City Church Knoxville

City Church is a downtown Knoxville church that exists to be a Jesus-centered family on mission.

Learn More About City Church Knoxville

“Good Grain is a very needed and helpful resource for the Church at large.”

— Kent Bateman (Senior Pastor at City Church Knoxville)

The Results

In 30 Days we made -20% Audience Growth turn into +20% Audience Growth (40% Change!)

Consolidated Church Informational Feeds into two Resources A Podcast & a Blog.

We Discovered Where Disengagement was actually happening for their Church

What made all of the difference?

Getting Organized and Strategic

Pastor Kent’s background as a communications director prepared him incredibly well here. The website was well designed and incredibly useful. We even learned a ton about how we can better use blogs based on how City Church was already utilizing the tool. The only thing that eventually stood out to me was in their backdoor functionality. They had nine different blog feeds. We decided to re-organize all of their written messages by tags and categories and then consolidate them into one singular feed for all written updates, keeping their sermons podcast entirely separate and independent.

Sending an Email Every Month

City Church always wanted to have a monthly email so we set them up with one. Typically, email marketing is an excellent window into how much people in your audience love your brand. When the email came back 24 hours later with a +60% engagement rating, we knew that we had formatted the email correctly for their community. We were also happy to report back that City Church’s community is engaged and chomping at the bit for what their church was up.

Taking a Deep Dive with their Data

Throughout the month, we began seeing a steep decline in RSS subscribers. We looked at which channel was getting disengagement, and we discovered that the podcast was losing traction quickly. Upon a closer look, we found out that subscribers were disengaging for two reasons. First, we saw the week City Church Knoxville began in-person services, is when the drop happened, secondly, City Church Knoxville was doing excellent Daily Devotional content at the beginning of quarantine. When their church reopened, their congregation began engaging with the church in person. They started showing signs what I call “Feed Fatigue” .we concluded that the church needed to phase out that category of content and re-evaluate what their community needs they could address through their blog and podcast.

Why I Love This Client Story

Kent Bateman is an incredibly talented Pastor leading a dedicated community of believers in Knoxville, Tennessee. Over the course of our time together, we discovered new ways to use digital platforms to engage his church under challenging topics, mainly, his series on how Christians are invited by God to participate in politics, specifically American politics during this season pandemic and protest.

When we started, I asked Kent “Why Knoxville” to which he said, “We all felt called, and we recognized that this city and the students that bring it to life need Jesus and that 60% of them have never heard of Jesus before they’ve come to University of Tennessee’s campus.”

It’s challenging to set stereotypes aside but the South, while very Christian is not wholly Christian. Yes, there may be many churches, but in context, the South needs Jesus as much as any other region in America.

If you are someone who watches for up and coming churches or looks for excellent and unique teaching from unexpected places, Kent Bateman, his boldness and sincerity have been an incredible privilege to work alongside. In case you’re wondering, yes, I’ve subscribed to their church’s weekly podcast too.

-Asher

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