012 | Evolving a Market Segment with Frank Barry from Tithe.ly | Studio CMO - a podcast by Golden Spiral, Shaping Technology Marketing

Frank Barry, founding team member and COO/CMO of Tithe.ly, joined us live on Studio CMO to talk about the impact of COVID-19 on faith-based institutions and how Tithe.ly’s technology has found a way to help.

Frank began his career as a youth pastor before entering the tech world through a position at Conterra (now known as ), where he was hired to start a faith-based consulting service.

This interview delves into:

• Tithe.ly’s new demand cycle
• The power of checking-in
• Tithe.ly's marketing & communications before and after COVID-19
• The pitfalls of rapid growth
• How Tithe.ly is preventing growing pains

Our Guest

Frank Barry is a founding team member and COO/CMO of Tithe.ly, a Nashville-based platform with tools built to help churches and ministries increase giving and engagement. Frank is a marketing and technology professional with nearly 10 years of service in the software industry and is currently focused on driving business results in the form of lead generation, pipeline growth, and bookings through B2B demand generation marketing.

Frank’s background has helped him develop a unique understanding of bringing products to market, sales enablement, improving product adoption, and building customer success, to name a few.

Frank frequently speaks at events, including SXSW, SiriusDecisions Summit, Content Marketing World, the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP), Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association (DMFA), and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN).

Show Notes

In Episode 010 of Studio CMO, we talk about how your company can set realistic goals for the remainder of 2020. Check it out.

THE PANDEMIC’S EFFECT ON TITHE.LY’S DEMAND CYCLE

Tithe.ly experienced a massive increase of churches creating new accounts. They progressed from 20-40 new accounts per day to 900 new accounts per day.

“COVID-19 forced every church on the planet to go digital.” - Frank Barry

As the pandemic progressed, churches had to figure out how to continue services and collecting giving and donations. Many churches were fast-forwarded into the decision to go digital.

THE POWER OF CHECKING-IN

Following the pandemic, Frank started a daily live show to talk to church leaders and pastors through the season. He speaks not from the perspective of a church technology company, but as a fellow church leader.

In those live interviews, Frank was able to hear the perspectives and challenges of churches of all sizes, everywhere.

Personal connection has always been important to Tithe.ly. Since the very beginning, Frank and Tithe.ly’s CEO would onboard each new client by phone.

“To this day, everyone that signs up gets a phone call.” - Frank Barry

TITHE.LY’S MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS BEFORE AND AFTER COVID-19

“We had a great business. And then you put an elephant on top of it, and it exposes the weak points. We were able to see those really clearly and go, okay, let's shift.” - Frank Barry

Tithe.ly’s focus has remained on two efforts despite the pandemic:

1. Content:
Tithe.ly spent five years producing content and now publishes 2-3times a week on its blog in addition to a weekly podcast. Tithe.ly also provides their customers with resources to help them communicate effectively, such as printed material forbulletins, email copy for newsletters, and social media content to advertise with.
2. Personalized communications: Tithe.ly doesn’t have any outbound sales. Itssales team takes more of an educational approach — they want to answer questions and connect with customers. Before the pandemic and when Tithe.ly was receiving 20-40 new sign-ups per day, they called each new user to personally onboard them. When the pandemic hit and Tithe.ly was receiving 600-900 new sign-ups per day, Tithe.ly expanded its team, streamlined its processes, and kept its promise to call each new user.

IS YOUR COMPANY GROWING TOO FAST?

“If you grow too fast, you build up the infrastructure to support that growth. And if it goes away really fast, all of a sudden you're left with all this infrastructure, people, tools, debt, and no business.” - Frank Barry

Tithe.ly’s advice? Manage your business with intention.

Tithe.ly’s team is frequently looking at its data and paying attention to emerging trends in the market to help inform marketing and sales efforts post-COVID.

Learn how to fortify your marketing infrastructure on the Golden Spiral blog.

HOW TITHE.LY IS preventing GROWING PAINS

The massive growth Tithe.ly has been experiencing during the pandemic forced them to rethink how they serve customers of different sizes and how those customers move through their systems and internal teams.

Tithe.ly’s customer could now be a church of under 20 people or a church of over a thousand people. Onboarding must be adjusted per customer to remain a streamlined process.

“It all comes down to: how do we deal with customers of all sizes? How do we get each customer live fast, make that experience great for them, and leverage software to simplify the process for our teams?” - Frank Barry

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