Your Contact List is the Key to Multiplying Your Engagement.
Picture this: someone visits your church for the first time and fills out a connect card. You reach out to them within 48 hours to thank them for coming and inviting them to connect with you. They’re encouraged to come back, and they do. Eventually, they become a regular attendee, showing up to your services, listening to your sermons, and then continuing with their week. They’re present but not connected; in the room, but still unknown.
This is the story of many church-goers, as well as many churches. When those contact cards are compiled, they become a massive list of contacts for you to communicate with. The problem: churches typically only do so en masse. This is low effort and typically yields low engagement on its own. Unfortunately, this is exactly what makes your guest feel like a number instead of like a person.
The fix is simple: just treat every contact like a person. Of course, simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy. Luckily, there’s a model we can learn from: the agency model. Not because people are leads to be converted, but because intentional follow-up matters. Agencies understand something churches can use in their discipleship process: each contact represents real people with their own stories, needs, and next steps they can take to get involved. Here are 3 practices your team can begin using to get more people involved:
Track Their Progress using Custom Tags/Fields
Agencies classify each contact (or lead) using tags and notes to identify them. They complete their profile with as much data as possible. They use this to keep track of fresh leads, ones that are on the fence, and those who have done business with them in the past…all with the hope that the contact will engage with them again.
By tagging and completing each contact profile, you can specifically target people who need care, guidance, or a clear next step. This data helps you notice people before they disappear. It also allows you to maintain your relationships with individuals and ensure they’re getting the care and support they need.
Create a Rhythm of Personal Check-Ins
Once all contacts are tagged, agencies keep their leads warm by constantly nurturing their contact list. They reach out for birthdays, special holidays, and even recognize milestones. A good agency will use any excuse to celebrate the contact and be there when they need a helping hand. They also make sure to give before they ask.
In the midst of all the mass messaging, you and your team should create a weekly rhythm of 1:1 outreach to your contact list. It doesn’t have to be a long, extravagant message or phone call. It just needs to give the person you’re reaching out to the feeling of being known and heard (without being asked for something in return).
Considering the scale of it all, this shouldn’t just fall on the pastor. You can optimize your outreach by training your small group leaders and ministry heads to do this regularly with their groups and teams, while a select group of volunteers or staff handles everyone outside those groups.
Clarify The Next Step in Their Guest Journey
In the agency world, every stage of the journey is intentional. They know what each stage of the process looks like, and they know exactly what they want their potential clients to do next. With all this in mind, agencies are very intentional about creating messaging that makes every step clear for their target audience. This is because confusion kills engagement.
What’s the first step you’d like someone to take after they’ve shared their contact with you? How about the next step? And the step after that? How do you even begin to encourage them towards each step? Don’t let your engagement grow cold because you haven’t clarified the action you want each person to take. Each person is looking for an opportunity to undergo a positive transformation, and your church should already be doing work that transforms lives by the power of the Gospel. All you need to do is point them in the right direction.
Putting these all into practice takes real work and intentionality. The benefit of doing so comes from doing so with the purpose of discipling and caring for others. If you do all of this work with the sole purpose of organizational growth, your efforts will come across as predatory, transactional, and self-serving. However, if you genuinely care for each contact and teach your team to do the same, you’ll develop a culture of trust and security that encourages others to carry the mission with you. The goal isn’t to move people through a pipeline; it’s to shepherd with intention.
Want to turn your contact list into a real engagement system using Planning Center? We can help! Hit the Let’s Talk button!