5 Email Tips for Visitor Follow Up After Easter

It’s the Monday after Easter and as busy as the week leading up to Easter was; the following week is bound to be one of the most important weeks. It’s visitor follow up week. I read an interesting statistic from Barna, it claims that 82% of millennials visiting a church are only comfortable with giving a first name when it comes to a connect card. Half are willing to give a last name and just 33% are comfortable sharing their email address. Based on that information your best chance of connecting with visitors is going to be email….and the bonus…. it can be automated.

Tip #1: Follow Up Within 24 to 48 Hours

This can be a very easy task if you use a digital connection card, if you use a printed connection card make sure you have staff ready to input email address into your email system. So why send within 1 or 2 days? The quicker the follow-up the more meaningful connection. The message will still be fresh in their mind and chances are their experience was a positive one and they will be open to an email from your church. The goal of this email? A simple “Thank You for worshiping with us.” In addition, I would also suggest a devotion. It would speak volumes to a visitor.

Tip #2: Send more than one email

I am pretty sure you know this but I just want to reiterate that to do visitor follow up well it is best to send more than one email. Considering the first email is a “thank you” for coming, the follow up email could be a great video about your church. Or even better and more meaningful would be a note from the pastor.

Tip #3: Engage and Nurture

Since the beginning of creation, God created humans with needs (outside of food and water). Two of those human needs is the need to have significance and a sense of belonging. Churches can help fill that need but how to communicate that in our visitor follow-up. In one of your emails consider showing some of the community outreach your church is involved with. Show pictures of the different life groups and the camaraderie. These videos and pictures if done right can engage an emotion that can speak to those human needs of significance and belonging.

Tip #4: Make sure to invite them back

This may seem like the most obvious tip but sometimes we get caught up in the process and forget about the objective. We want them to come back, so we need to make sure we ask them to come back. Make sure they have the correct service times, they know what is available for their small children. If you have a cafe or coffee stations make sure they know about that. You can even go as far as inviting them to a small group but chances are they won’t be ready for life groups just yet.

Tip #5: Optimize their Email Experience

I don’t know about you but I hate emails that have 80 links and are so busy my brain shuts down. It is overwhelming and honestly can create a chaotic experience. So my tip for visitor follow up would be to create a landing page just for visitors. There is one link and it has all of the information they may need. This link should be included on every email you send, it will create synergy across all of your communication.

To conclude, these are just tips and aren’t meant to be the status quo. Your church may have a great visitor follow up plan and a system that works really well. If you don’t have a solid plan then I hope some of these tips will help you create your own visitor follow up plan. At the end of the day, the goal is to share the message of Christ with the masses and the best way to get the masses to our churches is to engage them.