Around the holidays, synagogues show their marketing prowess

I belong to a local synagogue in my town. I’m not very religious, but try to attend services once in a while and take part in activities so that my kids can feel a part of a religion and soak in the cultural benefits.

I’ve always been impressed with how Temple Ner Tamid, a reform congregation, emails out new announcements in a professional manner, sends a decently written newsletter each month and overall does an admirable job of pushing out consistently unified messages to its members. Although I’m not involved with any of the marketing/communications activities, I have to believe that it has helped to educate members and make them feel more a part of the temple community. Since the membership continues to rise, it can only be helping on the recruitment and retention front as well.

Most people don’t really ever think of their temples or churches as organizations that “market” to find new members. But, according to the new book “Applebee’s America” many churches across the country have become very sophisticated marketing machines. I certainly hadn’t thought much about my synagogue doing this until the other night when I started to wonder if Ner Tamid stole a page out of P&G’s marketing handbook because this holiday season the organization has ratcheted up its efforts to a full blown aggressive marketing campaign. I think it’s actually kind of amusing and impressive.

Last week I received a well created pop up email (the type that a professional interactive shop would develop) alerting me to the fact that the temple is having a special Chanukah party and fun kids contest and I should look at the Montclair Times (local paper) the next day to read about it. Well, sure enough in the following day’s paper, a 1/3 page article and subsequent ad on the next page featured my synagogue and its special Chanukah activities. Over the next 3-4 days, I received similar (very cute) emails just to make sure that I wouldn’t forget about these exciting activities that were about to take place.

Even though I liked the campaign, I didn’t attend the festivities. But, if I had the time, I sure would have (if for nothing else to find out who led the development of this campaign). We all know how hard it is to break through the enormous amounts of clutter that exists during the holiday season. Nice to see that an unlikely offbeat marketer might have found a way.