TransPromo Special Report — TransPromo Communications: More Than a Pretty Statement

Cathedral is committed to quick and reliable church member mailing list updates. Churches send data updates to Cathedral via e-mail, disk, fax or phone. The envelope is the transaction document. Because the key is keeping parishioners focused on giving, Cathedral (www.cathedralstewardship.com/env_custom.asp) produces personalized mailed offering envelope sets that are sent out monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly. Cathedral offers customized artwork, scripture, colors and styles, as well as a host of special collection envelopes for holidays and capital campaigns.

The Archdiocese of Galveston Houston parish worked with Cathedral to reach out to all registered parishioners through its mailed offering envelope program, strengthening the parish community in the process. Father Christopher Shackelford was faced with a dilemma—the explosive growth in his town was making it increasingly difficult to support the needs of his parish, let alone the community.

Cathedral discovered that less than one-third of the 2,400 registered parishioners were part of the mailed offering program. As a result, Father Shackelford decided to upgrade to the bilingual Liturgical Series envelope program, include bilingual pastoral letters and mail them bi-monthly to 100 percent of the parish.

Since the implementation of the updated mailings, participation in the program is up to 40 percent, and increased giving has steadily held between 18 percent and 22 percent. The additional annual expense of mailing envelopes to the entire parish family was recovered in the first month’s weekly offerings. Not only has the parish increased regular weekly support, but they used the envelope program for a Capital Campaign to expand a facility that is literally bursting at the seams.

According to Gaige, it was natural to see how the proven effectiveness of stewardship direct mail also applied to the needs of for-profit businesses. Broadview Networks is a telecommunications firm for which Cathedral prints full-color, transpromotional invoices for all of its customers. In the view of Broadview Vice President of Marketing Tim Bell, the company’s bill is a product in itself.