Why Regular Email Communication Is So Important

From the moment you woke up to the time you go to bed there will have been literally thousands of things today that competed for your attention. Your phone, all by itself, will have presented hundreds of opportunities to spend your time and attention. If you’re a gospel worker in a non-western culture, the chances are good that the pace of life you’ve become accustomed to is a bit slower that what many of your gospel partners, family, and friends from your sending country live with on a regular basis, but you’re probably familiar with how fast-paced western cultures tend to feel.

If you’ve ever felt like few people remember the work you’re doing, if you’ve ever wondered if anyone is even reading your updates, if you feel less than fully supported by some of the churches behind you, then let this be an encouragement to you: you are not alone. Sadly, many of the gospel workers I talk to experience these feelings, and most of the time their feelings are not unfounded.

The good news is, there is something you can do about it! If you will invest in more regular communication with your gospel partners you will see your relationships and your support grow.

Let’s have a look at why regular communication by email is such an important way of building a stronger relationship with your gospel partners.

Sojourners in a (fast-paced) land

Most of your gospel partners live in a fast-paced culture that leaves little-to-no time for slowing down to read or absorb weighty or important things. And though their lack of curiosity and proactive communication may feel personal to you, it’s not!

Your gospel partners aren’t selectively ignoring you; there are literally thousands of other people, companies, and concerns competing for their attention every hour of every day. Whatever happens to be in front of them for any brief moment is generally the thing that will receive thought and attention.

Because of the fast pace and the barrage of content your gospel partners face all day every day, another thing is also true: unless people are extremely intentional about the things that are most important to them, the “out of sight, out of mind” rule applies to them, too.

How many opportunities are you giving them to remember the work they’ve partnered with you to accomplish? If you only show up in their inbox once per month that means they’re only reminded of you one time per month. If you send updates less frequently, then maybe once per quarter? My recommendation is that you strive to send one update per week.

It’s your job to battle the “out of sight, out of mind” rule

Did you know that only about 21% of emails are even opened?!¹ ² That means, on average, that only one of five people you send an update to will actually open it. Don’t worry, we’ll talk about ways to improve this soon. But if this holds true for you, then the single most important thing you can do is show up in your gospel partners’ inboxes more frequently so they have more opportunities to read your updates and share in the work God is doing.

There is another upside to more frequent updates: even people who do not open and read your email are much more likely to see your subject line and your name, thereby being reminded (once per week) that you exist.

Again, you should not take this personally. Think of your own experience: imagine for a moment your own inbox and how many emails you receive every day. Or think of your inbox before you were a gospel worker: did you open every update you received from a missionary and read it? Do you now?

It’s your job to give your gospel partners frequent reminders of their partnership with you by showing up in their inboxes.

But won’t weekly emails annoy my senders?

Probably not! Even your most faithful supporters need reminders to pray for you and opportunities to rejoice with you in the work God is doing.

It is true that because you’re going to send more updates, more regularly, you should anticipate that some people are probably going to unsubscribe from your mailing list. But trust me: this is ok! It’s even a good thing. You want people on your mailing list who are engaged and want to hear from you. The people who unsubscribe likely weren’t going to read your emails anyway, and now they’ve made it clear that they may not want to be engaged gospel partners.

Consistency is the key

What I’m suggesting will require some work from you; there is no easy button. In order for this to work, you will have to show up and put in the reps before you start to gain momentum and see results. Think of it like any other habit, or like starting to exercise or diet: results rarely show up overnight. It’s usually only after what seems like a long time that results begin to appear.

So be prepared to sit down and write to your gospel partners for at least one hour every single week. Faithfully. ~~Even~~ Especially when it feels like all hell has broken loose in your life. (No, seriously. I know it feels like that sometimes.) Those days, weeks, or months of trial are when you need the prayer, support, and encouragement of your gospel partners all the more, so discipline yourself to sit down and write even though it may be the last thing you want to do.

Does it have to be email?

Short answer: yes. You have to embrace email as your primary communication channel with your gospel partners. Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms are fine and I’m not asking you to abandon them, but you should use them to augment your communication strategy. They can’t be your primary channel of communicating regularly with your gospel partners. Here’s why:

Not everyone is on Facebook, Instagram, other whatever other social media platform the kids are crazy about this week. But nearly everyone has email.³ And think about it: this actually makes sense since you usually can’t even sign up for a social media account without an email address.
You own email! At any given moment Facebook can decide to change how they organize, rank, sort, filter or censor posts (and they do, all the time ), which can have an enormous impact on who sees your updates.⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ Not so with email - you have put a digital letter in your gospel partner’s mailbox and it’s there waiting for them to open it. You own your mailing list, not Facebook.
Social media, by design, is intended to foster short attention spans that keep users in the app by scrolling and clicking from one thing to the next. This means that keeping your gospel partners’ attention for more than about thirty seconds is extremely unlikely compared to email. When someone opens your email, there aren’t seven other shiny things on the screen screaming for their attention.
Studies continue to show that email consistently outperforms social media for the kind of engagement we’re looking for by huge margins.⁸ ⁹
New social media platforms pop up weekly. People are leaving Facebook in droves.¹⁰ ¹¹ People join new platforms and abandon others. Relying on any social media platform to communicate with all of your gospel partners will be a ton of extra work for you and will require you to either keep chasing people onto whatever social media platform is popular at the moment, or (worse) leave some of your gospel partners out of the loop. Don’t build your communication strategy on the social media house of cards!

Commit to communicate

Hopefully you’re convinced that consistent communication with your gospel partners by email is a key component in building up an engaged and connected support system. Don’t wait to get started. Decide today that you’re going to send weekly updates and then set aside a time every week to make it happen.

In the coming weeks I’ll begin to explore how you can establish your new writing habit and I’ll share lots of tips, tricks, and best practices for writing email updates that your gospel partners actually read.

Soli Deo Gloria

Zach

Life as a missionary is hard enough. Financial stress and lack of support make it harder. I can help. Schedule a free call to find out how you can build better relationships with your gospel partners and increase your support.

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