BETA19: Effective Easter Follow Up with Jeanette Yates

All right. Hey, we got the beta show episode. It's episode 20 here with the church digital podcast powered by Stadia Church Planning. Jeff here. It's been a minute since we've been here on the beta show broadcasting through the wonderful StreamYard platform. We've been hanging out in Clubhouse maybe a little too much and having a lot of fun over in Clubhouse. We're there. Thursdays at five o'clock, you can check out thechurch.digital slash Clubhouse to find some of those conversations that are coming up. We're doing a deep dive on how has physical changed? How has physical church services changed as a result of COVID? If the answer you come up with is, yeah, our people wear masks and we're socially distant, that's just scratching the surface of what our physical really should be and how we're keeping up with that culture.

Phenomenal conversation next Thursday. But now with the beta show, hey, remember we are answering your online ministry questions, digital discipleship, digital, physical, all the fun complications that come up with 2021 mid post COVID. We want to answer those questions. Text us 484-324-8724. And of course, given a shout out, hey, we are doing digital learning communities through Stadia. This has been a phenomenal experience. We've taken over 200 churches through this framework, through this process of helping them learn to thrive, grow, and multiply. Digital is the combination. I like making up words. Deal with it. It's the combination of physical and digital, getting the physical and the digital work together.

Hint, hint, it's really good. Digital is at disciple making, which is kind of weak in the physical space. And so if you want to learn practical steps on how to make this happen and learn from other churches that are doing it, swing over to stadiachurchplanning.org slash digital. And let's start talking there and let's you get connected in one of these digital learning communities. So hey, here with episode 20, we are going to do a beta show episode 20. We're going to do a deep dive here talking specifically about Easter follow-up. Easter is a thing, right? And so we've got this major event. Maybe it's physical, maybe it's digital, maybe it's both, but Easter is oftentimes a great opportunity to on-ramp into more ministry, more follow-up, able to get people connected in.

And so I wanted to have a conversation about that because there's plenty of things that we can do better with follow-up in physical and in digital space. And so we're bringing in a co-host here with the Church Digital Podcast, Ray DeArmas. Ray, broadcasting from Miami with myself as well. Ray, you want to say anything to the audience? Happy Easter, everybody. It's that time of the year again. Every year we come up to Easter season, and this year is no different. We seem surprised. And Jeff, this year brings more surprises than many because many of our churches are already reopened. We're reopening. You already talked about bringing figural to Easter and what we need to do moving forward. And so I can't wait to talk to today's guests because we've got so much in store for what's going to come this Easter season and a lot of different ideas for churches.

Awesome. Yeah, this is going to be a great conversation. And we're bringing in Text in Churches. Let me click the mouse again. Text in Churches, Jeanette Yates. Now, Jeanette is a great follow on social media. Incredible Twitter engagement. She's in this pocket of people. Jeanette, I think we met once. Maybe it was pre-COVID before the world came to an end in Orlando something. Yeah, exponential. And so this is a Florida beta episode here. Jeanette's in Jacksonville or Pensacola? Jacksonville. Okay. Somewhere north of us. Yes. Awesome. And so listen, if you're talking about follow-up in some of the things, I've loved seeing some of the stuff that Jeanette's been talking about in follow-up in general, but specifically coming out of Easter, of course, this is a huge opportunity that we, the church, we want to capitalize to reach out and connect with some of the holiday-only attenders.

I don't know how to say this graciously without... There are people that only come to your service, your church services, two to three times a year maybe. Or maybe even there's attenders that used to attend in physical space, but aren't, but may come back maybe for a holiday. And so there's an opportunity for us to re-engage, reconnect with. And this is really what I wanted to throw the softball to Jeanette and say, hey, which is what I'm literally going to do right now. Hey, Jeanette, what can we learn? How can we be effective in reaching out and connecting here? Can you give us some tips? Well, I think, like you said, Jeff, one of the things to consider this year, as opposed to any other Easter year, is that in addition to having our typical, yay, this is going to be a big Sunday, everybody shows up, families come into town, it's a big deal.

We're also in this circumstance of having people just haven't been connecting in the same way with their churches, people that normally would. So even, you know, regular attendees, you know, and we've talked, I'm sure y'all talked about this before too, that like when we say regular attendees now, it means like once a month you're attending, you know, it's not even really that much. But, and then, and then of course, with all of the stuff that's been going on, that's, you know, they're maybe only attending once a month and it's only online and they're not connecting in other ways. And so this year, as places begin to open up, or as people are rethinking, you know, their hybrid or fidgetal worship, or if they're still online, there is an extreme and important opportunity to grab, grab these people and, you know, love them and connect with them and, and, and build relationship with them.

So I think that's one thing that has to be said. You know, at text and church, we really focus a lot on guest follow up for every Sunday. But especially when we are talking about Easter Sunday, we really want to make sure that, you know, because these people, you're, you're reaching out to them and changing a habit. It's not just like, oh, they've shown up to church. Now you can get them, you know, they're going to come back the next Sunday, the next Sunday, the next Sunday. That's not necessarily the case. And it's not really practical for everybody because their habit isn't to come to church every Sunday. They're making a special thing. They got the Easter outfit. They're going to do pictures.

That's why they're, that is part of the tradition, but they may not have necessarily planned on the next Sunday or the next Sunday. So when we talk about following up with our Easter guests specifically, we want to think about what, what is going to be relevant to them for getting them back for another time, even if it's not the very next Sunday. So I think that's something to think about. That's really good, Jeanette. And so what do you think for some churches would be that first hook to bring them back to start making this hopefully a bit of a routine? So some, uh, some people say, you know, and this is my church has done this before where we started a new series on Easter Sunday. And then that was fairly practical in nature.

Um, it was around, you know, relationships with your family or something that, you know, everybody can relate to. And then, um, you know, the next week that was, you know, come back for week two. So you can do that, come back for the very next week thing. Another time we did something where we just had an open house the next week where we just, and of course I know things are different. I'm just giving you the ideas that we've had in the past. And then I'll talk about now, but, um, you know, we had where we just had a brunch in the garden. Um, so we had an outdoor space. We, you know, we live in Florida, so it's the weather's fine. And we did that. So it wasn't even like come back to, you know, sign up, you know, to be baptized.

It was like, come back and just get to know who we are. Um, some people, um, some churches focus on mother's day, um, which is a little bit down the road, but all things considered, we're talking about April 4th is Easter. You know, mother's day is going to be basically the middle of the beginning of, is it terrible? I don't know exactly what mother's day is. Um, but I know it wasn't the first. It's a second Sunday in May. So really, if we're talking about regular attendees showing up once a month, that's not really that much different, you know, and you then have that four weeks to follow up with them, which I guess is my second point is follow-up doesn't happen with one email with one text, with one letter from the pastor.

Like that's not, that's a start, but that's not the end of it. And so we're changing, you know, we're, we're trying to change a habit or start a new good habit in these people. We want that to, um, we want to provide them with reasons and, and information about what to expect. Cause a lot of people don't want to come because they don't know what's happening. So by having an extended follow-up for what weeks, we recommend six weeks of follow-up. But if you're talking about that mother's day, you're, you know, a little bit over four weeks, you're, you have the time to message them and give them information that's useful for them. Um, connect with them in other ways with phone calls or sending a handwritten note.

Like I said, it's not bad to send a note, but that's not the only thing you can do. So I think that's another reason to give yourself a little bit of time to do the follow-up, you know? Let me, I want to ask a question because that actually surprised me six weeks. Um, I've, I've, I've never really thought of it that long. So why, why six weeks? What are, what are you? And I'm humbly here, like I'm not a communications guy, so don't, don't, no judgment allowed in this zone, but why, why six weeks? What, what are we trying to achieve at like week five or six that you couldn't get to in, in week two? Kind of help me understand that. Well, with the understanding that everyone's an individual and there are some people that come to your church for the first time any Sunday and they're like the next week they're singing in a praise band, right?

Like we've had the, that happens. But when we're talking about people who don't have a habit of coming to church and trying to then come to church, and this is relevant for Easter, but anytime, again, we're talking about changing a habit. Well, what we all know the habit studies, how long does it take to change a habit? Longer than two weeks, right? So, um, now the reason our, uh, workflows that, that walk through this follow-up process are six weeks is because we've, we've used and tested this with thousands of churches and six weeks seems to be about right. Now, some people do some people, we have some people that do eight to 12 weeks because of the nature, you know, they live in an area where people are, um, in and out back and forth, maybe military, things like that.

And so they have to reach out longer. They have to follow up longer. But the idea being that for six weeks, you're sending a text and, or an email, um, so not a ton, you're not messaging them every single day, one text, one email that tells them something different, um, or engages them in conversation, ask them a question so they can respond to you. It's building that relationship. And then our follow up also includes not only our automated, automatic messages that are going to go out when you set up our workflow. Um, but also they're going to send reminders to you, uh, to you as your staff, your, or your volunteers. Hey, we've already started. It'll say, it's really cool. It'll be like, Hey, we Ray visited on Easter Sunday and we've already sent him, uh, uh, uh, an email and a text, but we would love it if you Jeff would give him a phone call or write him a handwritten note.

And here's the information you need to do that. And here's the script about what to say. You know, if you're nervous, if you don't know what to say. So our workflow process, not only kind of, instead of you having to think what, Oh, I got to send an email to the guests this week. Oh, I've got to send a text to the guest. What is it going to be? You, we line that out for you, um, in a workflow, and then you customize the messages accordingly. And then we also have those reminder steps that are still going to have you engage in real time, in real life, not an automated message, um, with your guests. And so, you know, what that looks like for each church is different, but that's, that tends to be why we spread it over six weeks.

We have a variety of communication because we want it to be sufficient. So we, we need more than two weeks, six weeks seems to be what are, uh, as we've worked with, you know, thousands of churches over the past six years, that's what tends to work the best. So sufficient, uh, relevant, we're sending multiple types of, you know, so we're phone calls, we're texting, we're sending email, we're doing a handwritten note, maybe we're dropping off a gift, you know, all these different kinds of things. And then we're making sure that it's relevant in the sense that I'm not going to send, I'm not going to tell somebody information about the children's ministry unless I know they need it. Hmm. Right. Or so like that.

So, so you're tailoring the data to the person or you're tailoring, tailoring the follow-up to the person, which I think is great. Um, and I think that's needed. Obviously we don't want to push certain services that we have to offer if they're not relevant to it. That's, that's wonderful. But they also bring up an interesting question for me, Jeanette, is there such a thing as too much? Yeah. So, so there is something to be said. And when I, um, you know, I coach, uh, churches every week, we do live, um, live coaching calls with our members every week. And we talk about this a lot, especially people that are brand new. They're like six weeks. Cause it does sound like a lot at first. And so we talk a little bit about, you know, changing the habit and all that kind of stuff, but then ultimately you have to know your demographic and know, you know, if most of the people that are coming to your church, really, they do get involved fairly quickly, or, you know, you know, it seems like maybe four weeks is better.

Our workflows that we use are customizable. So you can just get rid of the steps you don't need, you know, maybe you don't use every single one, maybe it's still six weeks, but you skip a week, you know, and kind of, you know, make it different or do something like that. You can, you can tailor it. Now, one thing I also say is you can also take someone out of the workflow. So let's say, you know, we've said maybe one, one or two weeks, isn't going to cut it, but let's say after week four, they've signed up for a small group or they've expressed interest in going to your next steps class and you're able to put them in, you know, another group or, or have another way to have a connection with them.

Then you just go into the workflow and pull them out of that and maybe put them in a group where you're communicating about your next steps class. Does that make sense? And so they don't have to stay in there if it's not relevant to them anymore. And typically what I tell people is, listen, they're either going to be in there by the end of the six weeks, still, you know, engaging. They're going to tell you to unsubscribe them. You know, they're going to get out of there or you're going to move them out because they've, they've engaged, you know? And so typically it's one of those three things that happens. They're like, seriously, we were just there. We're from out of town. We, you know, like we're not coming back anytime soon.

Or, you know, you do have a way to engage with them differently. Or if you've got that, that out of town or, Hey, instead of being the physical drip campaign, maybe create an online drip campaign, get, keep your digital pastor busy and give them an opportunity to kind of take lead in that, which would, would, would take me to, is, is it wise to have like a, in this post COVID world, right? You know, is it wise to have a physical and a digital? Is it wise to have like a, cause you were even talking about like having the campaign smart enough to know whether you have kids or not? Like how much are you shaping this? Well, I did want to clarify. Cause when he said that, I was like, well, not kind of.

So what our workflow does organically, you know, like the way it is set up, it is not going to extract every bit of information from someone on a connection card. Cause I don't know if you guys know, but when I grew up, when I was growing up, going to my church, that connection card that I filled out on paper, it asked all the information in the world, right? Like we knew everything. It was double-sided, right? You know, how many kids, you know, how old are you, all your whole entire family, all the things. What we want to do is gather enough information to get the conversation started. So our digital connection card will ask for name, cell phone, email. And then if you add the extended, it'll ask for mailing address.

If you need it, you're going to do that handwritten note, but then where we find out whether or not we need to get them information about children. Can y'all hear me? Uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Good. Where we find out if we need information about children or youth or, you know, whatever is when we make those phone calls. Right. And then maybe they go into another, maybe we put them in the children's follow-up, you know, where the, or we just let the children's director know, Hey, I just spoke to this new, this visitor. They have kids. I told them you'd give them a call. That's how the relationship starts building. And that's ultimately the goal. Um, is it, the goal is not to have the computer do it for you.

The goal is to move all of that technical stuff out of the way so that you can do your ministry. Yeah. And so, um, now in reference to your physical versus, um, online worship, we do recommend two different workflows because this, the language is different. Uh, you know, somebody that's at your physical service is going to be sitting there on sun Easter Sunday, watching it, but you know, on, you know, if it's online, maybe they're watching it Sunday night, maybe they're watching it Monday morning. So you don't want that first message to go out. If they decide to connect, you don't want it to say, thanks for, thanks for watching today. Or thanks for participating online with us today. Um, when it's really, you know, it was tonight or the day after.

So, you know, it kind of, we changed the language a little bit. It's a little bit different, but it's still a long, you know, a longer follow-up. Um, but again, you know, you can tailor that as well. So we do recommend the two different for the two different services. That's awesome. We get, we got to keep guys like Ray busy as digital pastors, getting them reaching out into the inner spheres and connecting and meeting people. 2020 was a real slack year for us. So we need, oh yeah, you guys are bored. You don't have anything else to do. Like you got to, got to get going. Um, Hey, uh, confession hour. I hate the connection card. Uh, like I just, I'm, I've not, I've seen Easter 2020, a church told me, Jeff, I had half a million viewers.

Um, and we only had, we only collected 11 connection cards. So like the percentage of people, maybe what, what are some ideas? What are some things that are different? Um, you know, I've seen a lot of, and I'm sure text in church, you guys offer this, the, the short code text in the words, blah, blah, blah, and get, you know, that get this resource or this thing. Um, you know, is that effective? What are some other ways that maybe we could start to meet and, and connect with, with people, uh, to, for follow-up. So, well, first of all, one of the things that text in church does is the text, a keyword and receive a digital connection card feature. So one thing is it's not such a, you know, like a form that again is just as long as the paper form was, you know, I don't want to tell you my kid's birthdays in a web form.

It's none of your business. Right. Exactly. Slow your role. So, so there's, there is that, there is this idea of like, just, you know, we just want to, and, but to your point, people still aren't going to text whether they're sitting in person or online, if they don't trust you or know what you're going to do with their information. So it's really important to make sure that you're clear about why you want them, you know, or why it's not even, you want them, why they should want to give you that information. Like what, you know, what's in it for them. Um, and, uh, I think if it's, if you're clear with, you know, like when we were talking about, like, what do you, what's that thing that you're going to be, you know, what's their call to action?

What are you going to be asking them to do? If you're saying, Hey, we've got something really awesome planned for mother's day. And if you're new and want to get connected to make sure that you know about that, you know, that's the kind of thing that you want to be clear with what you're going to be, um, giving them, you know, what's in it for them? How will it benefit them? Um, and then I also, another thing that churches do in this again is in person online and especially on Easter Sunday, when your jam, your service, your order of service is like, like jammed packed in there. One of the things that you really need to do is give yourself time to give multiple invitations for people to text the keyword, to fill out the digital connection card.

And of course, if you're doing it online, you can have that like lower third, that's got the information kind of just scroll on there anytime. But, um, you know, you want to do it at the beginning, but also in the middle and maybe even one more time at the end. Um, and I know, I know we're running low on time, but I did want to tell you like one of the things that my church did it. I think, I don't know if we're doing it this year because we don't know what our vacation Bible school is going to look like. We know we're going to do something, but we don't know yet what it is, but our vacation Bible school is like the thing in our area. And so we usually launch registration the week after Easter.

So if you want to get the link to register your children for the coolest VBS and down, then, you know, we'll follow up with it, you know, and said like that kind of thing. Now, my, the demographic for my church, most of the people have children. So it made sense for us to do that other churches. That's not going to make any sense because they don't even have any kids and you know, they never do VBS or whatever. So you have to decide like, what's the thing, what makes sense for your demographic and, and do that accordingly. Right. Love it. Go ahead, Ray. Jeanette, the first time guest gift, is it still relevant in a mid post COVID era? Is that still a thing that we can and should do? Well, a lot of churches still do a guest gift.

A lot of churches do it. There's different ways. Like if you show up and you text, you know, like some people are like, text the keyword, then I'm going to get a notification as a greeter. You're what your name is because, you know, the system can notify me. And then you can say, just go, go check, you know, stop by and pick up your gift. I can write that name on a, one of our gifts, stick it on there. And then I have a personalized gift. So again, how that works now, not, you know, it depends. Everything depends. But that's one way other people just do the drop something off. Other people are doing local gift cards to the local coffee shop or the local bakery to kind of, you know, help their local business people.

So there's still ways to do it. I think you have to shift it. And I, you definitely don't want to do like, here's all of the stuff that's branded with our church name. Cause nobody wants to walk around with your tote bag, with your church name on it, if they don't even go to your church. But my church name is awesome. I don't understand. All that stuff should be given to your volunteers. That should be in their swag. That should be their swag. True story. And to our, I don't know if it's to our detriment or to our wind. I've walked into two Goodwills and seen some CF swag that I know that we gave away as first time guest stuff. And I was like, I guess the mug just, here it is. Well, at least they're giving it away instead of selling it for profit.

So, you know, at least there's some value there. Hey, let me segue wrap up. We had a question coming from the outside Facebook user nameless out there. Awesome. No worries. So back to separate digital and physical flows. Do you give different short code to online audience versus in-person folks? Or is there a different way to sort them into two different flows, you know, text and church? How would you handle something like that? So there's a couple of different ways that you can do that. So we use a keyword system. So you're going to be telling people to text a keyword. So if you're just broadcasting, like some people actually have two different services they're recording, in which case you could, you know.

Yeah, like a live versus a prerecorded. Right. In this situation, it sounds like they're probably right. It's one service. So you would tell, you know, you would say, you know, if you're here with us today on campus, and you'd like to, you know, whatever you say, like to get connected, I've got a whole welcome talk thing I could go into. We could do that later. But you know, you text the word welcome. And then at the same time, there's the lower third that's going to say, and if you're online, text this. So that's one thing you can do. You can also have your if you have a period of time where you can segue away from what the on campus pastor is saying, and the online pastor comes on during that welcome talk time and does his own welcome talk for online.

You could do it that way. And so that way, they're not even hearing the other keyword. They're just hearing the keyword hello for online. There's that and then the online your online moderators, your online hosts could post the link to the digital connection card, you can do that as well. In the comment and the first comment and pin it. There's a there's a few different options there. And then that gets them to the two different workflows to answer that person's question. And ultimately, it sounds like you've got some sort of a system that that's able to manage different phrases like with within one of the churches I work with here in Miami Christ Journey, where I've been attending lately, they I mean, they've got I don't know, five or six different like there's pray, there's give, there's connect, there's like, and all of them are different workflows.

And so for them, it's they just they just they beat in that that short code that text number, I can say it right now on the thing like it's just as is in brand and brained in my head. Yeah, so we also use so people will be texting the keyword into a local 10 digit number. So they would be texting a local number. That is that there's many reasons, again, a whole different episode. But the main reason is because 10 digit numbers are not seen as spammy. And, you know, salesy. And they also are better for conversation back and forth. Because another thing is somebody if you actually text somebody at the workflow, text somebody, how did you enjoy your visit, and somebody replies back, you can as a as a staff member, go in there on your app on your phone, and text them back and engage in conversation.

And so we really like having that 10 digit number that provides more of that two way conversation ability. Love it. Hey, if somebody's got more questions on text in church, or wants to continue this this conversation with you, Jeanette, how are they doing that? What's a good next step? Oh, my goodness, I have so many ways. But I do want to share with you guys, I do have a couple things that I was going to share with you guys. One of the things that you know, one of the things that we're talking about today is, you know, following up for Easter. So I have a link, I'm going to actually paste it, I guess, in the comments. I'm here. Do you want me to do that? Yeah, click on the comments tab. And so you can do that.

Or if you want to tell me, I'll type it. I'll type it in. And now I can't see where to paste my stuff. Okay, it's not all the way down at the bottom. It's not down there. Tell it to me. I'll type it in. What's the link? I'm just going to put it in the private chat. And you can copy it. Sounds good. Okay, so I'm actually giving you a copy of our ultimate Easter follow up plan. So you can you can do that. And then I also my boss, let me have this link to where we have a link for you to use if you want to try out Texan Church for 60 days for free, you can do that. And 60 days, get your way past Easter people maybe even does it get you all the way to Mother's Day? I'd have to do that. It does. It gets you all the way through Mother's Day, which is a big deal.

I mean, that's a worthwhile thing. Anyway, feel free to hop on any of those. Of course, you can find us everywhere on the Twitter, on the Facebook, on the Instagram at Texan Church. We'd love to see you there. Come say hi. I can. The beta show, the church digital just gave you 60 days free of Texan Church. Write that down. Remember that. Thank you, Texan Church for that. Thank you, Stadia Church Planting for that as well. This is awesome. You literally get software for 60 days. This is great. Jeanette, thank your boss. What's your boss's name? We need to give the boss credit right here on the air. Well, Tyler Smith is the co-founder of Texan Church and he is awesome. Yeah. Another great follow on the social interweb.

So you can Google that and try to figure out which of the Tyler Smiths we're talking about. There are multiple out there. Just call it Texan Church. It's the place to be. Awesome. Hey, as we're landing the plane, Ray, any closing thoughts? Yes. If you are thinking through Easter and you're not thinking through follow-up, you're missing out on what could be a huge percentage of what we're trying to do. Folks are going to show up. Guests are going to show up. But what are we going to do with them afterwards? Jeanette, you gave us a pretty clear road map. Thank you so much for helping answering these questions. And then you gave us a way to enact this by giving us 60 free days in Texan Church. So any church that's out there, if you don't have a digital strategy for taking up some of this information, especially in an era where more people probably aren't going to feel as comfortable with picking up that pen and writing things down because they don't want to trade germs, this is a pretty good way to start.

So thank you. You're welcome. Love it. It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me. This was so fun, you guys. Yeah. It was for us too. You got it. You're one of the fun people. Like you bring some people on and they're just, honestly, they're not fun. They think they're fun, but they're really not. You, you're fun. So Jeanette, as we're landing the plane and anything on your side? Well, of course, in addition to following Texan Church everywhere, I would love for people to find me on Twitter at Jeanette Yates. Long story about why I abbreviate my name, but anyway, I'm always on Twitter hanging out. I'm always on Instagram hanging out and I love chatting with people and I love helping people out.

You know, I'm the unofficial cheerleader for church communications, for Texan Church, for, for digital church, all the things. Um, and so if you need some hype, I got it for you. She is the perennial hype lady. So we'll, we'll, we'll give her that. Hey, Jeanette, thanks for, thanks for jumping on here. Thanks for the 60 days. Thanks for some of the advice. Hey guys, let's make this Easter awesome. As, as we build into what's ahead for Jeanette, for Ray, this is Jeff at the church, digital stadium church planting, uh, get back to work. See y'all later.