Having done both direct mail and a street team that put door hangers on doors to promote an event, I’d like to share my thoughts on the effectiveness of both (And I’d like to hear your as well).

I think I prefer the door hanger/ street team approach better for a couple of reasons:

#1 – Cost – Direct mail isn’t cheap. Mailing out to homes within a 2 mile radius of our church is very expensive. With a street team, all you have are printing costs (which you would have with postcards anyway). Plus, people are usually excited to be part of something like this.

#2 – Uniqueness – I got 2 postcards in the mail inviting me to an Easter service (I had other plans), but they got mixed in with car ads, tire ads, mortgage ads, and whatever else was being advertised that day. The door hangers we put up were the only thing on the door. Plus, you’re definitely going to look at something that’s hanging on your door.

#3 – Involvement – We got tons of people involved by handing out door hangers. They were praying for the homes as they put an invite on their door, and they got to meet some other people from church that they didn’t know.

There are a couple of downsides as well:

It does take some coordination if you want to blanket your entire community, but it’s worth it rather than just paying a company to ship a postcard.

Gated communities or those with strict soliciting policies are tougher to get into (Unless you have people in your church who live in those communities).

All in all, the excitement level of those who were part of our street teams was really high and it showed on Sunday!