With the current state of the economy, a lot of churches are looking for ways to lower costs. Many churches are turning to online communication tools to promote their events.
Online Church Bulletin was created for this very reason.
Typically, bulletins are printed and passed out to everyone who walks through the door. At the end of the service most of the bulletins are laying on the floor or seats. That’s a lot of money tossed aside every week!
Online Church Bulletin was created by two average guys who have both been working for their churches for years designing graphics and programming websites: Jeret Slack, a graphic designer; and Darren Beckett, a programmer. Check out this video that shows how simple the interface is to use:
Both of them, frustrated with how ineffective the printed church bulletin is, set out to recreate the old, traditional, non-effective printed bulletin.
They turned to tools like email and social networking platforms to design a bulletin that could be viewed on personal computers and mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad, helping churches to communicate events and reach their members where they spend most of their time: email, Facebook, and Twitter!
Now a church can communicate to the church body more effectively, and also save churches thousands of dollars each year. Real savings, no matter how big or small the church is!
Another significant benefit to Online Church Bulletin is the ability to track the readership of their bulletin, something that isn’t possible with paper. The system provides stats on how many email were successfully sent, how many of those were read, and even can tell the church how many events were clicked on. That’s amazing information that was never available before!
Online Church Bulletin was designed to be easy to use by anyone on staff. Events are easy to create and edit, and can be saved for future use. Then the bulletin is built using a really simple drag-and-drop interface. A “proof” can be emailed to the entire staff before sending it out to the entire church body. The church can send bulletins as frequently as they’d like with no change in the monthly cost.
Top 5 Features:
- Affordable: Save $100s over the cost of printed bulletins
- Easy-to-use system: Anyone on staff to create beautiful bulletins
- It’s everywhere: Your church body can read the bulletin anywhere they are
- Tracking: Know which events your members are interested in the most
- User management: Assign specific access to volunteers and church staff
Pixel Ark offers a completely free, full access, 30-day trial to their Online Church Bulletin.
There’s no credit card required to sign-up for the trial, and no limitations during the trial period either.
Ben says
We’ve been doing the PDF thing for a while now. The bulletin page is one of the most visited so I can see how this would be a great help to a church. I wonder how you could promote it without making the ones without digital “options” feel left out? I doubt you would want to take time to create two bulletins. Maybe you would.
Something I’m thinking about.
Erica says
Umm…maybe I just didn’t read it close enough, but what is the difference between this product (which does look pretty slick) and something like constantcontact? For our email list of over 2000 we would have to get the $99 package here, but only pay $35 on constant contact. Just saying!
Jeret Slack says
Hello Erica, my name is Jeret one of the creators of the Online Church Bulletin. Great question. Services like constant contact & others only provide the email service of sending out emails and only give you a couple email templates that are not really useful for churches. Before creating the Online Church Bulletin I looked into these services to but they just did not provide a great looking, easy for anyone to use service to create my churches bulletin. I needed something that any office person on staff at my church could use and for it to look great and not like a boring email. And with services like constant contact if you want a really cool design you have to hire a designer to create you a clean looking design that someone can copy into constant contact to much money and time. What makes Online Church Bulletin great is the user interface. You create events store them in our system and when you are ready pull those events into your bulletin editor and create a easy to use beautiful bulletin your members will enjoy reading (thats where we stand out!) the email is just the tool of getting it into the hands of your church members. Anyways I could talk for days … hope you try it out once you try out our product you will see we have created something unique & easy for churches BIG & small to use. Thanks for the great question 🙂
Eric J says
we still hand a bulletin out to everyone, every service, but are looking at ways of saving money we already have a “news room” with our bulletin events and our church calendar but it is rarely in the top 5 most visited pages http://graceinauburn.com/news. Has anyone else had any success in saving money by printing less bulletins, any ideas?
Jeret Slack says
Hey Eric, This was one of the problems with my church most of the people at our church really did not have the time to visit or church website all the time because of their busy schedules. The Online Church Bulletin has become a more convenient & more effective way of communicating our churches event via email, facebook & twitter to or church members because that is where they are everyday anyways. We send ours out on a friday afternoon so people can read it on their lunch break, etc and have the weekend to see whats going on. Then when they arrive at church on Sunday they know whats going on and what they want to sign up for… It has been exciting to see 🙂
Jeret Slack says
Here is a demo sample bulletin for you guys to check out 🙂
http://pixelark.com/centerpointchurch/108
Ben says
Hey Jeret! Thanks for taking such an active role in answering the questions. Tou responses have got me thinking more about your product.
Landry Gatlin says
What is the price after the trial period?