Have You Looked at Your Visitor
Cards Lately?
by Joe Cala

Joe Cala is the Founder & CEO of ChurchSync and Joe Cala Ministries. He has authored, “Living Your Life Today The Full Proof Way!” “The Proven Formula of Success!” and Has created “The Next Step Visitor Follow Up System!” He is a seminar leader, traveling minister, contributor to Personal Excellence Magazine and editor of automotiveinternetsales.com. Visit www.churchsync.com for tons of Visitor Retention Strategies. Contact Joe at 848-248-0730 or by email at joe@churchsync.com to just say hi, schedule a seminar, on-site training, leadership training, and guest services training.

As I made a post on Facebook in February with a link to, “5 Reasons I Won’t Go To Your Church” an un-churched friend of mine asked a question that made me think about why ChurchSync does what we do. The question was simply this, “Why do you need a recruitment strategy?” Not that I was or that I am focusing on a RECRUITMENT strategy, but I understood what he was asking. To which I answered, “That’s a great question. People are going to do whatever they want to. When they visit a church for the first time they can only see so much in one visit. The strategy is to make sure that the church they visit is doing everything possible to get into their hands what it offers to them and their families as a church and how the church can add value to their lives if they choose to continue to come there. So it’s not that we’re recruiting because the people already came. The church is only providing the full picture through following up with their initial visit. There’s also the human factor to consider in this too. The church is made up of people just like you and me so there is always going to be some things we do right and some that are done wrong. So if we are not serving the people in a good manner, feedback will always help us see how to better serve them.”

With all of this in mind I want to talk about some things that may not be very spiritual or even may not seem very important to some but is vital to the health and growth of the church as a whole.

In many churches, visitors will attend church for the first time this week having the opportunity to make a decision on a number of things. Although they will not ask these questions, these questions will be the basis of their reason for visiting the church.

1. Do I want to allow God to have access to me through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?
2. Do I want to become a part of this church I’m visiting?
3. Does this church have something for me to relate with regarding the social fabric of my life?
4. Are the people of this place people I want to be associated with?
5. Do I really want to come back here again after what I just EXPERIENCED here today?

From this point I am going to have the visitor be referred to as a guest. So as you see the word guest we are talking about the first time visitor.

As our guests sit in the service for the first time we have an opportunity to find out how to reach them the way they want to be reached. We can find out what’s important to our guests, what areas we need improvement in and how effective we are in reaching target groups in our church.

Below is an example of a guest information card, a connect card or whatever else you want to call it. Look it over first and then I will explain.

(The Blue Areas Are The Information About The Guest)
New Guest Information Card

First Name _____Joe_____ Middle Initial ___A___ Last Name _____Cala___

Address_1234 Church Rd._____ State _NJ_ Zip __08753____

Email Address ___joe@churchsync.com____ Phone Number__848-248-0730_

Married Single Widow Divorced Male or Female

Please Circle Your Age Group: 17-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 66-75 76+

Please Circle Number of Children You Have: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8+
Would You Like To Receive Text Messages From Us: Yes No

Cell Phone Number To Receive Text Messages: ___848-248-0730___
Do You Have A Facebook Page? Yes No Facebook Name: ___Joe Cala__

Do You Have A Twitter Account? Yes No Twitter Name: ___Joe Cala Ministries__

Do You Have A Google + Account? Yes No Google + Name: ___Joe Cala__

How Did You Hear About Us? Driving By Web Search Friend or Relative Other

If Other Please Tell Us What Other Source: ___N/A__

What is the Most Important Thing You Look for in a Church? ____acceptance and if we’ll be allowed to be included into the church family___

What is Your First Impression of Our Church? __ good. I liked the message and the music____

What did you NOT like about the church/service you attended today? __it went too long, the parking lot was confusing__

(Guest Card Provided By ChurchSync’s “Next Step Visitor Follow Up System”)

This guest card provides me with tons of valuable information that I will want to know as a Pastor and leader of this church.

Inspect What You Expect

As a leader you may have discovered that not everyone does what you were expecting them to do. The first time guest has the information card in their possession, you welcome them from the podium, explain to them to take the guest card, fill it out completely and to then put it into the offering bucket as it goes by them. Simple enough right? Wrong! You had 5 new visitors and only received 1 card. Not only that, but the card had the first and last name, but no email address, no phone number and you can’t understand how to spell the last name because the handwriting looks like it was written in tongues.

So what can you do to improve the collection of the information cards? Don’t rely on them to do it right. Guide them more directly and with interaction of another individual and not just through your words from the podium. Provide to your guests a “Guest Services Center” for them to go to after service is over. In most retail stores today, if you need information or can’t find what you’re looking for, there is a “Guest Services Center” you can go to for you to receive the information and help you’re looking for. Why should church be any different? As you welcome them you can instruct them to fill out the card completely but HOLD ONTO IT until after service is ended. As service ends, Announce to the first time guests to please stop by the “Guest Services Center” to receive a complimentary gift in exchange for the information card they filled out. You may even want to dismiss them first before the rest of the congregation to give them a clear path to the center.

Once the guest gets to the center, the Guest Service Worker meets them, greets them and welcomes them to the church. They will then collect the card and review it in front of the guest. This is done because you are now INSPECTING what you were EXPECTING to be filled out properly, completely and legibly. As you go through the card you notice the email address is missing, so you ask nicely, “Mr. Guest do you have an email address?” If they say yes, you then ask nicely, “can I have your email address please?” If they ask why, you simply explain to them that it is so you can keep them updated with services, special service information, inspirational messages and further information about the church. Most people will give this, some won’t though, but that’s ok too. You will fill in the blanks and legibly write in your writing the information that looks to be sloppy. This is so important, because this is your only way to communicate with the guest after they leave. Everything they put on that card will now help you in reaching them and future guests that come to the church.

Let’s Review The Guest Information Card

This card has been set up to strategically help you as a church target, minister and reach your guests.

The basic information such as: Name, Address and Phone Number are a given. These are the basic touch points that churches stay in touch with their guests with. They send a letter to the address and call or leave a message on the phone number given. This was for many years the only way people were contacted, but in 2012 there are multitudes of ways we are connected to people in this world. We should be connecting with our guests the way they are connected to everyone and everything else in this world. Now we have: Email, Text Messaging, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Linked In and many other social media outlets that people are using to be reached and connected to. If we are not collecting or at least attempting to collect these touch points we will be missing opportunities to stay connected with the very people that sit in our congregations. If you have these areas filled in then create a process to execute an email, text and social media campaign to showcase the value of what your church and ministry can add to their families and their own lives.

Take Hold On The World Of Technology

According to Facebook statistics, there are more than 800 million active users on Facebook. Facebook has also been translated into over 70 different languages. Over 350 million active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices. From these stats we can see that this is where the people are. This provides an ENORMOUS audience. If you as a church are not on Facebook I have one question to ask you, “Why not?” With that much exposure and it costs you NO MONEY AT ALL, why wouldn’t you want to be able to reach out and stay connected with those who are in your church through this avenue? Twitter has over 100 million active users and Google +, the newest of them all, has over 62 million active users. The point is make it a focus to maximize your social connections with your congregation both personally, as the pastor, as one of the leaders and as a church.

Here’s something that most every church ISN’T DOING but you can do! On your visitor cards put in a section that asks if they are on one of these social media outlets:

Do You Have A Facebook Page? Yes No Facebook Name: __Joe Cala__

Do You Have A Twitter Account? Yes No Twitter Name: __Joe Cala Ministries_

Do You Have A Google + Account? Yes No Google + Name: __Joe Cala__

If the guest is on one or a multitude of these sites you suggest the church page and accounts to them. This will give you more proactive ways to reach and stay connected to the people who are coming to your church or who are considering coming back to your church for another visit. This is a great opportunity.

Who is God Sending?
Look at this part of the Guest Information Card:

Married Single Widow Divorced Male or Female

Please Circle Your Age Group: 17-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 66-75 76+

Please Circle Number of Children You Have: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8+

This section will show you a number of things. If you look through your visitor cards and notice that you have out of 100 visitors last year, 30 widows, 10 divorced individuals, 40 singles and 20 people who are married. What can you gather from these analytics? It looks like we can form a singles ministry and a ministry for the widows. Why? God is sending them in overwhelming degrees to the church, so if we don’t recognize what God is doing we could miss the opportunity to minister to those groups.

We can also see the impact we are making through the age groups we are having visit us. If the majority of visitors are between 36-45 years old but we are running an overwhelming number of 55-65+ members then we should prepare a place to minister to these 36-45 year old group the Lord is trying to send to us. There is a hole we are allowing to stay open that is allowing this age group to fall through and not stay. Address this area and work on closing that hole.

I trust you are beginning to see the value of, “The Guest Information Card!”

How Are People Hearing About Us?
How Did You Hear About Us?  Driving By     Web Search     Friend or Relative   Other

If Other Please Tell Us What Other Source: _________N/A_______

This section helps you maximize the areas of strength and strengthen the areas of weakness regarding how you are being seen and visible to the guest before they come to visit the church. If you are getting the majority of people visiting through driving by then focus on how you can maximize that area and make it the best it can be to bring more people in through that avenue. Maybe you can improve the landscaping or purchase a new digital sign to improve the impact of the drive by. If it’s the web, clean up the website and try and market your site to the max through Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing.

The Power of Questions
These questions are like your personal interview with the guest who sees things through a different set of eyes. These people have no emotional attachment coming in to this place and will give you the truth even if it’s negative. Most church members love their churches and only want to see the good so they purposely overlook the bad. This does nothing to improve the church and how it handles change when confronted with things, processes, ministries and people that are causing outsiders to not want to come back in.

What is the Most Important Thing You Look for in a Church? ____acceptance and if we’ll be allowed to be included into the church family___

What is Your First Impression of Our Church? __ good. I liked the message and the music__

What did you NOT like about the church/service you attended today? ___it went too long, the parking lot was confusing___

We are to hear what our guests are saying and make necessary adjustments if we want to grow and reach the people God is sending us. Take their words as building blocks and listen to what is said, make the adjustment and manage God’s number 1 value, (His people) to the best ability you can. God bless you as you serve the Lord and His people.