Before we get into that, let us look at the average open rates for email messages and what you should be shooting for with your emails. There are three key performance indicators (KPIs) for your email marketing campaigns.

Key Performance Indicators for Email Marketing

1. Open Rates — Your open rate is the percentage of people who open your emails after seeing your header in their inbox. It all starts here.
2. Click-Through Rates — A click-through rate measures the number of people responding to your call to action and clicking your links. This is the true measure of success.
3. Unsubscribe Rates — How many people are saying they no longer wish to receive your emails. Someone unsubscribing is not totally a bad thing. It helps people self-identify who is a good candidate for you. It can be a sign of someone losing interest in your services.

What percentage of open emails and click-throughs to your website do you think you need to average with your email campaigns? According to Campaign Monitor, the average open rate is 18%, and 15% is considered successful. This is excellent news for you. You do not need to get everyone to open your emails to be effective. Not every message you send is going to hit a need for every person on your contact list. You just need to make sure that you are adding value often enough to keep them engaged.

What should you do if you are not getting the 18% open rate and are not seeing 15% of people clicking through to your website? Donald Miller, the heralded marketing expert and brand specialist, gives excellent advice on changing the script to get more clicks. He says the problem is that we often put our ministry and ourselves at the center of the story. This is not engaging to people because they are not thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves. When we talk about how great our church is (because you know it is!) and how you have the solution to save the day, we pump ourselves up as the hero. Of course, this is only natural. You know how to help people find the hope of Jesus that can change their eternity and family life and help them find freedom.

The problem is that people simply are not interested in our stories. They only care about their own story. If we do not focus on the reader, they disengage, and your emails become less effective. To change the script to get more clicks, you will have to make them the center of attention. As Donald Miller puts it, you should make them the focus by positioning them as the hero and you as a helper to achieve their best possible story. This is different than making your ministry the hero and them the victim in need of saving. But how do you do this?

Three Email Marketing Tips from Donald Miller

1. Use "you" and "your" instead of "we," "my," and "us" — Miller says, "If you position your brand as the hero, you'll subconsciously compete with your customer's internal narrative. That kind of marketing almost always fails to connect. If you're making this mistake, you'll find the words 'us,' 'we,' or 'my' popping up a lot in your marketing copy. If you're doing a good job of making your customer the hero, you're more likely to see words like 'you' and 'your.'"
2. Make the person receiving your email the focus of the subject line — Miller points to REI as an excellent example of this. Instead of saying, "Check out our European adventures! We offer flexible itineraries and great prices," REI chose to make their customers the center of attention with this leading line: "Now booking: your European escape. Make this the year you discover Europe." This taps into their customers' dreams and aspirations.
3. Highlight the benefits of taking action — Every hero has to take action, or there would be no story. Taking this step into the unknown is what inspires us to follow a hero's journey. You need to encourage people to take this leap into their own story by highlighting the difference they can make and the benefits they can see in their own life.

You may be wondering how a church can accomplish all of this since you are not selling a product. You may not have something for sale at your church, but you are asking people to make an exchange, just like a business does. You want them to exchange their time for an experience at your church, or their night watching TV at home for a small group where they can be discipled. Marketing in its basic form is an exchange. You want your messaging to create an exchange of people's time for the benefits of your church or the investment of their donations for the difference your church is making in your community.

How Churches Can Apply the StoryBrand Strategy to Email Campaigns

1. Start with knowing who your audience is — Are you speaking to insiders, outsiders, or investors? This will determine how you position your message. For insiders and investors, you will want to emphasize the difference they can make by taking action. If you speak to outsiders, you will want to highlight the personal benefits to their lives.
2. Be life-giving — It is hard to define what being life-giving is. It is a philosophy you carry into every conversation and perspective and not just the way you preach. It focuses on God's best for people, what He does for them, and not people's worst and what they need to do to change. It is a way to inspire people to embrace all that God offers instead of pointing out how far away they are from God's best.
3. Deliver eternal truths in modern language — The truth of the gospel and your message as a church will never change. Over the centuries, it has been delivered in different ways and languages. Remaining relevant in our message does not water down the Good News. It keeps it flowing when traditions could keep it from reaching a new audience.

Changing the focus of your message is a paradigm shift for most businesses and churches. As fishers of men, we have to realize that fish don't bite hooks. They bite bait without realizing the hook is in there. All this means is that we have to look at all of our messaging, not just our emails, through the eyes of the people we want to reach. They probably do not yet value all that we offer. That's why they are our mission. So we should pause and ask ourselves, "What is important to them?" and "How can I help them take a step closer to all God has for them?" Doing this has the extra benefit of tapping into people's personal stories and will lead to more clicks on your emails.

For more free resources to help you communicate and build your church, visit buildthe.church.

Josh is a ministry leader, communicator, and creative who helps train and coach church planters at the Association of Related Churches (ARC). He has written Believe Again: Finding Faith After Losing Religion and has contributed to many ministry publications, including Relevant Magazine. Stay connected with Josh at buildthe.church and on social media at @JoshRoberie.