NOTE: Updated June 23, 2015. Add people to your Mailing List quicker — “invite” has been changed to “add”.
Is your church ready to use email for keeping in touch with members? Are you already using ConstantContact, MailChimp or Listbox but finding it challenging to manage the list as members come and go? eAdventist’s new Mailing Lists combine your membership data and Mandrill (MailChimp’s email engine) to give you high “deliverability” and easy list management.
Still need postal mail to stay in touch with members that don’t use email? Mailing Lists lets you create mailing labels for them without maintaining separate lists.
Try it out
If you have an eAdventist account with the “church clerk” or “pastor” role, you can try Mailing Lists. You’ll find “mailing lists” in the Reports menu section. Click the “New list” button. Fill in the “name”, “description”, “from name” and “from email” and use the defaults values for the other settings.
Save the new List and you’re ready to add some Subscribers.
Add your church and “Add subscribers” will show you the number of members (and nonmembers) that currently have email addresses.
For testing, let’s click on the “Add subscribers” link and add a few select people (e.g. yourself, your pastor) to the list.
Now you’ve got email subscribers and it’s time to create your first message. Let’s send it to the “entire list”.
In case you haven’t run into this before, it’s important to create 2 versions of your message — “HTML” and “plain-text”. You can make the “HTML” version look spiffy by use bold, italics, links, colors, font sizes, bullet lists, images, etc. Be sure to try out the “Merge fields” that let you personalize the message for each recipient.
The “plain-text” version looks like you wrote it on a typewriter. Why bother? Some of your subscribers may have chosen to reduce the risk of email attacks (e.g. phishing) by refusing HTML email. Your message will “bounce” and never reach them unless you include a “plain-text” version. You can use the “Merge fields” in it, too.
That’s it! Save the message and you’re ready to send.
eAdventist has already established a good reputation (very important for mass email), so you message will usually be on it’s way in minutes. The Mandrill service that we use helps to ensure that it will be delivered as “mail” rather than blocked as “spam”. Check back on your message in a day or two to see if any of the email addresses had problems (e.g. bad address, rejected) and how many have already been opened.
There’s more
Send a message to just a segment of your list using tags – great way to communicate with “growth groups”. You can also include photos in messages if they are hosted in a public location (e.g. Flickr). In the near future, you will be able to host them in eAdventist.
Conferences can also use Mailing Lists to stay in touch with their members, pastors or church officers. Contact our team if you would like more information about using Mailing Lists.
Okay – So this is super cool.
a) is there any way to DELETE an unused list ‘cuz an unnamed conference clerk was experimenting with this new feature? 😛
b) What about a Test sent email embarrassingly titled: “What the heck is this Description?” :$ (Some people, eh??)
c) I just showed this to our Communications Asst. and together we just took it for a test drive. We’re both quite excited about the potential. She sends bi-monthly Conference e-newsletters to “all” our members and is very excited about this, as our current rudimentary system consists of sending 5 email groups BCC’d to members. The email list is over a year old and the Comm. Dept. has not added new members – baptized or transfers.
a. Can the Conference Communications person have access to this feature?
b. Say we have a List for “Man-Sask Conference” entire membership. How do we know to “INVITE” new members to that list who join in successive quarters, or is there some automated management of that?
c. If we choose to send to “individuals” rather than “family” – and the same email address is listed for 3 members, will they receive 3 emails, or does the system recognize and filter identical email addresses?
d. Can we add attachments that are not posted on a public site?
Thanks again! This holds a lot of promise.
Aris
Aris, glad that this looks valuable to your conference. I’ll send you a private message to answer your questions.
This is awesome.
I would like to know if there will be a texting/SMS service soon.
The Pastor has asked and we do have alot of people using the communication format.
Ken Denny
Palo Cedro SDA
530-547-4777
pcsda@juno.com
Yes, we will be adding a similar feature for sending text messages. A lot of churches are interested in this and it should be ready later this summer or early fall.
I’m excited to be able to use this new feature but I’ve run into a little problem.
I sent out an email 5 days ago to the 25 people who have subscribed to my new mailing list. When I check on the “status” of the emails sent (Email Recipients screen) it shows 25 sent and 0 soft/hard bounced, rejected and opened. However, I’ve received confirmation through replies, etc. that at least 9 have been opened and I also believe one bounced. Any idea why eAdventist is not showing who has opened the email?
Tracking “opens” for email is not an exact science. The mail system embeds an image link (for a 1px transparent image) in the message. When you open the email, your mail software (e.g. Outlook) usually warns you that the message contains images and asks if you want to download them. If you say “yes”, the mail system detects that you opened the message. If you say “no”, the mail system has no indication that you opened.
For security reasons, some people set their email accounts to only accept email “Text” format. Messages in “text” format cannot include images, so there is no way for the email system to detect if the message is opened.
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Brian,
How are you? Hope you are doing great!
I have a question for you……
The new feature says you can set up and send mailing labels but the instructions only show how to set up emails. I think this is a great new feature, looking forward to the changes you guys are making ie: text messages etc. but ……. I still need to send snail mail to some of our older members and use it for sending out hard copy letters. I need the label feature, if there is one.
Can you help me to figure out how to set up labels and print them?
I’m trying to use eadventist exclusively now, I was using two programs at once. One we have had for years and eadventist. Now as eadventist is coming into the 21st century I’m excited to use it only.
Thanks for your help.
I’m doing very well and it’s great to hear from you! I’ll add instructions for “postal” mail and send you a email tomorrow.
Unable to add https//demo.eAdventist.net to Internt options>privacy, Tab Sites, in the bos to add, the hit the add button. Will not add sais address. I Am unable to go to the websoite ? help! Help ! HELP!!!
Conrad
Conrad, there doesn’t appear to be an eAdventist account with your name or email address. You can email us directly at help@eadventist.net to help us identify your account.