Remember those expensive demographic surveys — Precept, Proscript, something — that the districts provided for church planting, say, 15 years ago.
OK: perhaps not. After all, they were expensive.
Well, I learned today that ESRI — and no particular endorsement for ESRI, by the way — has a map-based zip code look-up tool. Not the same thing, but it does suggest where you might want to target in-person (or postal ?) outreach activity, and what the people who live in that zip code likely value.
Oh, I’m sure it’s a gateway to more refined data, at a cost, I’m sure. But we’re hardly ready for that kind of granular data (for new churches, anyway) yet —
In the meantime, here is a link to the demographic profiles and segmentation overview.
My heart skipped a beat. I first saw ESRI as ESR (as in Earlham School of Religion). Which would be cool and unexpected. But ESRI makes so much more sense.