Feature Update: Events

We've been working hard on updating our events feature, and we are excited to announce that it's ready! 

The Events module in your app can now be driven by the Dashboard or integrated via an iCal compatible feed that could come from your CMS such as CCB, ACS, The City, Ecclesia, Site Organic, Fellowship 1, or many other events systems like Google Calendar.

We’ve updated a lot of elements of the Events module including:

• Duplicating events
• Refreshed aesthetics
• New UI components including date and time pickers
• More control over the time of your event, including better support for all-day events
• If you’re managing Events in more than one time zone, we now offer the ability to specify the time zone for individual events
• Ability to change the title for the link of an event’s webpage

Check out some of the major highlights of this refresh:

Event Images
Enhance your brand by adding graphics to your events that will be displayed in your app.

All-Day Events and Time Zone Support
You can now create events that span an entire day (or multiple days), such as that week-long fundraiser you have planned. Additionally, if you’re managing events in more than one time zone, we now offer the ability to specify the time zone for individual events.

Custom Text for Web Links
Another often-requested feature: you can now change the text for your website link to anything you want! “View Event”, “Go to Website” and “Sign Up for Donut Delivery” are all acceptable.

Duplicate Events
Have recurring events? You’ll love this feature: it allows you to simply duplicate any event that has already happened, making event-creation easier than ever before (added bonus: you can now duplicate media items, too!).

Best Practices Part 6: Media

Media concludes our best practices for reaching and engaging your audience. Whether they’re on a morning run or commute, you can easily connect your audience with your media anytime, anywhere. We really did save the best for last!

Media

So why media? As both mobile app use and media consumption continues to rise, delivering media through your app enables you to meet your audience directly where they’re at:

• Mobile apps account for 52% of digital media consumption

• Mobile video will represent 69% of all mobile traffic by 2018

• App use makes up 88% of total time spent on mobile in the U.S. 

With weekly recurring media content, utilizing the media tab provides an effective medium for expanding the reach of your content beyond the Sunday service. Not only can users instantly access your sermon collection, but they can download for offline listening wherever they are. Many churches have seen a strong increase in sermon downloads through their media tab alone!

The media tab is the most robust way to present your media on a mobile device. Built and designed for multiple devices and operating systems, the Subsplash Platform enables you to deliver a beautiful and intuitive cross-platform media experience. Easily customize the artwork and display of your media with multiple layout options, making the user experience more delightful and catered to your brand.

As our series comes to a close, these are a just a few ways we’ve seen churches use their apps to increase engagement and enhance their communication efforts. Your app should not only be a tool for presenting content, but also an effective way to directly remind, notify, and encourage users to engage. If you’d like to add any of these features, or would like to get started with your own Church App, we’d love to help!

Best Practices Part 5: Events

By providing a visible and effective way to promote your events, the events tab enables your audience to easily discover and sign up for events directly from their devices. 

Events 

LifeGate Church has done a great job of integrating all the benefits the events tab has to offer. In addition to promoting your upcoming events, this feature also gives your audience the ability to save them directly to their iCalendar. By including a description, map location, contact information/sign ups, and more, having this tab in place enables your users to easily sign up and share events in your community.

Like sending out a push notification, the events tab gives you another effective way to increase awareness for your ministry's events.  Download LifeGate's app here to see it in action, and stay tuned for Part 6!

Best Practices Part 4: Social Sharing

Social Sharing has a well-earned spot in our best practices for outreach and engagement by enabling your community to share content quickly and effectively.

Social Sharing

We’ve heard incredible stories of users sharing sermons with friends and resulting in new relationships with Christ. With the ability to share sermons, blogs, and content directly through your app, users can easily share the right resources with the right people. I know when I’m listening to a sermon or reading a blog, sometimes I’ll think “wow, this person would really enjoy this.” Rather than opening a browser, copying links, and then sharing on Facebook (or forgetting altogether), I can share directly through the app to any of my social channels, email, and text.

These sharing capabilities enable your church network to reach their individual networks with the tap of a screen. A few ways you can encourage your users to share include adding a reminder in the Sunday service announcements, at the end of your sermon audio and video, or sending a push notification reminder. Happy sharing and stay tuned for part 5! 

Best Practices Part 3: Push Notifications

Push Notifications have earned the third slot in our series of Best Practices for outreach and engagement. Why are they so lucky? Well, they can guarantee your audience will see your message directly on their devices.

Push Notifications

Sometimes all we need is that final "push" to take the next step. From a newly uploaded sermon series, a new blog post, or a reminder of the community BBQ, push notifications provide an effective way of updating your community immediately anytime, anywhere. By updating users on resources, events, services, and more, push notifications allow users to take advantage of opportunities to help them grow in both their faith and community.

One way we've seen churches and ministries use push notifications is for the purpose of sending reminders for upcoming events. Both The Gospel Coalition and Harvest Ministries have sent out reminders of their upcoming conferences, while others have sent out reminders of gathering times and places. Whatever the event, resource, or opportunity, push notifications enable you to get more people involved with a direct and visible message on their device.

Happy notifying, and stay tuned for part 4!