Does Your Church Have a Visitor Follow-up Strategy?

You’re prepared each week to welcome new guests.

Your website has clear directions to your church and even addresses the common concerns of new attenders, like “What do I wear?”

Your greeting team is friendly, offering welcoming smiles, handshakes, or high-fives.

Your children’s ministry volunteers are trained to help a new child adapt to the classroom and build rapport with mom and dad.

Boom! You’re prepared.

Or, are you?

If you don’t have a visitor follow-up strategy, you may be missing a much-needed but often overlooked element to your welcome strategy.

6 Steps to Sensational Follow Up

There are many great follow-up strategies; choose one that works well for your church and your attendees. Here are six steps we’ve discovered for creating sensational customer service that wows your guests:

  1. Act fast. The quicker you can follow up, the better. At Life.Church, we commit to follow up within 48 hours. The more time that passes between your guest’s visit and the follow-up, the less meaningful the connection becomes.
  2. Engage in person. One of the best things you and your team can do is to meet visitors in person. Encourage your attenders to introduce their guests to your staff or key volunteers. Or, consider having a dedicated place or time to connect with your attenders—new and regular. Learn more about connecting with attenders in this blog post.
  3. Ask the right questions. Meeting and connecting with new people can be challenging, but many of our teams have found success with the FORM method. FORM stands for: Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Method-of-contact. First, we ask about our guest’s family. Second, we talk about their occupation. Third, we’ll dive into what they like to do for fun. And, lastly, we’ll capture a method of contact, like a phone number or email address, to follow up with them later in the week.
  4. Learn and use their name. The simplest way to make a great impression and show someone how much you value them is to learn and use their name. It can be hard to remember names, especially if that’s a skill that doesn’t come naturally to you. Consider having a place in your phone where you can record their name and a few details about them.
  5. Be personal in your follow-up. All follow-up isn’t equal. If you send a generic email, it sends the signal that you really don’t care. However, if you use their name and recall details about your conversation, it shows that your follow-up is meant just for them.
  6. Don’t forget the kids! Kids LOVE getting stuff in the mail; it’s so special to them! Consider writing cards to welcome new families and ask volunteers to write cards to the new kids in their classroom. Refer to number 5 to make it extra special!

FOMO is real, so don’t take chances.

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