10 Church Invitation Text Message Samples That Work

Many churches take great care to create an attractive email newsletter, with quality design and text, only to see 22% of their recipients open it. When however the same information is sent from the pastor’s phone via text message, 94% of recipients will open the message. 

This is the power of a church invitation through text messaging. Text messages are delivered to where people are checking their messaging apps and are nearly always read. If your church is not currently using text messaging to reach your congregation you are likely missing out on more of your members than you realize.

Included below are copy and paste examples of 10 text invitations that you can use today, as well as practical information about the rationale behind why texting works, what to include in your invitations, and how to get it to a high volume of people.

10 Church Invitation Text Message Samples

These cover the situations most churches deal with week to week. Swap the brackets for your details before sending.

Why Use a Church Texting Platform?

If you are texting one or two people through your phone, then you are fine. However, when you start to reach 50, 100 or 500 congregational members, that method is no longer sustainable.

Here are the issues you will run into when attempting to scale your personal texting efforts:

You are unable to personalize anything. All of your text messages to recipients will go out the same way, with no first name and no segmentation.

You cannot track anything. You won’t know who received the text message, who replied and/or if the text message made it through.

You are not compliant with the law. For example, in the United States, all bulk SMS messaging requires registering for 10DLC with the major carriers. If you do not register for 10DLC prior to sending a bulk SMS message your message(s) will either be filtered or blocked as spam.

A church texting platform resolves each of these challenges. You write the message once. It will be sent out to your entire list of members, personalized with their first name. The responses will come back through a shared inbox. Your sending will also be registered to comply with the law from day one.

For a church communications team, or even a single dedicated volunteer, this changes what is possible. With a church texting platform you can have a full weekly outreach program without it taking up a lot of time each week.

Benefits of SMS Church Invitations

People actually read texts.

The primary reason why texting works more effectively than any other communication is that people actually pay attention to the message. For example, the average email open rate for a church is around 25%. By contrast, 98% of all people will read an SMS message, typically within 3 minutes of receiving it. This means that when you absolutely must have your recipient view your message, it would be impossible to have any other type of communication provide the same level of success.

Texts feel personal, even at scale.

Another reason why texting works is that it creates a sense of closeness, even when it is being sent out to a large number of individuals at once. When someone receives an SMS from their church with their name in the message, the message feels less like a newsletter and more like an individual has reached out to them; this distinction carries much more weight than most church leaders are able to comprehend.

It starts real conversations.

Texting provides an opportunity to re-engage individuals that have not been in attendance recently. Typically, once a member of the church begins to drift away from the church, they may also stop viewing their email from the church. However, most have not stopped reading their text messages. If a short, encouraging message can be sent to an individual at the right time, it may help to reconnect them with the church without the awkwardness of making a phone call. 

Finally, texting allows for the establishment of true two-way communications between you and the recipient. As soon as an individual receives a text message from you and is able to reply, this changes the communication from a one-way marketing tool to a two-way pastoral care connection ( two-way SMS).

It works for any church budget.

On a pay-as-you-go platform, you only pay for what you send. There are no monthly platform fees, no minimum commitments. A small congregation can run the same quality programme as a mega-church. [SMS for nonprofits]

How ZeepText Helps With Text Messaging for Church

ZeepText is an SMS broadcast platform designed for nonprofits, churches, and community organisations.  It’s among the least expensive church texting platforms on the US market at this point in time; there’s no monthly fee and the per-message pricing is $0.039, pay-as-you-go.

Here’s why this is a good option specifically for churches:

1.  There’s no monthly fee. You only pay for text messages. If you have a slow month at your church, you don’t have to pay anything.

2.  10DLC registration is included.  ZeepText will help you through the carrier registration process to ensure that you can send bulk SMS text messages from your church. This step is mandatory in order to send bulk SMS.

3.  Customised broadcast messages. You can send your entire list a church invitation text at the same time.  Each text will have the first name of the recipient so it will not appear to be bulk text messages sent out.

4.  Two-way inbox.  You can see any incoming replies and you can reply back to them. You can manage all of your pastoral follow up in one place.
5.  User-friendly.  No training is necessary.  If you can send a text message, ZeepText is easy for you to use.

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