Most church email lists don’t grow on purpose. They grow by accident. Someone types in addresses from an old sign-up sheet, someone else adds the small group roster, and a few years later nobody’s sure who’s on the list or how they got there.
A healthy list is different. It’s made of people who said yes. They know why they’re getting your emails, they expect them, and they’re much more likely to read them.
Here’s how to build that kind of list, one honest yes at a time.
Start With the People Already in the Room
The easiest people to invite are the ones already showing up on Sunday. You don’t need a campaign. You need a few simple, consistent places where people can say “yes, keep me in the loop.”
Connection cards
If you use connection cards, printed or digital, they’re your best list-builder. Just make the email part clear:
- Ask for an email address on its own line, not squeezed into a corner.
- Add a checkbox that says what they’re signing up for, in plain words: “Send me the weekly church email.”
- Keep it separate from other boxes. “I’d like to be contacted about serving” and “Send me the weekly email” are two different things.
The lobby
A lot of people will never fill out a card but will happily sign up if someone smiles and asks. A welcome table with a tablet or a simple sign-up sheet works well, especially on high-attendance Sundays like Easter, Christmas, or the start of a new series.
Give people a reason. “Get the weekly email so you don’t miss small group sign-ups” is better than “Join our mailing list.”
From the stage
A short mention once in a while helps: “If you’re not getting our weekly email, that’s where we share what’s coming up. Sign up on your connection card or at the welcome table.” Pair it with an easy way to act right then.
Make Your Website Do Some of the Work
Plenty of people check out your church online before they ever walk in, and plenty of members go to the website looking for an event date. Both are good moments to invite them.
- Put a short email sign-up on your homepage and your events page.
- Say what they’ll get and how often: “One email a week with what’s happening at church.”
- Ask for as little as possible. A name and an email is enough to start.
Be specific about what they’re signing up for. “Stay connected” is vague. “Weekly announcements and event reminders” sets a clear expectation, and people who know what to expect are less likely to unsubscribe later.
Ask for Consent Per Channel
This one matters more than most churches realize. Saying yes to one kind of contact isn’t saying yes to all of them.
Someone who gives you their phone number so the youth pastor can text about a trip hasn’t agreed to receive every church-wide text. Someone who gave an email to register for a class hasn’t necessarily agreed to the weekly newsletter.
So ask separately:
- Email: “Send me the weekly church email.”
- Text: “Text me urgent updates like weather cancellations.”
- Ministry-specific: “Keep me updated about kids’ ministry.”
It feels like more boxes, but it builds trust. People are far more comfortable saying yes when they know exactly what they’re agreeing to. And it keeps you from becoming the church that suddenly texts people who never asked.
What Not to Do
A few shortcuts tend to backfire:
- Don’t add people just because you have their address. An email from a wedding inquiry or a one-time donation isn’t a sign-up.
- Don’t buy or borrow lists. People who don’t know you won’t read your emails, and they may mark them as spam.
- Don’t make unsubscribing hard. If someone wants out, let them go easily. A smaller list of readers beats a bigger list of people ignoring you.
Keep One Source for Your People
Here’s where a lot of church lists quietly fall apart. The connection card goes into Planning Center. The website sign-up goes into a spreadsheet. The lobby list goes into someone’s email program. Six months later, those three lists don’t match, and nobody knows which one is right.
If your church uses Planning Center, treat it as the home for your people. That’s where you already track who’s attending, who joined a group, who updated their address. Your email list shouldn’t be a second spreadsheet that someone has to keep in sync by hand. It should draw from the people you’re already keeping track of.
That way, when a new family fills out a connection card on Sunday, they’re in the right place, and they’re on the right list without anyone retyping anything. We explain why this matters in more detail in our post on the best way to email church members.
Then Send Emails Worth Staying For
Growing a list is only half the job. Keeping people on it means sending emails they’re glad to get: short, clear, and useful. Every announcement should tell people what’s happening, why it matters, and what to do next.
If you’d like help with that part, Hey Church connects to Planning Center so your contacts stay in sync, and it takes care of sending your announcements on a schedule, rewritten fresh each time so people keep reading. There’s a free plan that covers up to 250 contacts, which is plenty for a lot of churches getting started.
A list made of real yeses is smaller at first. It’s also the one people actually read.