Email. It’s a term that doesn’t necessarily stimulate the most exciting of ideas. It’s old. It’s tired. It cannot be used in nearly as innovative ways as social media. However, in communication, innovation isn’t always the goal (in fact, that’s a whole different topic that we can save for another post). Instead, getting your message across is the goal—to the right people, at the right time—and while it may not be exciting, email definitely does accomplish that effectively and inexpensively.

However, do you think of email when you hear about “virality”? While it may not be the first word that comes to mind, according to some recent statistics, email should be a major part of any viral objectives you have as a church or ministry. Just look at this report from eMarketer… Broken down by age group, the following table shows the breakdown of how people are sharing content online. As you can see, 18-24 year-olds primarily share content through Facebook, but email is a very close second, other mediums dropping way off after that. However, in the very next age group, 25-34 year-olds, that number inverts, with email leading, and Facebook trailing closely. After that, the numbers quickly fall in email’s vast favor, it serving as the primary sharing mechanism for those 35 years and older.

So, what are the implications? Chances are that your respective church or ministry is comprised of a variety of ages. With that in mind, it’s important to keep email in the picture not only for outbound communication, but with ways that allow your community to be sharing content with their own networks via email. For ministries that have a younger demographic, obviously Facebook might be used more prominently, but with email clocking in as a close second, don’t forget email altogether.

Here is a simple, but straight forward example of how we’ve included the ability for churches and ministries to facilitate easy email sharing. While it may not be the most appealing button along that strip of icons and images, as we have learned here, it will likely be the most used.

The point of all this, of course, is that you employ not only the most innovative of tools and channels in your communication strategies, but ones that are familiar, tested, and continue to be well used. With the most important message in all the world to tell—the gospel of Jesus Christ—let’s make it easier to share that message.