Three Keys to a Seamless Christmas Experience
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Almost three times as many people will be coming to your church this Christmas season; expect a bump.
If the bump is coming, what are you going to do with it? If you typically see 1000 in attendance on a weekend, and all of a sudden you are at max capacity and running 3000, what are your next right steps? Sure, we make fun of this bump and chalk it up to CEO Christians (Christmas and Easter Only), but it is an opportunity that God has placed before you and you need to leverage it. From the moment someone sees an ad on Facebook to the moment they walk through your door, you need to make the experience as consistent and engaging as possible.
We want to see more people come to know Jesus through this season, and we want to help you do that in your city. Because of that, we’re giving you three keys to a seamless Christmas experience. Follow these keys, and you will see an increase in overall comeback attendance, statistically as high as 60%.
Three Keys to a Seamless Christmas Experience
- Information. We saw an advertisement Saturday night from a church for an upcoming Christmas Party for fifth grade students. It was a hodge-podge of design elements, but fun for a fifth-grader. However, on further inspection, they committed the ultimate sin in advertisement: no next right step. Sure, it said show up, what they’re going to be doing this Friday, but they forgot to say where it was and who was hosting it. So imagine our dismay when we learned that students were supposed to pass this out to their friends. Uh … where would their friends show up Sunday? Sure, this seems like a simple thing for you to remember to do, but you would be shocked at how many churches forget to give their users clear next right steps. Want more on this piece? Read this post.
- Visuals. Content is king but context is queen. What you are communicating is critically important. How you are communicating is just as important. Having a branded experience from the time someone sees a church ad on Facebook about an upcoming Christmas Eve service to seeing the banners on the wall as they walk in through your doors matters. Why? It’s all about creating a familiar experience, and this is the way our brains work. Marketing works off of the five touch principle, that if someone is exposed to something five times, they are more likely to engage with their next right step. If you create a branded experience from their cell phone to your sanctuary, you have helped them overcome one of the biggest hurdles in churches today and made them feel welcome and at home … on their first visit.
- Sermon. People come for the show but stay for the story. If you can get them there and make them feel welcome, then you have set your service up as best as possible. Now it’s time for the most important piece of the puzzle: the Christmas message. You may have heard that music is the most important component for a guest when visiting a church. That’s not true. It’s not even the children’s ministry programs (that’s actually the second highest reason for coming back for a second visit). The number one reason why people come back to a church is the quality of the sermon. Please hear this: if you can get them through the doors and help them feel welcome, then you are 60% more likely to see them next week. Let’s put some math on this. If you normally see 1000 people on a typical weekend, and then see a jump to 3000 people during Christmas Eve, if you hit it out of the park in these three key areas, you can see as many as 2200 people that next weekend. From there, it’s up to you and God to make it happen.
The key is: doing everything you can to dial down this process and set up the most seamless Christmas experience ever, so that as many people see God through it. We’re praying for you this holiday season. Make much of Jesus and let us know how He moved through your churches this Christmas.