Tracking your visitors to help them become regular attenders.
While the process of gathering visitor information and using it in a meaningful way may seem daunting, our goal is to make it as breezy as possible!
With the use of key Breeze features, you can easily collect and use information to help ensure your visitors become regular attenders and that no one slips through the cracks.
Here's how this can be done with Breeze...
Gather Visitor Information
Gathering information is an important first step that allows you to begin creating a personal relationship with your visitors from the moment they walk in the door.
The key to helping them find their place and get more involved with your church, is to make sure you have a way to reach out to them after that initial visit.
We completely understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this process, and that every church will have their own unique sets of needs. We’re here to offer solutions and let you decide what works best for you and your church, regardless of whether or not Breeze is at the forefront.
The three main options we recommend churches use to gather visitor information are Check-In, Forms, and paper visitor cards.
a. Check In
The Check In section of Breeze can play a vital role in helping you to track visitors and gather pertinent information on the fly. In addition, using Check-In for your children’s ministry or main service allows you to track individual attendance and even set up alerts for when your regular attendees may be slipping through the cracks or need a little one-on-one attention.
Regardless of how you use check-in at your church, it is easy to add someone to the system on the go by clicking the (+) in the top right of the check-in screen.
You can even customize the information options displayed on this “add person” screen to ensure you’re gathering exactly the information you want. We recommend having the Status field displayed on the check-in page so that you can easily assign the Visitor status to any of your new people.
Adding people at check in also allows you to add entire families at once by switching to the “add family” view! This makes it especially easy to gather parent contact information for churches who only use Check-In for their children’s ministry.
Here's an example of what it looks like to add people to Breeze during check in:
b. Forms
Forms offer another great way to gather visitor information, whether it be in tandem with your check-in setup, or as a standalone source for gathering this data.
Because Breeze forms are highly customizable, you can use them for whatever you want! Creating a “Visitor Information” form would give you a set place to gather specific information and would allow people to provide this on their own time, accessing the form from a link you share in your bulletin, or directly from your website.
Another perk to using a form is that it takes the guesswork out of deciphering an individual's handwriting.
c. Paper Visitor Cards
For some churches it just works best to gather this type of information on paper, whether it be through a form in your bulletin or a paper sheet at your visitor's table - we totally get that!
If using paper forms, Breeze makes it simple to record this information and put it to work by using the Add Person page. From here you can easily enter individual/family information, update their Status with Visitor, and even immediately assign follow-ups!
Note: If you input the information into the event using the add person field, it will then automatically trigger the follow ups in step 2 below.
To avoid awkward information-gathering situations with your visitors, you may even decide that what works best for your ministry is a combination of several of these options, such as:
- Using Breeze Check In for your children’s ministry, gathering parent information as new kids visit
- Using an embedded visitor form on your website, making it easy for new visitors to give information on their own time
- Using paper forms in your bulletin/visitors center as an optional approach for when people first visit your church
Assign Follow-Ups to Your Church Staff
If you’re interested in assigning tasks to your staff in relation to visitors, this section can be extremely helpful; if not, feel free to move on down to step 3!
Now that all of your visitors and their information are in Breeze, it's time to use Automated Tasks to create follow-ups for your visitors.
You can have follow-ups automatically generated as soon as someone attends an event for the first time. This makes it easier than ever to make sure no one slips through the cracks.
Following up with your visitors after their initial visit is an important step to making them feel welcomed! Whether your follow up is a simple “Thanks for Visiting” email, or is something a bit more personal, like a “Thank You” card or a plate of cookies, this effort will be meaningful to your visitors.
Follow-ups can also be extremely helpful for tracking and facilitating the involvement of your visitors, as you can establish future-dated follow-ups that will remind you and your team to complete specific visitor-related tasks down the road. An example of this would be assigning a follow-up for your admin to reach out to your visitors with upcoming events, future dating it for a couple weeks out.
Here's an example of some follow-ups you might find helpful:
Organize Your Visitors
Once your visitors are in the system, it’s important to organize them in a way that will be beneficial for both you and them!
Keeping track of key visitor-related actions on an individual’s profile can help you get a better idea of where they are on their path to involvement.
a. Using Tags to Hide Visitors from Other Users
If you do not feel the need to hide your visitors from the view of other Breeze Users (such as those with Member Access), feel free to continue on to step b.
While most aspects of visitor participation are going to be tracked via Profile Fields, there are some instances where you may want to use Tags, such as for the purpose of restricting permissions around your visitors.
By using Smart Tags, you can automatically filter any visitor into a tag specifically designed for visitors. Just set up a smart tag to look for anyone with a status of "visitor" and it will automatically filter individuals in and out of that tag based on their status.
By hiding your visitors from regular members, you can gather and use this information for admin purposes, but keep your visitors private from other staff members or individuals using Member Access.
b. Tracking Progress with Profile Fields
A great way to keep track of visitor contact and participation is to create a new Visitors profile section with corresponding profile fields. You can use these fields to track visitor milestones used at your church, such as whether or not they’ve completed your Sunday Experience form, requested additional information, made a contribution to your church, or even attended a specific number of events.
For the best search opportunities down the road, we suggest using separate fields for each of these milestones, using either the Dropdown or Multiple Choice field options.
Here's an example of what this profile section and multiple choice profile fields would look like in Breeze:
c. Searching with Profile Fields
We recommend running advanced searches in the People section of Breeze to optimize how you track and communicate with your visitors.
An example of this would be a search for everyone with the Visitor status and an Added Date of the last 30 days. This type of search allows you to manage visitor groups you’d like to track together, whether that be individuals who visited in the same week, month, or quarter, and makes it easy to communicate with them through the Action Panel and send corresponding information that aligns with where they are in their path to involvement.
This is also a great way to see who has met the “required minimum” for you to consider them a regular attender, as you're able to run a search and bulk update the statuses to be properly reflected as such. At this point, we'd also recommend removing anyone marked as Attender from any visitor Tags.
For anyone you don’t anticipate returning to your church, we suggest archiving them from your Breeze system. We recommend archiving those one-time visitors over deleting them in the case they decide to come back later, as it's always easier to not have to track down all of their information again!
Congratulations, you’re now ready to help turn your visitors into regular attenders and walk them through getting more involved at your church!
We recognize that every church is unique and has a distinct assimilation process, so if you would like additional assistance in brainstorming different ways to track and organize your visitor information and participation data, please contact Breeze Support.