6 key types of church analytics & how to track them

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Churches invest a lot of time and money into online technology so they can better serve their congregations. But, is the return worth the investment? If you find yourself asking this question, learning how to correctly use church analytics can help shed light on how well your church tech is performing and measure its overall impact on your community.

Church metrics are important because they tell you about your people. You’ll learn what they like, what they need, and how to keep them engaged.

Let’s explore six different types of church data analytics to learn what they mean and how you can use them to better understand your congregation.

1. Church member analytics

Use church member analytics as a touchstone for the overall health and well-being of your church body. These numbers can help you recognize when a regular attendee suddenly stops showing up or if a new member starts to connect with the community through small groups. While every platform is different, churches using the Subsplash Platform can quickly view:

• Attendance tracking: Learn church member habits by taking attendance for one-time events and recurring meetings. If someone shows up consistently or has a hard time attending regularly, stay in the know. Gain insight into what days and times seem to work best for people to increase church attendance.

• Donor activity: Steward your finances well, identify patterns, and make informed decisions by tracking donor activity. With Subsplash, you can view donor profiles and see who’s donating, how much they’re giving on average, and if they’re a recurring donor.

• Check-ins: Gauge interest and engagement by tracking who checks in for children’s classes, women’s meetings, and special events. Anticipate the number of people who are likely to attend in the future and be prepared with enough space and materials.

• Group messaging data: See which church members are chatting in your Subsplash Messaging account and which channels they’ve joined. Track their engagement to see what topics resonate with group members and generate the most interest.

• Volunteers: Keep track of your volunteers and who’s leading them. Be the first to know about gaps in your team so you can fill positions and stay on top of weekly schedules. Church volunteer management tools can also help people block out dates if they need to miss a Sunday and be prepared with a different rotation of helpers.

• Small groups: Dig in to the spiritual development of your congregation and track who’s signed up for small groups. Assess which groups see a lot of member participation and which ones may need help getting more people involved.

2. Church giving analytics

Assess your financial support, plan budgets, and make informed decisions by tracking your church giving analytics. For example, with Subsplash Giving, churches can track nearly 20 essential data points. From total gifts to donor-specific reports, church leaders and administrators will have a better understanding of giving trends with insights into:

• Overall giving: Get the big-picture view of your financial income with a grand total number of dollars received. This number can serve as the benchmark for measuring progress each month and year. Plan expenses, track your goals, and create realistic budgets.

• Fund summary: Know exactly where gifts are coming from and where they should be sent. Track whether the donations you receive are tithes or gifts and for what purpose they’ve been given (e.g., global missions, local outreach, capital fundraisers). 

• Recurring gifts: Identify your regularly scheduled income streams by tracking who in your church is a recurring donor. You can plan your church’s budget with better accuracy and stability when you know what to expect on a regular basis. 

• Average gift amount: Track your average gift amount to gauge the overall financial health of your church and make note of when it increases or decreases. This is another great tool to use for predictability as you create spending plans and organize fundraising targets.

• Donor summary: Understand your donors’ giving history and monthly averages in one place. An itemized list of contacts and their giving information brings insight into who is giving, how often they’re giving, and how much they’ve given in total.

• Payment summary: Organize your income by keeping track of non-charitable payments like clothing, ticket, and conference sales. Easily maintain compliance with tax laws and regulations by tracking these streams of income separately.

3. Church website analytics

Your website is the digital front door to your church. It’s where people go to learn more about your ministry, values, and what to expect before they visit. But if your website isn’t performing well, it could be limiting your reach. 

Fortunately, you can set up Google Analytics for your church’s website and answer important questions, such as: 

• Who is visiting your site? Look at visitor demographics with information on age, gender, and interests. Understand who is coming to your site and identify any gaps you’d like to fill. Know your audience so you can provide content that will serve them well.

• How long are they on each page? Monitor engagement on each page to see what’s resonating and what isn’t. Google can track bounce rate (visitors who quickly leave your website after visiting) which can pinpoint pages that may need optimizing.

• Which links did they click? Set up event tracking and allow Google to track an “event” when visitors click on links, buttons, and videos. Learn which elements of your website are interacted with the most and if they convert to things like newsletter signups or donations.

• Where did they come from? Find out how visitors are making their way to the church’s website and what’s driving traffic your way. See if you’re being found through organic search, direct traffic, referral traffic, social media, or paid advertising with referral URLs. 

We’ve only touched on a handful of ways you can track your church website performance, but Google Analytics can track up to 200 different metrics for your website. Once you’ve connected your Google account with your church website, you can dive deep into how people are interacting with your online resources.

4. Church communication analytics

Your team spends a lot of time communicating with your church community. Emails, text messages (SMS), and push notifications are just a few ways to keep people informed, engaged, and excited about what’s happening at church. Subsplash allows you to see your analytics for these tools, so you can monitor:

• Open rates: Understand what kind of messaging resonates with the congregation by tracking which emails and text messages are actually being opened. This is another great indicator of engagement. If church members don’t see the value in opening your messages, you’ll know it.

• Group messages: Discover how your small gatherings are staying connected with group message analytics. Each person who uses Subsplash group messaging has their own unique profile where church leaders can view engagement data. Gain a holistic view into who is leading and participating in groups as a way to connect. 

5. Church app analytics

Similar to website analytics, app analytics will help you determine how well your app is performing. You can track engagement across all platforms to know how many people have downloaded, opened, and interacted with your mobile church software. 

Access your church app analytics on the Subsplash Dashboard homepage to view charts that illustrate metrics for:

• Media plays: Find out which media items are getting the most playtime across all channels. This church metric tells you how many times a media item has been played in your church app, web app, audio Bible, or embedded media items on your website. Keep in mind that even if an item isn’t watched or listened to entirely, it still counts as a play.

• App downloads: Quantify the reach of your app by keeping track of how many times it’s been downloaded. This metric reflects the number of downloads from an app store onto a unique device. Gauge the effectiveness of your promotional campaigns and app invitation efforts by monitoring this data.

• App launches: Discover how many times your app was opened on any given device with this metric. It’s great to see that people have downloaded your app, but do they actually use it? Get to know how often your church members open the app and track peak usage dates to release announcements or send messages strategically.

• App impressions: Take your analytic exploration one step further by seeing how many times users have accessed any one of your in-app pages. Identify which topics, resources, and sections your church members are most interested in. Collect this data to provide more or less types of content based on your congregation's wants and needs.

6. Church live stream analytics

Live stream services have become a normal part of Sundays for many churches. When you go live every week, you need to know how many people you’ve reached and how well your broadcasts performed. The Subsplash live-stream report generated after every recording will give you a detailed breakdown that includes the following metrics:

• Live stream viewers: Whenever you go live, your viewer count will be tallied and kept on record. Subsplash keeps track of the number of unique devices that connect to your live stream so you know how many households you’re reaching each week. 

• Live stream chats: Find out who was active in the live stream chat with post-stream chat analytics. You can see the total number of people who were chatting and a list of members. From this list you can click on each profile picture and head straight to their profile.

• Average viewer duration: The total amount of time each viewer watched your stream is figured into an average viewer duration metric. Get a good idea of how long each person watches your broadcasts and decide if you need to make adjustments. 

• Peak traffic viewers: This data point shows you the maximum number of people who were watching your live stream at exactly the same time. You can track this and make a note of patterns and trends to help you structure your services.

• Stream duration: Know how long your streams tend to run and decide if you’d like to shorten or lengthen stream time. Using this data along with average viewer duration and peak traffic viewers can help you decide if you need to make adjustments.

• Telemetry: Your Subsplash Live telemetry report details the health of your broadcasts by transmitting your data for monitoring and analysis and sending back the results. You get info on stream quality, resolution, frame rate, bitrate, disconnects, and A/V settings. A color-coded rating system shows you what’s working and what could use improvement. 

Make data-driven decisions with the help of church analytics

With church leaders using more and more technology to further their ministry efforts, understanding your church analytics is a necessity. They give you key insights into the overall health and growth of your church. You don’t need to be ruled by these numbers—use them as guideposts.

Some ministries rely on multiple platforms to track metrics for their website, communications, giving, mobile app, and church membership. Their data points are spread across a wide range of platforms and providers. Subsplash makes it easy for church leaders by providing these tools on a unified platform, organizing all of your data in one place.

By partnering with Subsplash, you can streamline your decision-making process to quickly steer your church in the right direction. And that direction will be unique to every congregation, which is why it’s important to have a platform that is ready to scale with your church, from humble church launches to churches growing incredibly fast. 

To learn how Subsplash can help you connect with your community in every season, [.blog-contact-cta]schedule your free demo today![.blog-contact-cta]

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