam
Use Relius tags to create these smart lists. Once configured, they update automatically as people's data changes. A family with kids who age into the youth group automatically moves into the youth parent segment.
Create a communication calendar
Most church communication chaos comes from poor planning. Last-minute announcements lead to duplicate emails, conflicting messages, and stressed staff sending things at 11 PM on Saturday night.
Plan your announcements a month ahead. Use a shared calendar that every ministry leader can see. When the youth pastor wants to send something, they check the calendar first. If three other messages are going out that day, they reschedule.
The calendar doesn't have to be complicated. A shared Google Sheet works for small churches. What matters is that every person who sends communication on behalf of the church can see what else is going out that week. Visibility prevents pile-ups.
Communication calendar best practices:
- Limit church-wide messages to 2-3 per week maximum
- Schedule ministry-specific messages on different days to avoid inbox overload
- Designate one person as the 'traffic controller' who approves all church-wide sends
- Write messages early in the week and schedule them in advance
- Review the calendar every Monday morning as a staff team -- five minutes prevents a week of overlapping messages
The traffic controller role
This one role changes everything. Assign one person -- usually a communications director or executive pastor -- to approve every church-wide send. Ministry leaders draft their message and submit it. The traffic controller checks the calendar, edits for consistency, and schedules it for the optimal time. This sounds like bottleneck-creating bureaucracy. In practice, it cuts total email volume by 30-40% because someone is finally asking 'does the whole church actually need to see this?'
Relius lets you schedule messages days or weeks in advance. Write Tuesday's volunteer reminder on Friday when you have time. Set it and forget it. Your team gets their weekend back.
Measure what matters
If 8% of people open your emails, something's wrong. But you won't know it's wrong unless you're tracking the data. Most churches send communications into the void and hope for the best.
Track three key metrics for every message: open rate (are people seeing it?), click rate (are they engaging?), and unsubscribe rate (are they opting out?). Industry averages for nonprofits are around 25-30% open rate. If you're below 15%, it's time to rethink your approach.
Relius analytics show you which messages land and which fall flat. Over time, you'll learn that your congregation opens emails sent on Tuesday morning but ignores Friday afternoon sends. Data replaces guessing.
Quick wins to improve engagement
- Use the recipient's first name in the subject line (personalization increases open rates by 20%)
- Keep subject lines under 50 characters -- short and specific beats long and vague
- Put the most important information in the first two sentences (many people only see the preview)
- Include one clear call-to-action per message, not five competing links
- Test your send times -- run the same message at two different times and compare the open rates
Here's a common scenario: a church sends a newsletter every Friday afternoon. Open rates hover around 12%. They move the same newsletter to Tuesday at 10 AM. Open rates jump to 28%. Nothing about the content changed. The timing changed. Your congregation has rhythms -- learn them and your messages will land.
Build a feedback loop
The best communication strategies aren't built by the communications team alone. They're shaped by the people receiving the messages. Once a year, ask your congregation three questions: What church communications are most useful to you? What do you wish you received less of? How do you prefer to hear from us?
You'll discover that most people want fewer, better messages. They want to know about things that affect them directly. They want to hear the pastor's voice occasionally, not just administrative updates. And they want the ability to choose what they receive.
Communication preferences should be part of your member profile, not a one-size-fits-all setting. Some families want every email. Others only want texts about service cancellations and emergencies. Honoring those preferences isn't just good communication practice -- it's respecting the people you serve.
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