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Sending a Mass Email
In the left sidebar click Mass Contact. Then select the New Message button.
A modal screen will appear giving you the option to choose between an Email, Text Message (SMS), or a Voice Message. Click on Email.
Choose Group(s) and/or Add Recipients
- Start typing a name to activate the search against your Group list. Relevant results will show below the search bar.
- Click the Group name to select it.
- If more Groups are needed, keep starting the search again to add additional ones.
- Remove a Group by clicking the Grey "X" next to the group name.
- A Group is a collection of names. Use the 'Add Recipients' or 'Manually Select Recipients' options to manually edit the list of names.
- The 'Add Recipients' option allows for a stand-alone way to manually create a list of contacts from the database instead of using a Group. This way you can send to a single person or a few people quickly.
- By clicking on 'Manually Select Recipients', the populated list allows for unchecking anyone you do not wish to include in the Contact.
To email an individual, they must be a contact in your Database. For spam and other reasons, you cannot simply type/paste in email addresses.
The total amount of recipients on a contact email is capped at 5000 contacts. Having more than this will result in an error.
Include
The three options are
- Group Members - Anyone noted as active in the Group(s) selected.
- Include Inactive - Optionally include anyone that is marked as inactive in the Group(s) selected.
- Parents of Group Members - Particularly useful for youth staff! Choose a group(s) with children in it. Then, based on the family relationship statuses in the linked family (Family positions of Primary, Spouse [husband or wife], and Partner), anyone with a parent position will get the email.
- Send To Yourself - Add yourself as a recipient of the message, especially if you are not one of the people in the group or contact list. A copy of the message will be sent to your primary email address.
Pro-Tip: When choosing options in "Include"
- To send to Group Members within the group AND their Parents, both "Group Members" and "Parents of Group Members" boxed MUST be checked.
- To send ONLY to the parents, the "Parents of Group Members" box must be checked while the "Group Members" box is UNCHECKED.
~ Errors
If members in the Contact list do not have valid contact information, a notification appears and lets you know this along with a count of how many people may potentially be unsubscribed (Troubleshooting FAQ). Member email addresses in this list can be updated in the modal after clicking the link or find the member profile and resolve it under the Edit tab.
Email Title
To give your email, series of emails or campaign a name, make sure to enter it into the appropriate field. It can be found at the top of the page, simply click on the pencil icon to edit. Unlike the subject, recipients will not see this title. Instead, it can be used for reference and organization within your email history.
Customize From Name
Customize the name a recipient will see when the message is delivered. By default, this is populated with the name of the logged-in user. This can be customized to something like 'Youth Minister' or 'Church Admin' to make the message easily identifiable.
Email Subject
Add an appropriate subject line. Like the message above with the subject of 'WEEKLY SCRIPTURE'. When adding a subject line, the title of the email will mirror the subject.
Send personally addressed messages
Like in other email programs, this option is equal to being Carbon Copied or Blind Carbon Copied. Note the directions below the checkbox before unchecking this default setting.
Personalize with Name Placeholders
The Send personally addressed messages also allows for use of @NAME or @FULLNAME to dynamically insert an individual's member's First Name or First/Last name, respectively, into the body of the email. If a Preferred Name is in the member's profile (Ex, Robert & Bob), the Preferred Name will be used (Ex, Bob). Other placeholders from the software are not supported at this time.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- A placeholder must be in ALL CAPS to function.
- Send personally addressed messages must be checked for Placeholders to populate dynamically (screenshot above).
Message Body
Type and style your message using the available tools in the email editor.
The editor is designed to be a great and simple editing tool to create basic and effective messages.
As a best practice, it is important to not copy and paste content directly from other email editors/software or from word processors like Microsoft Word. Pasting into the editor directly from these sources introduces hidden formatting which will change the look and feel of your message. When copying and pasting are needed, we advise using a text editor like Notepad or Text Edit as a middle ground. Paste your message content into the text editor of your choice to remove this hidden formatting. Then copy all of your now cleanly formatted text into the message editor. In the Contact email editor, your text can now be styled to your liking for the best results!
Images
It is important to know that attaching an image is different than just uploading the file from a computer. First, the image will need to be hosted at a public location like a website or a file-sharing service that can handle giving the image a public URL. You will know the image is working when the direct file URL displays the image when pasted into your browser address bar. Place this confirmed public image URL into the add image tool. Adjust other properties like height and width to your liking. Click OK to save the image into your message.
Pro-Tip: When inserting an image via website or file-sharing service (such as imgur, Dropbox, Amazon S3 etc.), for the image to appear in your email you must ensure that your link begins with "https." If the site that the image is pulled from is not secured, the image will not populate.
Two other tabs could also be important to review. There are the Link and the Advanced tabs.
- Link → This tab supplies the tools needed to make the image clickable and tied to external source from the email like a webpage. There is also the ability to set a 'Target' (basically how should the link be handled). The most common option is to use the New Window (_blank) selection.
- Advanced → The tab is for just what it sounds like, add and customize further details around the image and the link. Custom styling can be added and other details. Unless you are really sure what is needing done here, most people will not need to use this tab.
Pro-Tip: For more robust email templates and features, take advantage of our integration with MailChimp or Constant Contact. These solutions provide enhanced read rate tracking, metrics, custom templates, etc.
Alternatively, use a free email template creator (A simple Google search will yield multiple results). Create your email using their tools, then copy all the code they provide. In the system's email editor, click the Source button and paste it in.
- When using templates from 3rd party providers, we recommend first sending a test to yourself to check how it looks.
- Note: We cannot assist troubleshooting template display issues from 3rd party email providers.
Attachments
Make sure the file(s) attached are under 10 Mb in size (this is a consideration for one or multiple files). A single large file will display a 'Failure' error as seen below. If attaching multiple files, some size calculations will need to be done to make sure there will not be an issue with reaching the size limit. A single small file will not show this 'Failure' so knowing the size of all your files is important. As a general rule, it is best to consider using a file sharing service or upload the file(s) directly to your website and add links to these files in the message body much like when adding an image. This also helps with spam filters not hanging up the file(s) due to the always increasing security measures that are being implemented.
Log Contact as Interaction
Logging a contact as interaction is a great way to keep track of the contact(s) made to a member right on their profile. Your email will be logged under your interaction type with the message body for later reference.
Schedule Sending for Later
When a scheduled message is created, it is saved to the logged-in user profile. This is important to know if you need to adjust the scheduled message content, settings, or time.
Check to schedule the message for later. Add the correct date and time you want the message to send. This time setting references the preference set for the time zone under General Settings → General.
Should the scheduled message need to be edited/changed, you can load it again. Select the message from the "Mass Contact" home screen, which will resemble the one found below.
Once your email is selected, an email preview screen will appear. To edit your scheduled email, use the "Edit" button that can be found in the top-right corner of the screen. This will load the settings and the message body to update with new information. Use the blue "Schedule" button to save your updated email or red 'Delete' button at the bottom to fully delete the email if it is not needed anymore.
Complete the message by clicking "Send."
Once sent, the message is delivered to our email queue for sending on a first-come, first-serve basis. Typically this results in a quick delivery but depending on processing volume, there can be a slight delay. As always, if you have further questions, please feel free to contact our awesome support team through the '?' icon at the top right of the database window.
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