This past week I was eating at a pizza place with a friend and we saw the missionaries come in. I told them to come join us after they had ordered. We talked about this missionary effort and they started to suggest names of people that we should send Ensigns to.  They were interested in sending magazines to help the people that failed to progress all the way to membership. I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to receive contacts from them.

This principle of working with someone and trying to prepare them for personal interaction (again or for the first time), in marketing, is called lead nurturing. An example of this is a “drip” campaign where a lead will receive an email every two weeks to a month and if they show interest by opening the email, clicking on a link, or any number of predefined actions they’ll be contacted by sales, or they can even have the option to contact sales directly.

That is one of the goals we have with buying subscriptions for investigators. We want to nurture the investigator without utilizing our missionaries valuable time. It’s like the drip campaigns because they get regular contact and the chance to make the next move. Then when they show interest they are much more likely to be baptized.

I’m sure every missionary has had a similar experience of investigators progressing, and progressing and then nothing happens. You try your hardest to teach them, to find out what stalled the progression, and usually, just to find them. Eventually your efforts aren’t enough and you have to leave them to make their own decision, which isn’t what you’d wish.  

One man, that filled this description, kept coming to mind.  He lived in a town where the church only had a branch and no priesthood. My companion and I taught him almost all of the lessons and then he disappeared. He didn’t move; we just couldn’t ever seem to catch him at home.

I wished I could give him another chance to accept. Well, we found 12, monthly ways for him to be exposed to the church. I dug through my missionary address book, found his address, and bought him a subscription to the Liahona. I haven’t heard anything from him yet, but hopefully one of the issues will find him at a time when he is ready to read it and accept. 

Dig through your missionary journals, address books, contacts and send us the addresses of those people that have been close to accepting. Maybe their time is in the next 12 months and we can be ready.