We are going to use Rock's giving data to identify people who are

  1. Regular givers
  2. Who haven't given in the past 8 weeks
  3. Who aren't in a seasonal giving break

And ask them if they want to meet with a pastor, but without mentioning their giving as the reason.

Why do this?

In an ideal church situation, people would reach out to the church when they are having problems

  1. Personal, Family, Health crises
  2. Unemployment
  3. Dissatisfaction with God or the church leaders
  4. Other conflict in the church

But some times people just fade away, and the first sign of a fade-away is stopping giving.

Ideally everyone has a pastor who is regularly reaching out to them. But if a person who used to give regularly stops, and they don't normally take a giving break at this time of the year, this recipe will email the person asking if they want a Pastor check-in.

This automated email is not the best way to reach out to lapsed givers. I recommend creating a DataView or Dynamic Data Block page for a pastor to monitor and them personally review the list and email/text/call people. Here's the recipe on how to do that strategy: Lapsed Giver SQL Recipe

But an automated email is better than nothing, and you can set it up once and let it run.

UPFRONT WARNINGS

  1. $50 Rock plugin required to make this work. It's a great plugin that you should buy anyway, but you should know in advance you'll need BlueBox Moon Data TookKit plugin from the Rock Shop to get this working

Steps

  1. Add a new System Email called "Lapsed Giver pastor check-in"
  2. Install BlueBox Moon Data Toolkit Plugin
  3. Create a new DataView and paste the SQL
  4. Use GroupSync to combine the DataView and the System Email

Add a new System Email called "Lapsed Giver pastor check-in"

Here's the Template:


Subject: Pastor check-in

{{ 'Global' | Attribute:'EmailHeader' }}

<p>{{ Person.NickName }},</p>

<p>How's it going? How's life? Now's a good time at the church to grab a catch up meeting with a pastor.</p>

<p>Would you like to do that? Reply to this email and a pastor from the church will get in touch.</p>

{{ 'Global' | Attribute:'EmailFooter' }}

```

PLEASE CUSTOMIZE THAT EMAIL FOR YOUR CHURCH. This email copy is designed to be so unspecific as to work for most churches.

In the Rock System Email setup you can set a From Name or From Email, maybe you could send this from a particular pastor which would be more effective than the default church email.

Instead of "with a pastor", you could write "with Pastor John", that would be better.

Install BlueBox Moon Data Toolkit Plugin

Watch Screencast on installing Blue Box Moon Data Toolkit

  1. Admin Tools -> Rock Shop
  2. View by Category -> General
  3. Search the page for "Data Toolkit"

You are going to love this plugin. It does more than just add SQL to DataViews.

Create a new DataView and paste the SQL

  1. Name the DataView, probably something like "Lapsed Givers"
  2. Choose a category, probably Finance
  3. Create a new DataView, Applies to Person, Filter Type -> dropdown -> look for Blue Box Moon Data Toolkit SQL Query
  4. Paste the SQL in the new SQL Query text box
  5. Click Add Filter -> Filter Type -> Person Fields -> Email Preference = Email Allowed
  6. Click Add Filter -> Filter Type -> Person Fields -> Age Classification = Adult
  7. Save

Link to SQL

Watch Screencast on creating a DataView using SQL

Use GroupSync to combine the DataView and the System Email

There's like 4 more steps that I cover in a separate Recipe:

Recipe to setup GroupSync

BEFORE YOU FINISH THE TUTORIAL

Don't just hookup the real DataView to the System Email without testing things.

How to test this

  1. Review the DataClip we made and browse the names. Does that look like the right data?
  2. Create a GroupSync group for testing this that's not the full DataView. Make a DataView of just you, or you and a few staff. Then make a Group that GroupSync's off that Dataview sending the email as the welcome email. Did you get the email? Does it look good? Do you like the copy?
  3. To force the email to go out quickly (like for testing), go to Admin Tools -> System Settings -> Jobs Administration, find the Group Sync job and run it.