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Since creating the first church app in 2009, Subsplash has continually looked to the future to equip churches and further the gospel. We're committed to innovating and providing your church with the best-in-class engagement platform.
One of the big questions facing church engagement technology right now is about how to approach private location data when it comes to reaching your audience. Our team of experts has stayed on top of trends like this to help you make the best possible decision for your ministry. Here's what you need to know about the future of location-based engagement.
Key things to know
When smartphones began to adopt GPS technology in the late 2000s, many companies realized they could gain access to their customers’ precise locations by tracking their mobile devices. With incredible potential to profit from this data, tech leaders like Apple and Google began to promote location-based technology as a major feature of their operating systems.
Eventually, church leaders also began to imagine how they could use this technology to better connect with their communities. For example, if “First Church” wanted to connect with people near their church who had downloaded the First Church mobile app, they could set up a “geo-fence”—a predefined radius around their physical location—so any users within that area could receive targeted communications.
But the landscape has changed since 2015. The ripples made by location-based technology have been followed by tidal waves of privacy rules and legislation. So what does geo-targeted technology look like today?
In 2016, Yahoo! announced one of the biggest personal data breaches in history—over 1 billion of their customers had their data stolen. Actually, the data was stolen in 2013 and 2014, but it took Yahoo two years to realize that data had been stolen.
Since then, personal information security has now become a major consumer concern. In 2016, the European Union passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that went in effect in May 2018. While the law itself was complex, the premise behind their regulation was simple: your data should be yours, and you should be able to control how other people use it. Canada and the US followed suit by updating their privacy legislation as well. Users began demanding control over their data, and Google faced a lawsuit in 2018 for tracking the location of their users.
In response to this public outcry, Apple rolled out their new privacy policy with the release of iOS 13 in September 2019. This update required app users to grant permission for apps to track their location. Google announced their version of a similar policy in February of 2020.
The public response has demonstrated that many people prefer not to have companies track their location. For example, just a few months after launching their new privacy controls, Apple’s location data dropped by a whopping 68%! Google also reported that roughly half of their mobile users turn off location-based tracking options.
Here’s the overall trend after Google and Apple’s privacy changes:
These statistics begin to indicate just how drastically recent privacy changes will impact location-based engagement!
Privacy laws are expected to become even more restrictive towards collecting personal location data. With each update, tech companies are eliminating the offered functionality of location-based engagement features, making them less effective for widespread use. Unfortunately, the result is that geo-targeting services for many business, organizations, and even churches will continue to underperform and decline in popularity.
However, there is still good news for churches looking to engage their communities with timely and customized content! Reaching your audience is still easily achieved through push notifications, and the best church app builders will also offer in-app instant messaging.
Instant messaging apps, especially in-app messaging, have grown in popularity because they create two-way communication in real time. Subsplash released Subsplash Messaging with unlimited messages, unlimited channels, direct messaging, group messaging, prayer requests, polls, and push notifications. Whether asking for prayer, coordinating a Bible study, or having a direct conversation with a friend, in-app messaging can help build authentic relationships.
Push notifications are still effective when the content is relevant to individual users. In fact, push notifications are opened twice as often than emails. This is why Subsplash mobile apps allow churches to set up group or segmented notifications so your users can select which groups they want to hear from. When your users receive messages with relevant information, they are much more likely to keep their notifications turned on.
In 2013, Apple announced another evolution in geo-location technology: iBeacon. These hardware devices could be installed in retail stores or other establishments to send out a unique signal that would be picked up by mobile applications. Google released their version of this beacon technology, Eddystone, in 2015.
A beacon is different from geo-locations in that it uses bluetooth instead of GPS signals to communicate with mobile devices. Their maximum range is 230 feet, but they tend to be more effective for even shorter distances. Similar to radio signals, beacon signals can be blocked by buildings or experience interference by other beacon signals.
Once a mobile app is within the range of the beacon, it causes a specific action, such as sending a push notification or a link to a website to the user’s home screen.
But beacon technology is complex and has a limited effective range. Many churches simply don’t have resources to invest in beacon technology, and the challenges of implementing beacons far outweigh the potential benefits. Additionally, many smartphone users still maintain strong preferences against being tracked—whether by geo-location or beacons.
The future of church engagement is in allowing your church to have personal conversations through tools like in-app instant messaging. Continuing to put your content in the hands of your church audience through mobile apps, websites, live streaming, and podcasts is also important for ongoing engagement. If your church creates meaningful connection points with your community, the community will respond positively as well. Promoting your current communication channels will help your church community stay connected.
Today there are more ways than ever to engage your community, from instant messaging to custom TV apps to live streaming, and so much more!
Ready to learn how your organization can create more meaningful connections with Subsplash’s Ultimate Engagement Platform™?[.blog-contact-cta] Let’s chat! [.blog-contact-cta]
