Episcopal Church USA A Local Church Web Site Turns Into A Comprehensive Web Marketing Solution. July 2007

Background St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Elkhorn, NE, contacted Granger Group with a challenge: They already had a Web site but were unable to manage its content. As a result, the church had fallen more than a year behind in updates. A lack of programming resources and understanding of "possibilities" meant they were missing out on a big opportunity to reach out to potential members and members alike. Challenge Small- to medium-size parishes like St. Augustine’s don't have a lot of operating income to work with. Yet, many want a robust site that will provide more details than simply presenting service times and church locations. Instead, they’re looking for content to support outreach and communicate to new and prospective members—and do it in a cost-effective way.

Granger Group's Solution Create a flexible, yet structured, system that not only enables a person with no programming skills to be able to manage site content, get valuable marketing insights and share ideas.

Resource Center Homepage From here, site members can access tools to help them edit site content, get marketing tips and tricks, share information via our members’ forum, as well as learn a little about another church through our Featured Site.

Resource Center Edit Site Content In addition to providing access to all the editable pages within the site, Granger Group publishes a monthly new site tip to help ECUSA site members get the most of our their Web site management.

Resource Center Marketing Info Page Each month, Granger Group publishes new marketing information and insights—designed to help churches of all sizes better communicate with their members and potential members.

Granger Group's Solution Create a one-to-many system that spread out the cost of a robust solution so that more churches could afford it. Develop a Resource tool to support each parish in managing their site’s content, learn more about marketing/communicating their message(s) and facilitate the sharing of ideas with other solution members. A thorough research and iterative development process enabled us to quickly design and release a comprehensive Web marketing solution for St. Augustine’s. Noting that there’s more to the church solution than just a single church Web site, Granger Group created a two-tiered site solution that creates a funnel-like system. Web visitors who visit the Diocesan Web site are led to a Find-A-Church interface which facilitates their search for an Episcopal church near them. Results A comprehensive, two-tiered Web site solution for the Diocese and the churches that comprise each diocese.