A simple but effective follow up hack to make sure no guest at your church gets overlooked
I love this old saying: “You can kill two birds with one stone.”
Not that hate I birds. I just love the idea of shooting one arrow that hits multiple targets for the win.
One of the best things I’ve done over the last 2 years is consolidate my podcast listening, exercise, and prayer time into a 2 mile walk or run around a reservoir near my house.
It’s killing three birds with one stone. Rather than have a prayer and meditation time, then go exercise, then listen to a podcast I want to learn from, I can turn almost 3 hours of activity into less than one.
It’s what I call a “threefer”: a hack that serves as a catch all for a few different things on my to do list.
Over the last year, I have also developed a new hack for following up on guests.
Whether they are first time guests, or just made a decision for Christ, or just checked in the kids for the first time or gotten baptized, I can count on this one hack to reach them all.
So what is this follow up hack that serves as a “catch all” for all these groups?
Here it is: I send a monthly email to all new people who have not yet attended our one program (Next Steps).
It not only has produced increased connections through our Next Steps experience, but it has increased engagement as people return this email to me, asking questions and allowing me to create personal conversations with them via the email thread.
So let me break it down.
What is the content of this email?
There were 76 new people at this session of Next Steps this month at our Anaheim campus. Here they are getting to know each other by playing Next Steps Bingo….and loving it!
There are always three components to each email.
The first is a short blog style post on some current felt need or hot button topic (check out four free examples here, or get our pack of 25 templates here)
The second are some images that tie into that topic and a thumbnail of my face over my signature to make it more personal.
The third is an invitation to jump into Step One this weekend as a natural way of dealing with this hot topic.
Who gets the email?
Anyone whose profile was created on our database over the last 12 months.
Think about it.
If you were baptized or made a first time decision to follow Jesus, you will get this email.
If you checked your kids into the children’s program for the first time, you too will get this email.
From a first time financial donation to a sign up for Financial Peace University-if you were added to our database in the last 12 months, you will get this email.
No matter what you do (or don’t do) for new people, they will always get this monthly urging to come to your One Program to connect to a small group and a ministry team.
When do I send it?
On Friday afternoon before Step 1 of our Next Step Experience begins (Step 1 always starts the first weekend of every month). Why then? In a word, immanence. Guests who are new to church going (along with those who were and no longer are due to the breakdown of habits during COVID) approach weekends without church attendance as an automatic.
Their receiving of an email early in the week will likely be forgotten when the fog of a work week clears and the weekend is in view. Catching them on Friday afternoon is strategic because that is when thoughts of what they want to do on their Saturday or Sunday begin to be processed.
The fact that it comes just before the weekend when Step 1 begins (as opposed to Steps 1, 2, or 3) is also an incentive as most of them want to do them in order and waiting another month might seem undesirable.
The only thing you’ll want to consider (and track by watching the open rates) is that email marketing research sometimes says that Friday CAN have lower email rates. Thursday morning or afternoon has higher rates, and might still have the right immanence factor.
Get the data for yourself, and your own people! Track who is opening, clicking, showing up, etc. — you’ll figure out your best play.
How do people stop receiving this monthly email?
There are only 4 ways they can stop receiving this email:
They show up at your One Program.
A full year has passed since their profile was created.
They unsubscribe.
They die.
Let’s hope for number 1 :)
How to create your own monthly email:
Obtain a list of all the guests who have come to your church over the last 12 months.
Write an email that speaks to them and provides very real value in the email itself. Then make sure it also invites them to your One Program where guests connect to your church (see examples to use or get ideas from here — or get a pack of 25 email templates here)
Send it the Friday afternoon before the weekend when your program begins.
Don’t get me wrong. We still have unique follow up strategies for first time guests and milestone decisions like baptism and the like.
But if it all fell apart tomorrow, this simple hack would insure that all your new people will regularly get invited to take their next step and engaged with on a monthly basis.
While you get working on this, know that all you need to form a 4-phase engagement strategy that works in churches with attendance under one hundred and all the way up to 22 thousand (that’s experience talking here), can be found through a 6-session video course for your staff and teams that I’ve put together that you can access here.
Read the description and the kinds of churches that have and are using it to grow their congregations.
That’s exactly what you can do by connecting 1 out of 4 new people that walk through your door.
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