Archive for category: newsletter

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January Product Newsletter

The team and I are excited to introduce the new TouchPoint newsletter designed to help your church maximize your ministry through the platform. The “TouchPoint Minute” will share the latest happening here at TouchPoint. You will find product updates, new features, training and enablement resources, and more. We hope you enjoy it! Our door is always open to feedback, so please let us know how we can best serve you and provide the resources needed for success.

In Christ,

Ross Miller

New Features

  • Send Leaders Attendance Reminders: Leaders of your classes and other organizations can receive texts or emails with a link for taking attendance shortly before the beginning of the next meeting.

  • Vital Stats Graphs: Quickly access graphs to compare the current year with the previous year for contributions and attendance. The graphs can also be customized for an ad hoc look at specified groups of funds and organizations.

  • Pushpay Integration: Now your Pushpay transactions can be automatically uploaded into your TouchPoint database nightly.

  • SMS Limit Increased to 1600 Characters: We increased the character limit of texts from 160 to 1600. This was a small and simple change, but important to some of our clients!

​Have questions about any of these new features? Feel free to send in a support ticket in TouchPoint and we’ll be happy to explain.

Tips & Tricks


Did you know you can perform a quick Database Audit to ensure you’re maintaining relevant information on your congregants? For example, I can use the Basic Search (People Menu > Find People >  Basic Search) to filter for those who are Members of our church and whose marital status is Unknown.

people search screenshot

As shown in the screenshot above, this tells me I need to spend more time getting to know these particular people. Knowing someone’s marital status is important information for ministry—it allows us to present relevant information related to the Married/Singles/Divorced/etc. Ministry.

Resources to Use and Share

  • Year-End Giving for Executive Pastor | A Remote Roundtable: Last month we sat down with leaders from Bellevue Baptist Church, Fielder Church, and Cross Church to discuss year-end giving best practices. Watch the webinar replay here, and don’t forget to share with your fellow friends in ministry.

Come See Us!

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April 2019 Product Updates

Easter is one of the busiest times of the year for church leaders. Despite the chaos, I hope you found a moment in the last few weeks to reflect. We worship a risen savior who makes all things new!

Speaking of new things, we’ll be releasing some new features in the coming weeks that the team is pretty excited about. I can’t say too much at this time, but be on the lookout for them in your inbox.

We are grateful, as always, to serve you and your church.

In Christ,
Ross Miller

New Features

Custom Login Screens!

TouchPoint Software aims to be a resource for every person that steps foot in the doors of your church. Your staff uses it to track attendance and giving, your lay leaders use it to manage groups and communicate with their teams, and your congregants use it to view their resources and access giving statements.

So why is all of our branding all over your ministry tool?

These are your tools and we want you to make them your own!

Many of you already know that you can replace the TouchPoint Logo in the database with your own using a custom header. We’ve now also made the login screen available to rebranding as well! This enhancement will make your login page look more familiar to your congregation. It can even be customized for each campus!

So please make the login page your own and show us what you can do! Our Custom Login help document will walk you through how to set it up.

Tips & Tricks

Resources vs. Members Only Page: Which feature do I use?

With the implementation of Resources, churches now have the ability to relay information to their congregation, staff, lay leaders, members of an organization… Any audience as broad or narrow as they prefer!

This means that there are two different ways within TouchPoint to provide information to members of an organization: through Resources and through the Members Only Page.

How do churches decide which method to use?

Resources and the Members Only Page both support the same information: images, videos, links, member directory, text formatting, and all by way of a full editor. Using either one will allow you to put any information at the fingertips of the members of an organization.

The primary difference lies with who your church wants to make responsible for communicating the information. Access must be granted by way of Roles for someone to modify Resources or the Members Only Page.

  • To manage Resources, the role ManageResources is required. This will allow a user the ability to manage all resources that the church has available to any audience. So someone can not only provide information to a Sunday School Class, but they could also upload videos for a sermon series to the congregation, provide links for a registration, remove outdated material, etc. This would likely be a staff member rather than a lay leader.
  • To manage the Members Only Page, the roles OrgLeadersOnly and ContentEdit are required. The person must also be a leader of that organization, such as a Sunday School Class Teacher. This would likely be a lay leader who has limited access to the database.

The other difference is with location. A user (such as a Sunday School Class Member) can access their Resources on the Resources Tab of a user record, if your church has enabled this feature. The user can access the Members Only Page by going to their Involvement Tab of their user record and then clicking on the organization name (such as the Sunday School Class).

For more information, check out these two help articles: Resources and Members Only Page. For more tips on setting these up, be sure to sign up for our Resources Training and our Small Groups Training (where we cover the Members Only Page) by Contacting Support. You can Contact Support by logging into your TouchPoint database and then clicking the Help Button on the upper right-hand side of the screen. You will then see a tab called Contact Support.

Resources to Use and Share

  • Subscribe to our blog: In the past, if you wanted to get updates about TouchPoint’s new features, you had the option of subscribing to our blog. This functionallity unfortunately did not carry over with the new website — until now! To get product updates delivered directly to your inbox, all you have to do is enter your email address in the field to the right of any post under the Product Updates tab in our blog.

Come See Us!

  • Thrive Leadership Conference
    May 2-3 | Granite Bay, CA
  • SBC 2019
    June 9-12 | Birmingham, AL
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May 2019 Product Updates

We’ve spent the month of May making some fresh upgrades, new features, and fixes. Below are highlights from our latest release — every single one already available to you right now.

As June approaches, so does VBS season. In the Tips & Tricks section, we’ve outlined some ways to make your registration processes run more smoothly.

If you’re utilizing TouchPoint in some innovative ways at your church, please don’t hesitate to share your story with our team. We’d love to showcase your work and help other churches improve their systems and processes.

In Christ,

Ross Miller

New Features

Mission Trip Fundraising Pages

Do you love the functionality and look-and-feel of Go Fund Me and Kickstarter fundraising pages. Good news — now your mission trip attendees can send their potential donors a page showing progress-to-goal, previous donations, and information about the trip. “Goers” can se

Previously, “goers” could only receive emails when a “sender” made a donation, and could not easily see a list of all their supporters.

Read more about the new Mission Trip Page here.

mission trip funding page

We also made another small enhancement to missions fundraising that was released this month. In short, it allows donors to give toward a mission trip’s entire fund, rather than limit them to a single attendee. Read more here.

New TouchPoint Status Page

There is now an easy way to check the status of the TouchPoint servers! Check our new TouchPoint Status Page. On the color-coded graph, you can see at a glance if there are problems with our web servers, or with our documentation or public sites. We will also announce any major issues at the top of the page.

You can continue to contact Support for more information, but now you can quickly get answers on the status page.

Check out the Status Page and bookmark it in your browser!

Tips & Tricks

Join Org and User Selects and Compute Org By Birthday – Oh My!

It’s that time of year. Your church has lots of activities that need online registrations. Join Org is the most basic type of online registration, but there are many benefits that come with a User Selects or Compute Org By Birthday registration.

Let’s explore a few:

Registration For Family: Your church is hosting an event for adults and is offering childcare. User Selects would be ideal in this situation since the adults could register for their event and then select the right childcare class for their young… All without leaving the registration or using a separate registration link.

VBS: Churches typically separate children by age within their classes. Compute Org By Birthday would be an excellent choice for this scenario. A registrant will only be able to register for the class where his/her birthday falls within the range specified on the organization.

​User Selects is also a good option for presenting graded classes to for selection. This helps churches that organize children in a way other than by birthday.

Wednesday Evening Programming: There may be a lot happening at the church in one night, but we can only be in one place at one time! Providing different options for the evening’s programming in one spot (via User Selects) will allow your registrants to select their chosen activity from a list.

Both User Selects and Compute Org By Birthday use a master org and pick-list orgs. The master org contains the single link used for the registration. This means the family registering for that event and for childcare will use one link to do so. The parent registering his/her child for VBS will have one link. There will also be one single link to access each of the Wednesday evening programming options.

Want to learn more about registrations?

Check out these help articles: Registration Types and User Selects and Compute Org By Birthday Registrations.

For more tips on setting these up, contact support to sign up for our Online Registration Training. You can contact support by logging into your TouchPoint database and then clicking the Help Button on the upper right-hand side of the screen. You will then see a tab called Contact Support.

Resources to Use and Share

  • Subscribe to our blog: In the past, if you wanted to get updates about TouchPoint’s new features, you had the option of subscribing to our blog. This functionallity unfortunately did not carry over with the new website — until now! To get product updates delivered directly to your inbox, all you have to do is enter your email address in the field to the right of any post under the Product Updates tab in our blog.

Come See Us!

Will you be attending any of the conferences below? We’d love to see you and meet your friends.

If you introduce us to another church that is looking for a new Church Management System, we’ll give you a $10 gift card to Amazon. Just make sure you mention the promotion to our representatives and leave us with your email address as well as the contact information for your referral.

  • Pushpay Summit
    May 22-23 | Dallas, TX
  • SBC 2019
    June 9-12 | Birmingham, AL
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October Monthly Newsletter

Have you heard of the TouchPoint Minute? If not, consider yourself officially looped in by the end of this post!

Every month, we send out a roll-up of new product features and announcements about TouchPoint, plus best practice resources like ebooks and webinars. We’re posting last month’s newsletter in case you missed it, or aren’t subscribed.

If you’re not currently subscribed to the TouchPoint Minute, and would like to get these updates delivered to your inbox, you can sign up here:

 

October 2020 Updates

Our cups are full following our time with you at TouchPoint Summit last month — thank you for making it such a great event! Like many gatherings this season, our annual software summit pivoted to a virtual format. I could not be more proud of the TouchPoint team for their effort and dedication to make this happen.
 
We’ve been working hard all year not just on the Summit, but also on new features and improved functionality to make your mission successful. I hope you’re enjoying the fruits of our labor. In fact, we’ve recently released features that you’ll find especially helpful in the months ahead.
 
For instance, our giving platform makes it even easier for congregants and church leaders to manage contributions during the holidays. Ticketing allows you to cost-effectively and efficiently organize event sales while supporting safe practices, such as socially distanced seat planning and ticket delivery via mobile and email. There are plenty more of those improvements available, including an overhaul of online registrations — read on to learn more!
 
Thank you again for partnering with us in ministry. We hope the fall season has kicked off smoothly for you and that you’re staying healthy and happy!
 
Galatians 6:9,
— Ross
 

Upcoming Webinars

October New Features Webinar | Thursday, October 29 @ 2 pm central
 
Those of you who were able to attend Summit got a sneak peek of some of these features, and now we’re proud to demonstrate them for everyone. Sign up for this month’s New Features Webinar to save your spot.

 

New Features

Ticketing Available now! Churches can sell reserved seating with this new integration that saves you 75%+ compared to similar solutions. This feature was just used at a large church last Sunday for social distancing and contract tracing. Learn More or Schedule a Demo.
 
Giving Platform Our team has created an all-new, zero-fee Giving Platform that is free to use and integrates with the payment gateway of your choice! Learn more.
 
Did you know that TouchPoint offers nine different ways to brand your database? You can make TouchPoint an extension of your church by customizing your database. Branding your database provides familiarity for your staff and end-users that will instill trust in your system and create a more positive experience overall.
So, what are the nine different ways to brand TouchPoint? Keep scrolling to find out.

1. Login Page This is the first screen that every TouchPoint User will see as they log in to their database. 

2. Navigation Bar Once you’re logged in to TouchPoint, the button in the upper lefthand corner may be modified to be your church’s logo. If you haven’t updated it, it will read “TouchPoint.”

3. Online Giving Pages These are public-facing pages that the congregant will see as they go online to donate, so make them beautiful.

4. Online Registrations These are also public-facing pages that the registrant will see as they register for events online. You may have a default look for all registrations or brand each individual registration/event.

5. Web Check-In Screen The Web Check-In Screen is what the Member/Guest will see when they arrive at the check-in station to check in for a class. You can customize these pages per Profile (Ministry/Location within the church).

6. Emails We have an easy-to-use mobile-friendly email builder that allows you to create beautiful, branded, mobile-friendly emails. Many churches create and save templates per ministry or event.

7. Small Group Finder The Small Group Finder is what your churchgoers will use to search for and register for a group.

8. Custom Domain A custom domain allows your churchgoers to type in a customized URL (that your church owns) into the address bar that will redirect the user to your TouchPoint Database. For example, they may be able to visit “My.YourChurch.Com” instead of “TouchPoint.YourChurch.com.” This feature requires development resources and is available for a one-time fee of $350.

9. Mobile App Your staff, lay leaders, and churchgoers will all use the same app if your church has purchased the custom-branded mobile app.

Learn more here!

Promotions

Back by popular demand: these promotions have been extended through Saturday, October 31 at 11:59pm CST, so reach out to our team today!*

Training and Consulting:  Buy at least 10 hours by 10/30 and get 20% free

Tune up package – 4 hours of training and 3 hours of consulting for $1,000

Custom Domain:  $350 if by 10/30, then it goes to $400

Ticketing: Buy $3,500 of tickets by 10/30 – setup is included and tickets can be used until 12/31/21

Referral Program: 25% of yearly subscription revenue, no limit

Deadline is close of business on Saturday, October 31 at 11:59pm CST

Terms and conditions apply.
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Better Communication via TouchPoint Email

TipsAs a followup to my article about spam, I want to give you a few tips for emailing newsletters, daily devotions, announcements – whatever it is that you are sending via email through TouchPoint. The goal is to make your emails compelling enough that recipients will want to read them. What you don’t want to do is make people stop looking at your emails altogether – or to get mad and click Spam. They are more likely to do that if you are sending to the wrong group of people.

For example: You don’t want to email the entire church when you are advertising an event for women.

So, here are just a few tips that you might find helpful:

  • Tell the recipient what he needs to hear, not what you want to say.
  • Do not send all emails to everyone in your database!
  • Use Search Builder to find your target group for that specific email and save the search for the next time.
  • Always insert the Unsubscribe link.
  • Take advantage of the Tracking feature to see how many people are opening your emails.
  • Consider creating users records in your database just for sending certain types of email – such as Moral Concerns, Children’s Ministry or Recreation Ministry – and send on behalf of that user. Create a people record for each ministry.
  • Use Templates to visually brand your emails.

These are just a few simple tips for more effective email communication through TouchPoint.

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