7 Ways to Use Group Texting to Capitalize on Easter Church Attendance

March 22, 2016 12:00 am by GroupTexting

Easter has a church attendance that rivals Christmas. Many people who do not take the time to attend services during the year make an extra effort to make an appearance on this important Christian holiday. Easter is more than just one day; There are also Holy Week services leading up to the big day. With so many opportunities to interact with visitors, parishioners, and twice-a-year members, Easter makes the perfect time to incorporate new ways to stay in touch with your congregation, such as group texting. If you are unsure how to implement texting to help you capitalize on your increased attendance during Easter, consider one or more of the following.

Promote Services

Add texting to the promotion of your services during Easter and year-round.

To reach people outside of your regular community, you have to market your church and its services. Use group texting to help promote your Easter and year-round events. To do so, simply add texting as a call to action in your other marketing collateral, including flyers, print ads, church bulletins and more. Include a keyword and short or long code for interested parties to text for more information about your church and services.

Ask Visitors to Sign Up

Get your visitors’ contact information before they leave so that you can interact with them in the future. You probably already have some program in place for capturing visitors’ information. You can add a place on the visitors’ log for their mobile phone. Group texting is a permission-based medium, so you need to get them to agree to it when they sign up for communication from you. Because texting is a popular form of communication (81 percent of Americans send or receive texts), many of your visitors who are interested in potentially joining your congregation will want to sign up for your texting program.

Remind Parishioners of the Service Times

Send a text to remind parishioners and guests the time of Easter services.

Group texting provides an excellent resource for reminding people about events and services. Once you have the contact information and permission from visitors to contact them through text, send them occasional reminders about what is going on in your parish. This is not just for your service times. You can also send them information about Bible studies, group meetings, volunteer opportunities, and more.

Easter Egg Hunt

The children are not the only ones who can enjoy an Easter Egg Hunt; you can turn your texting list into a digital hunt for the adults in your parish. You can place special keywords in places around town and ask people to find them and text your short code. In the places where you have keywords, include information about the event to garner the attention of other people who may be interested. Offer some reward to the winner, which could be a gift card to a local business or some other prize.

Donations

Texting has become a popular way for churches and non-profits to ask for donations. During your Easter service, you can tell your parishioners and visitors about your text donation program. Some of your visitors may not have thought to bring cash or a check for your collection plate. However, they may be willing to text a keyword to either donate or to receive a link to donate online. This can help you to raise more funds to do the work your church needs to do.

Follow Up

To turn visitors into members, it is important to follow up with them. Send a friendly text thanking your visitors for attending Easter service. Include information about how to learn more about your church and all the activities and groups available. Visitors appreciate feeling welcome. A simple text can go a long way in facilitating it.

Survey

Send a survey to your visitors to help your church learn and grow.

Another way to use a group texting service to capitalize on your Easter visitors is to send out a survey link via text. This survey can be simple. You can find out how your visitors felt, learn what you can do to create a more welcoming environment, and help to increase the chances of turning visitors into members.

There are many other ways you could use a group texting service to convert visitors to members and to communicate with your entire parish throughout the year. By concentrating on one or more of these programs, you can create a way to communicate with visitors and help to bring them into your community.

Try GroupTexting for free to communicate with your visitors and parishioners.