This is a Guest Post by Andy Darnell.

How’s that for a blog title?

The other day I was spammed. My wife was spammed. We each got an email blast from a local car dealer. I’d love a new car. In fact I’d love a new used car. I might even be in the market for a car in the near future, but for now I have no idea how the dealer got both of our email addresses.

Regardless, we both went online and “unsubscribed” from the spam that we received.

I happened to take it a step further. I wanted to dig a little to find out how they got both of our email addresses. I noticed that the unsubscribe pop up took me to a company called eleadcrm.com.

In today’s market place you can’t afford to gamble when it comes to finding the right CRM Technology for your dealership. That’s why eLEAD CRM gives you the competitive advantage that you need to sell more cars and service today.

It appears that their purpose in business is to provide auto dealers with sales leads for spammy blasts such as this. I’m not naive about how they got our information. I’ve seen the power of web analytics and know that there are some pretty savvy scripts out there that can pull a lot about a person. Then, all they have to do is query the dozens of databases that can match you up. Voila. Whether or not this is how they got our information, I don’t know.

Either way… Way to go eleadcrm. You rock.

I did get a chuckle from their lovely website though… which actually may have been worth the price of the spam blast. Upon browsing to their site (in firefox mind you) I got this pop up:

Seriously? It is Highly Recommended that I use IE5.5! Wow. Fantastic.

So, yesterday I think about it this way.I wonder how many churches exist with approach to ministry that echos this sentiment.

You know what I mean, right?

• What worked in the past is the program we support.
• We could push the envelope a little and be innovative, but then we’d have to be backwards compatible.
• We recognize that there are great applications out there that other people use, but that is for them to use… not us.
• We’re much more comfortable being status quo.

How do we challenge these sentiments? What are your thoughts?

Watch the following video above and think in terms of your ministry, church, and their social media initiatives.

Does social media marketing, initiatives, and strategies pay off? Definitely. But, only if done really well. But what exactly is the payoff? What is the true measurable ROI?

I’ve had more than a few conversations recently about how effective social media is for ministry, especially the ROI, or Return on Investment.

Now, generally this term is associated directly with a financial return. Our goal, though, is not money, so ROI is calculated a bit differently. Sure, we definitely need to be fiscally responsible, but hoarding treasures that moth and rust destroys is not our primary goal.

It’s people, and is there really a price tag on salvation? Obviously not.

But, ROI also can be measured by the success of a particular campaign, product launch, or initiative. Social media can help make those things a success and a positive ROI. The key here is measurement and what exactly you’re measuring.

We need to be wise with our time and financial resources. Let the Holy Spirit guide you and your leaders as to what will result in a positive ROI (whatever that might be) and trust Him for the results.