Chat Archives - aware3

Avoid The Crash After The Fall Sugar Coma

The first major holiday of the fall is already behind us as 2017 keeps speeding by. Candy, cookies, treats, it all just tastes better on Halloween. And diving into your leftover candy after the dust settles from the trick-or-treaters is always something to look forward to, but the sugar high also comes with a sugar crash. It happens to almost all of us!

How did the year go by so fast that we are already talking about post fall events? Aren’t we still planning Easter? Oh, right, that’s Easter 2018 that’s starting to ramp up … (you can never start too early). Fall is a busy season. Even though, sometimes every season feels busy. But, fall does have the most holidays or days to celebrate. And with holidays, comes events. And with events, comes research, planning, execution and follow up. You still with me? It’s safe to say that for some of us, it has been a long October.

But why do we do these events? It’s true, people love to celebrate. Trunk-or-treats, fall festivals, harvest hoedowns, chili cook-offs—these celebrations provide a reason to drink some apple cider, relax with friends and family, and have a fun with your kids. But something events also do is bring people together. Whether you bring your family, coworkers, friends or your small group with you, these fall events provide opportunities for people to connect not only with each other, but also with your church.

The church has a unique opportunity to be a safe place for people to come to have a enjoyable time without the having their guard up. Of course, you probably already knew this since you probably did host an event or partner with another church to host an event leading up to Halloween. The rush of the planning and the whirlwind of the day of the event is comparable to the sugar high you might have gotten last night while finishing off that Halloween candy.

But, the sugar crash and the post Halloween blues are setting in today, the day after Halloween. Experiencing something similar after your fall events is completely normal. You planned, executed, and are now exhausted. But the job isn’t done yet. Hopefully, you have a pile of guest cards/submissions sitting on your desk or in your inbox. Do you have a plan to tackle your post event fall follow up?

Follow up can be draining, but this is an important time to capture the people who came to visit your church because Christmas is right around the corner. If you have low energy after the fall season, digital technology can be a solution for you, and it can also take on a life of it’s own.

Work smarter, not harder this time of year. There is a long term, and sustainable way that digital technology can help you beat the post Halloween and fall events sugar coma crash.

Raise Up Leaders With Chat & Text Engagement

With your mobile app, there is more to the story than only using it for giving or occasionally updating the calendar. You have the power to use digital technology as a tool to grow your congregation and foster a community. Let guests know that their visit to your event mattered to you. You can send a bulk follow-up message to everyone whose information you have. Use outbound text messaging (text engagement) to send all participants a quick thank you. Better yet, you can include a “looking forward to seeing you soon” and some information about your services and a call to action to download your mobile app to check things out before they visit. In our work, we’ve found that there are 3.2 more unique app users than attenders. Your church reaches beyond Sunday morning.

Then, once event attendees are able to visit and hopefully get connected, you can use mobile chat to take on a life of its own in the process of fostering leaders and community. Use chat to connect newer people to others that they may have common interests, can help them join a small group, or get involved in serving. With chat, you are able to have an open line of communication between new guests and volunteer or staff leaders in your church. These leaders can help foster community with newer church members or attendees, and also help mentor them into the mature believers that every church craves.

So when you feel like you’re hitting wall after coming down from a great fall run, there’s no need to panic. Digital technology and mobile apps can work for churches of all sizes and help them grow through member engagement.

Group Messaging: Our Newest Feature: Chat

Have you even hard to make a decision by committee? Of course, you have; you’re a church leader. How about something as simple as picking a place for the group to go to lunch? Sean wants sushi, Lance wants BBQ and Joe want’s Mexican. But, Lance had taco’s for dinner last night and Joe’s not a fan of raw fish. Everyone has an opinion, but nobody wants to be too pushy so landing on an option that makes everyone happy becomes a challenge. After about 10 minutes of “I had that for dinner last night” or “didn’t we just have that for lunch last week?” you’ve finally had enough. If only there was a place where everyone’s appetite could be satisfied …. and then it hits you!

The mall food court. Why not? You’ve got your Chick Fil A, Asian, pizza, Chipotle, Subway, etc. Perfect. And some dessert too. I think I can smell Cinnabon from here. It’s a solution that can please everyone.

Well, just as the mall food court could be the one stop shop for your lunch needs, we have also created aware3 with that same idea in mind. Why not create a platform that serves the multiple growing needs of your church all in one place? With existing features like registration, online giving, sermon notes, and videos, we’ve added another facet to our growing library to make your church app the place for everything.

At the core at aware3, we want to grow churches through member engagement helping you to create disciples. The key ingredient of engagement is relationships. Relational connection is what keeps people coming back and desiring more from your church. But, building relationships over a couple of hours on a Sunday morning alone, is a long process. Relationships need to extend beyond just conversations in the atrium before and after service.

In talking with our partner churches we realized that they are using a variety of tools to try and support communication between different groups of people. This disjointed approach is better than nothing, but we thought, ‘we can make this a lot easier’. Maybe it’s time to add a feature to your church app where people are already cultivating community by registering, listening and giving? Well, we did, and we are here to introduce the newest feature to the aware3 collection: Chat.

Instead of email prayer chains and Facebook groups, Chat makes relationships simple. By putting instant messaging in your mobile app, we’ve added another restaurant to the mall food court of options you have to engage the members of your church.

If you are interested in finding out how to get more from Chat or any of our other features, connect with our team.

If you are looking for a way to leverage mobile technology to extend your reach and grow engagement, we would love to talk to you.