Maintain and email large groups of people rather than using Groups to email
Because Churchteams began as a small group-focused software, it seems natural that we would encourage you to use Groups for collecting people as an email subscription list. However, there are some issues when using Groups as email lists:
- People cannot unsubscribe from Group-level emails as those aren't considered "mass emails". They can unsubscribe from individual lists. (Emails or Texts sent from within a group are meant to only be used when sending more personal notifications)
- Email lists tend to contain a large number of people whereas we encourage your Groups to remain smaller in nature for the sake of efficiency.
- If your settings aren't correct in the Group, you could inadvertently email everyone in the TO: field rather than the BCC: field when using Groups.
Email lists are the solution!
Email lists will address each of the issues mentioned above and allow your Group Leaders to maintain their groups as a means of doing ministry together - communicating there only on a more personal level.
Where are Email Lists and how can I edit those?
Go to Communicate > Email > Lists to see your current Email Lists. By default, we have set up "Newsletter" in all Churchteams databases and you are able to add more by clicking the Add button. You can use the Email icon to be taken to the Reports page to begin the Email process. If you do not need any other filters, click Run Report to start your email. *To reduce the likelihood that an email is suspected as spam by a receiving server, we recommend that you use Filters to narrow down the number of recipients for a given email.
From this page, you can show Subscribers by clicking the list icon under "Subscribers."
On the Email List Subscribers page, you will see a list of all people subscribed to that particular list. You can remove anyone currently on the list by clicking the red "x" on the right side of the page for that person. You can add others to the list by clicking the blue Add button. If you are ready to send an email, click the Send button. (You can also Mass Add people to a list.)
Unsubscribing from Email Lists
Anytime an individual receives an email and clicks unsubscribe, they will be asked to choose which email lists they want to receive, or the very first option is to unsubscribe from all lists. With that said, if you send out an email directly from a group they are a part of, they still will get it. If you know a person no longer wants to receive any kind of email from the church, the best practice is to just delete the email address or add a note to their profile with the email.