It’s pretty obvious if you want your church to grow, you need to attract new visitors. Every week people attend Sunday Church services for a variety reasons. Some might attend “just this once” because of an invitation from a friend, others simply because of tradition, or special events occur like Christmas or Easter.
It’s important to attract these new visitors, but probably even more important to church growth is getting these folks to come back. What makes those visitors come back a second time? What helps a visitor take their next step and become a member that finds life in (and bring life to) their congregation?
Simply put, people are much more likely to return when they’ve connected on a personal level. Here are some suggestions on having effective follow up:
Create a Culture of Connection
You can do this by having people welcoming at the doors, giving a moment in the service to chat with the person next to you, and having an area in your facility where visitors can obtain more info about your church and perhaps receive a gift for coming. Hopefully you can get some contact info from these visitors that you can use later to reach out with a phone call, email or postcard.
Carefully Create a Follow Up Team
It’s critically important who you allow to be the “face” of your church, and anyone making or taking calls becomes your ambassador. Ensure they are well-trained, have a great personality, pastoral in nature, and able to take initiative.
Consistent Reporting
By recording the success of a follow-up call or email contact and what may have been discussed helps other members of the team know where someone is at, and potentially what not to talk about. These cumulative statistics give Senior Leadership a clear view of the health of this process.
Create Relationships
Announcements, websites, live streaming video, social media all have their place, but nothing can take the place of a relationship. Chances are they came the first time because someone invited them, and they’ll come again if someone continues to invite them.
Follow Up Tools for Streaming Video
We understand streaming video is a great way to create “windows” for your church. People considering a church will look at your live and recorded video to get an idea what your church is like. In the past, it was difficult to follow up with viewers unless you were chatting with them and they gave you their contact info or you had a digital connection card available. Now StreamingChurch.tv has created some effective tools to automatically follow up with viewers. Now you are able to connect with many of those who attend your online service.
Once enabled and customized by your ministry, specific targeted automatic follow up emails will be automatically sent to your online attenders after they attend your service. The system will automatically discern between those that attended for the first time or the fortieth time and send a customized email specifically for them.
Don’t let visitors slip through the cracks!
For more information on the Automatic Follow Up Feature, contact us! [email protected]