What Should a Synagogue Board Actually Measure About Communications?

Boards often know how many members the synagogue has.

They know the budget.

They know religious school enrollment.

They may know event attendance.

But when the conversation turns to communications and marketing, measurement often becomes much less clear.

“How many people opened the email?”

“How many Facebook followers do we have?”

“How many people visited the website?”

Those numbers can be useful.

But none of them tells the entire story.

Start With the Congregation’s Objective

What are you trying to accomplish?

If the goal is increasing program participation, measure registrations and attendance.

If the goal is membership growth, measure inquiries, visits, follow-up conversations, and new members.

If the goal is reconnecting less-engaged members, measure whether those households are responding and participating.

The measurement should follow the goal.

Track the Journey, Not Just the Final Number

Suppose ten families inquire about membership and only two eventually join.

The answer is not simply “we added two families.”

Leadership should understand what happened to the other eight.

Did they visit?

Did anyone follow up?

Did they attend an event?

Did they choose another synagogue?

Did they stop responding?

That information can reveal where the real problem is.

Useful Communications Measures Might Include

• website inquiries

• event registrations

• email engagement

• first-time visitors

• prospective member conversations

• repeat attendance

• religious school inquiries

• volunteer participation

• response to personal outreach

• new member conversion

• member retention

  
  

Not every synagogue needs to track everything.

Choose the measures connected to your current priorities.

Avoid Vanity Metrics

A social media post receiving 100 likes may feel successful.

But if the goal was getting people to register for an event and nobody registered, the likes did not accomplish much.

Likewise, an email with a strong open rate may still fail if readers never take the intended action.

Marketing activity should ultimately connect to congregational outcomes.

Ask Better Board Questions

Instead of:

“How many emails did we send?”

Ask:

“Which messages drove the strongest response?”

Instead of:

“How many followers do we have?”

Ask:

“Are we reaching the people we actually want to engage?”

Instead of:

“Did we promote the program?”

Ask:

“Did our communication help produce the attendance we expected?”

Better questions lead to better decisions.