Here are the main ways our text messaging system helps your ministry
to achieve its mission.
Capture
Collect information from members or visitors who express an interest in your church or ministry directly from their phones.
- No need for your audience to be in front of a computer to connect with you.
- Quickly build a database of contacts that you can engage with.
- Build deeper relationships with them, both now and in the future.
- Send messages with a 97% open rate.
Mobile Keywords
Keywords allow your audience to quickly communicate their interest to you. Just have people text to your unique number, e.g. (987)-654-3210, with a keyword that you designate. Use different keywords, to identify people responding to different campaigns and offers. No need to get creative as you can create unlimited keywords.
Automatically Group People
For example, people who want to be in a specific small
group could text “NEXT1”, while people who want to be in a second small group could text “NEXT2”. Our software can manage those responses and create lists of people who are interested in each group.
Gathering more detailed information
If you want to capture information beyond cell numbers, you can have an automated response to your mobile keyword that asks the recipient for additional information, like their name or email address. This way, you can build a more robust database with complete information.
Online Forms
Online forms can collect more detailed contact information, household data and even interests.
For example, you can have a list of your church’s active ministries and ask people to check the ones they are interested in. A school could have a list of volunteer opportunities, for parents to check off the ones they would like to participate in.
2 ways to share your forms
- Mobile Phones
- Online forms on your website
Online forms are designed to collect even more information from your audience. The forms are mobile-friendly, so they are easy to use on a phone.
Import Information
You can also integrate information from your ministry’s existing databases into your PastorsLine account. Just create a spreadsheet with the information from your existing database and import it into your PastorsLine account. This way, you can use all the contact information that you have already collected, to get started with text digital strategy right away.
Communication
Text messaging makes it easy to communicate with your audience, even though they are on the go. It puts your message at their fingertips, by using their phone as a communication channel. Text messages have a 97% open rate, so it is nearly certain that everyone on your list will see your message. This is far better than social media or email alone.
Mass Text Messages
With PastorsLine, you can send text messages to many people at one time. You can’t do this with your normal phone service. Group texts are possible, but if you want to tell 500 people that your weekend service has been canceled due to weather, this is not going to be practical with just a group message. You need a complete system to keep track of your contact list and to send out your message. With our system, your contacts can also opt-out from receiving messages if they change church membership, due to school enrollment or just loss of interest in that specific communication.
Voice Messages
You can also set up an automated voice message. Just record the message and the system will play it for all the contacts you request. It will automatically call your contacts and either play for a live person or deposit the message on that person’s voice mail.
This is a good way to reach everyone in your congregation with a phone, whether or not they have a text service. Older people may not use text messaging and will want to hear a recording or voice mail about updates.
Engage
With PastorsLine, your audience can respond to you, providing valuable feedback and input. Using text messaging, you can engage with your audience in a back and forth dialogue, to find out how they are responding to your messages. When you send a text, your subscriber can reply back, and you will receive it in your inbox. In addition, you will have a rich array of features at your disposal, to collect information from your subscribers.
Polls and Surveys
If you have more options than “yes” or “no,” you can use the polling feature. This allows you to create questions with up to 10 possible responses.
For example, if you have three possible themes for your next sermon series, you can ask your contacts which one they prefer. You can assign keywords to each series topic and ask your audience to text in the keyword for the topic they prefer. A musician could ask their audience what songs they would like to hear in the upcoming concert and provide a list of ten different song options.
Contests: Shuffle Responder
This is a fun way to interact and engage with your users. You ask your audience to text you a specific keyword. You then program a number of responses that people receive in a random fashion. When people text you, the system automatically collects their information.
You could use this feature to create a contest. People text in the keyword and the system chooses the winner of a free gift. This is a great evangelistic tool. Many churches have contests at ministry picnics or social events, with a lot of visitors in attendance. They offer a chance at a gift, in exchange for contact information.
The shuffle responder makes this easy to execute. People use their phones to enter and the system chooses the winner. Best of all, the contact information for each person is automatically collected by PastorsLine.
Manage
account
settings
Control
notifications
Control
notifications
Set up
your team
Multiuser, Multicampus, and Multinumbers
You can now invite your entire team to use PastorsLine.
Our multiuser option gives you lots of choices, including the ‘role-based user’ profile: users see only the groups which they have been assigned and perform only those actions for which they have been given permission.
You can…
Share one, single telephone number among several team members who are working with the same groups, on the same event/project, etc. … Everyone sees everything for the full picture.
Give each team member his or her own, unique telephone number so that each person sees only the messages that are connected to him or her ... Saves time sifting through unneeded messages and makes sure texts don’t fall through the cracks.
Changes can be made at any time by the admin: number of monthly messaging credits, permissions, groups which can be accessed, etc. … Means that your setup flows with and adapts to your church’s needs, not the needs of the platform.
Automated Messaging
You can add messages that are automatically sent out when a specific event occurs.
For example, when someone opts-in, you may want to send them a personalized message or you could send a thank you message when someone makes a donation to your ministry. A conference could set up reminder messages about important keynotes sessions for a conference.
Analyze
With a variety of reporting options, PastorsLine makes it simple to find out how well your mobile strategy is working. You can access opt-in rates, click-through and more from your PastorsLine dashboard.
For example, if you are asking people to opt-in to your mobile marketing in your church bulletin but the report shows that only a few people are opting-in, then you know you need to change what you are doing.
You get this feature and so much more...
(All features are included.)
direct, automated data capture via phone from those interested
mobile keywords to opt in to different church campaigns
automatically create and manage groups
gather information via online forms
polls and surveys
personalized, bulk text messaging
personalized birthday wishes
contests
create and schedule a series of automated messages
integrates with Planning Center, Church Community Builder, Mailchimp, Elvanto, ...
Dozens of churches are already using
PastorsLine and seeing success.
The PastorsLine platform is a church-driven, bulk texting platform developed and managed by church ‘insiders’. We know churches intimately. We’ve attended them, been part of their management teams and worked with them for many years. Our goal is to serve you by helping you spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. We’ve positioned ourselves to be your in-house, IT team for solutions to your communication issues. In addition to everything our platform can do, our partners love our responsiveness to their needs and fast tech support.
“Our land line [SMS-enabled by PastorsLine] is more familiar to our congregation. When we texted from the other number, some would inquire about who was sending the text as the number was unfamiliar, and we did not use it frequently, so by the time we sent another text, some had forgotten the number.”
Myrna and Peter Rohdin
New Life Fellowship Church, Elmhurst, NY
PastorsLine has totally changed not only my workflow, but it's taken our "personal" factor up 10x! Just with our welcome process, we have gone from a 40% READ rate to a 40% CONVERSATION rate. That's just crazy!
So thanks 🙂
Tommy Carreras
Group Director
[PastorsLine is] a huge answer to something we’ve been looking for. I was able to send a template with a field merge by scheduling it...
Dr. Matthew Robinson
Pastor
By using the same phone number for texting and calling you get people to remember your phone number. When it comes the time that are ready to reach out to us they know the phone number.
Abraham Schwartz
It’s honestly the best feature that we have utilized. Being able to give one phone number for voice and text simplified our process.
J.W. Dunbar
Pastor Gateway Church, Ashland, KY
Baptism Worship Service Reminders - bulk texting—we were blown away by the number of people who showed up.
Cara Saliby
Director of Admin
PastorsLine has been a fantastic tool which has enhanced communication with out church family. As with any tool, the secret is in learning how to use it effectively. I have been most excited when I see my church members telling their very own unchurched friends to text “PRAY” to our pastorsline number and have them join our prayer sessions.
Paolo Esposito
Pastors, RGF Church
At first, the landline feature seemed like it would overload the church secretary since everyone would have the church phone number saved in their phones. This has not happened! People are simply interacting with our events better than ever before! We love the landline feature.
Sterling Willborn
Associate Pastor, Journey Church
Sending and receiving texts from our landline number is the #1 feature that ensures visitors and members can engage with us on the most relevant means of communication there is right now. Having one number to advertise, simplifies all graphics, ads, announcements, etc. for us, as well as for those we're trying to reach. I use PastorsLine EVERY DAY. It's changing the way we engage with our members - it's both easier and more effective.
Tara Freeman
The text message bible study invites are working great. We saw a huge increase from 5-6 to 10-12 and the numbers stayed consistent.
Zeke Vas
Pastor
For us [a PastorsLine text-enabled church landline] has been huge for people to be able to text the number they already knew for our church. It means they don’t have to remember two different numbers when they are looking to try and get in touch with us. Most people don’t even realize its mostly an automated process.
Tyler Boles
Connections Pastor, The Exchange
...the guest connection card...We had a great response -- people whose names and contact info we might not have captured otherwise. Our autoresponder directs them to our Welcome Center...where we have a gift...with their name on it.
Kristen Waddle
Church Communications
I honestly never realized how many people must have been trying to text our landline all along! We never advertised our landline as a number you could text, but we have gotten multiple members of our congregation and even guests from some of our events to send us texts saying, ‘Thank you for this and that’, and it has been really great to see!
Heather Bredeman
Joy Christian, Center,
St. Cloud, MN
I belong to a Church Communications group on Facebook, and you were highly recommended. We signed up with you over others because we are a multi-generational church and you have an ability to reach people on landlines.
Daniel Chambers
Thus far it’s worked perfectly!! When we wanna send out a text message we use the church office #.
When somebody calls this #, it just takes them to our office phone where a front desk agent can answer. This is perfect! Far better than our individual cell phones ringing when somebody calls our PastorsLine number. It’s only been a week but it’s working great!
Josiah Elias
Young Adults Pastor, Faith Chapel
The personal and almost immediate assistance at [PastorsLine] is so great! We feel valued and important! We love that it is church-based!!! … Jason and the team at [PastorsLine] are always ready to help, make things better, and they also welcome feedback.
Richie Halversen
Pastor @ College Drive Church
When we finished our evangelistic event in Houston, 70% of those who were baptized, communicated with me through PastorsLine...it had a big influence.
Wyatt Allen
Evangelist, End Time Hope
We hired [PastorsLine] to assist us in a new “Small Group” initiative we were launching at our church. The tools they provided us with helped us monitor and take action on hundreds of responses. Our workflow was cut in half and our ability to track, monitor and follow through with the data gathered more than doubled.