How to Get People in Your Group and Engaged: Before Your Meeting

How you market online small groups at your church greatly affects the adoption rate. How do you promote your online small group and make it easy for your audience to in your group and engaged?

While Zoom has a webinar sign-up process, the most effective solution is an all-encompassing solution. That means that communication to your audience is handled via a subscription form with automation triggers to an email system or your database. If your church has an ecosystem like Planning Center or Tithely, then it’s appropriate to keep your people in the funnels that your administrators have already created.

Once the user is in the queue, church administrators or small group directors who are notified of the form submission can filter contacts, appoint group assignments, and send a “Welcome to the Group” email (on behalf of the church and group leader). This welcome email will include all the pertinent details for the group meeting, such as group day and time, what they can expect from the group and what the group expects from them, and direct links to access their online group. After the letter has been sent to the new group member, the group leader should send a welcome text the day before the meeting, welcoming them to the group and express their interest in meeting them online.

Here's how the process should play out:

1. User expresses interest in an online small group.
2. User registers for a specific group online through a web form.
3. User's response is submitted to the church management system.
4. Church management system automatically places the user in a queue.
5. The queue triggers an alert and sends out an automated email confirmation to the user.
6. Email confirmation will double as a welcome letter (sample letter below).
7. Online small group leader will personally call and welcome the new member.