Organizing Church Groups Effortlessly: The Power of Tags in Breeze ChMS

Churches are in the business of two things: loving God and loving people (of course, one is the result of the other). 

But to love people well–especially in a time of digital overload–churches need tools and systems that allow them to engage with their members, visitors, and even “Chreaster” (Christmas+Easter) Christians well. They need not only strategies, but tools that make the most of current technology to boost connection, communication, and even Christ-centered growth. 

One critical tool that every church needs is a contact database. Often called a CRM (customer relationship management) in for-profit business, a CRM for churches behaves similarly to its secular counterpart, but with a different focus. Instead of filtering people based on their buying behavior and basic demographics, a church CRM pays attention to the whole person, adding details like spiritual giftings, family relationships, and significant milestones. 

In the following article, we’ll talk about the real secret sauce of a church CRM: tagging. Plus, we’ll cover how you can use this feature within Breeze Church Management to level up your connection and engagement, and most importantly, love your people better.

What is a Church CRM?

A church CRM is a specialized type of software designed to help churches manage their interactions with their congregation. It stores and organizes information about church members and visitors in a way that makes it readily available and far more useful for member engagement, communication with volunteers and ministry leaders, and even marketing. Not only that, but a properly utilized church CRM can offer churches valuable insight into member demographics, engagement patterns, and more. 

To get the most out of a CRM, church leaders need to use tags. Tags within a CRM are customizable labels or keywords that can be attached to individual profiles, enabling users to categorize and filter people based on specific criteria, such as interests, skills, life stages, or spiritual journey points. In the next section, we’ll take a look at what kinds of tags you can use to personalize and refine your CRM.

What Kinds of Tags Can I Add to My CRM?

The flexibility of tags means that you can create a wide variety of them to suit the unique needs of your church community. Common tags include:

• Demographics: Age, gender, marital status, and place of residence can give you valuable insight into who your church is attracting and engaging the most effectively. 
• Giving History: Regular givers, first-time donors, lapsed donors, occasional donors, large donors, and recurring givers allow you to send targeted communications for opportunities to give.
• Family Relationships: Family units, siblings, and extended family connections show how your church is successfully engaging oikos, or family units. 
• Spiritual Gifts: Leadership, hospitality, teaching, service, and more are especially valuable details for making decisions about leadership positions.
• Specific Skills and Interests: Skills such as writing, construction, teaching, graphic design, entrepreneurship, or computer engineering can highlight potential volunteer roles or even opportunities for consulting. Interests such as sports or film can also help you see who might be interested in leading or participating in specific events (such as a churchwide kickball competition). 
• Volunteer History: Volunteer history is a great data point for evaluating your culture of volunteerism and can help you see when you may be overburdening a particular volunteer or unpaid ministry leader.
• Birthdays/Special Dates: Birthdays, anniversaries, and significant spiritual milestones give you a chance to reach out and engage on significant days. This might include special days–like the anniversary of a wedding, or days to grieve–like the anniversary of a death. 
• Spiritual Background: Details about a person’s walk with Jesus are important for knowing how to engage with them in discipleship, teaching, giving, and more.
• Personal Goals: Discipleship paths, personal growth areas, and mission interests can help you pastor your church members more effectively toward their God-given dreams and goals. 
• Any Other Relevant Details: This can include ministry interests, attendance patterns, or any other specifics that can help in pastoral care and community building.

Every church is different. While you certainly don’t need to include all these details, a few strategic choices on tagging can help you level up engagement in a way that makes sense for your church culture.

How Using Tags in a CRM Can Level Up Engagement, Connection, and Discipleship

In this section, we’ll take a look at specific use cases for tags. Remember that these are just ideas; get creative with tagging and think through specific needs your church has. 

Staying Organized with Tags

Tags are powerful tools in combating the chaos of church administration. They allow for easy organization of volunteers and tracking of individuals through different life stages. They also ensure that communications like emails and texts are sent to the right groups, enhancing the personal touch in church communications.

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Upping Your Engagement and Connection with Tags

Tags enable the creation of new systems for connecting with various groups within the church, such as new visitors, occasional attendees, and new believers. By tagging these individuals appropriately, you can ensure they receive customized content and communications that meet their needs and encourage deeper engagement with the church community.

Building a Church "Search Engine" for Your People

With a well-structured tagging system, your CRM can function like a searchable, filterable database, giving church leaders insights into the congregation's composition, needs, and engagement levels. This "search engine" capability can significantly enhance pastoral care, community building, and ministry planning. For example, if you’re running a conference on marriage you can search specifically for young married couples. Or if you’d like to offer workshops on specific topics like finance or theology, look for individuals with a passion for teaching. 

Tips for Using Tags

To be effective with tagging, you need to be strategic. Here are three critical tips for using tags in your church CRM. 

• Be Consistent: Use a standardized set of tags and apply them consistently across your CRM to maintain order and ensure reliable data. For example, if you’d like to tag all high school students, make sure you don’t have several variations on that tag (“HS,” “teenager,” “highschool”). 
• Be Specific: Use clear, descriptive tags that accurately reflect the category or characteristic you're labeling. Instead of saying “young adult,” say “Age 20-30.”
• Be Considerate: Always consider privacy and sensitivity when tagging. Ensure that personal and potentially sensitive information is handled with care and that access to detailed tags is restricted to authorized users only. Don’t use tags with sensitive information like medical history or mental health issues. 

Using Tags with Breeze

Does every church management software come with tags? Not necessarily. 

Breeze People is a CRM system designed with the needs of church communities in mind, offering intuitive and flexible tagging capabilities. Breeze People allows you to:

• Add an unlimited number of people
• Store and filter by any information (using tags)
• Email & text people and groups
• Create & share member directories
  

Plus, Breeze will help you move all your data over from your previous system for free. 

With Breeze, you can easily implement the tagging strategies discussed above, making your church administration more effective and your community more connected. 

Try it for yourself. Click here to access your free 14-day trial of Breeze.