6 Steps to a Successful Follow-up Strategy in Your Church

Have you ever visited a church and received a welcome pack, an applause, and an invite to join them and then never heard from them again?

Or maybe you led someone to the Lord in a church service and in the excitement forgot to get their contact details?

Or you are a church leader frustrated by the lack of information on where all the visitors and new salvations went. You handed out over 150 Visitor Welcome packs in your service, but your church attendance doesn’t show where they went after that first visit.

You might even be a church administrator who needs to communicate with visitors, but you use outdated and slumberous ways of capturing their information.

An intentional follow-up strategy lessens the frustration of not knowing and helps steward the people God adds to your church.

What if you could capture a visitor’s info right there where you met them? What if you could immediately assign it to one of your trusted leaders for follow-up and then by Wednesday pull a report on how many visitors you had, and how the follow up conversation went with each of them?

What if you had an effective follow-up strategy? What difference would it make in your church?

An effective follow-up strategy consists of 6 aspects:

1. Capture Visitor Details Easily: Make it simple for newcomers to share their contact information. Offer clear connection cards during services, or have a signup form on your website and social media.

2. Connect with a Welcoming Member: Pair new visitors with someone who shares similar interests, creating a sense of connection. Train your welcoming team, or your whole congregation, to be friendly and approachable.

3. Gather Feedback and Personalise: Use feedback from connection cards or follow-up conversations to personalise your outreach. Mention something they enjoyed about the church or ask a question they had.

4. Communicate and Stay Connected: Reach out to new visitors within a day or two of their visit. Send a warm email or text, then follow up with a call to answer questions. Maintain regular communication with newsletters and event invitations, if they opted-in to receive those.

5. Track Your Outreach: Use a church management system or spreadsheet to track visitor interactions and follow-up efforts. This helps you see what methods resonate most and identify areas for improvement.

6. Monitor Trends and Adapt: Analyse the data you collect to see what’s working and what’s not. This allows you to refine your follow-up strategy and continuously improve your church’s welcoming approach.

When you set up this process, think of your church context and culture to determine what your process should look like.

It also helps to document the process in a working document, making it easier to share with your team.

If you want help with the process, or the tools, have a look at www.sachurchhub.com. We offer tools and free resources for church operations.