Email an announcement to your members

Once an announcement is posted, you can send it to your members by email as well. It is a separate step on purpose: you can post several small notices and email only the ones that matter. Each member gets their own copy, so nobody sees anyone else's address.

On a site we host

Emailing announcements is part of the Starter plan and the Premium plan.

Before you start

• The announcement must be posted and Visible. See Post an announcement.
• Check the wording. An email cannot be taken back, and changing the announcement afterwards does not send it again.

Send a test, then send to everyone

1. In the admin panel, open Announcements.

2. Under the announcement, press Email to members. A panel opens.

   

   The Email to members panel open under an announcement, with the box Send a test to one address first and the button Send to all 24 active members

3. Under Send a test to one address first, type your own address and press Send test. A message confirms "Test sent to" and the address.

4. Read the test in your inbox. Its subject starts with [Test]. Check it looks right on your phone too.

5. Press Send to all 24 active members (the button gives your own number).

6. A box asks you to confirm, naming the announcement and the number of members. Press Send.

   

   The confirmation box asking whether to email the announcement to all 24 active members, with the Send button

What happens next depends on where your site runs: see How the sending happens below.

note

The link to stop the emails in a test copy is a dummy. It does nothing for whoever presses it. Real copies each carry the member's own working link.

Who receives it

Every member who is Active and has not turned announcement emails off. Each gets one message addressed to them alone.

• Disabled members are not emailed.
• A member who has turned the emails off is left out. They still see the announcement in the portal. When some have, the button says "members" rather than "active members", and a line under it says how many have turned the emails off and are left out. You cannot override a member's choice. See How people stop your emails.

What the email contains

An emailed announcement as it arrives in an inbox: the title as a heading, the message, and a grey footer with a link to the member portal and the link Stop receiving announcements by email

Part	What it is
Subject	The announcement's title
Heading	The title again, in your site's main colour
Body	Your message, with its formatting and links
Footer line	The Announcement email footer from Site Settings, Email. It starts as "You are receiving this as a member of the choir." If you empty it, the line names your choir instead. See The sign-off and footer of your emails.
Link to the portal	"This and earlier announcements are in the member portal."
Stop link	Stop receiving announcements by email: this member's own link. See How people stop your emails.

The email also has a plain-text version for mail programs that do not show formatting.

Read the status line

Beside Email to members, each announcement says where it stands.

Status	What it means
Not emailed	It has never been emailed.
Emailed to 24 members on a date	The last time it was emailed, and how many copies were accepted for sending.
Queued: waiting to be sent to 24 members	Hosted sites only. It is in the queue and will start shortly.
Sending: 10 of 24	Hosted sites only. It is going out now. The page updates every few seconds.
Could not send to 2: and addresses	Hosted sites only, in red under the status. Those copies were not accepted. Up to 200 addresses are listed.

Send it again

After an announcement has been emailed, the button reads Send again to all 24 active members. The box to confirm reminds you of the date it was already emailed. Sending again goes to everyone who qualifies now, including people who received it before. There is no way to send only to those who missed it.

How the sending happens

On a site we host

Your announcement joins a queue and is sent in the background. The panel says "Queued for 24 members. It is sent in the background: you can leave this page." You can close the page or the browser; the status line shows the progress whenever you come back.

• The emails come from an address of ours, with your choir's name as the sender's name. Replies go to the Public email address in Site Settings, Contact. See How your site sends email.
• You can have announcements sent from your own address, through your own mail server, instead. If your server refuses a message, it is sent our way so that it still arrives. See Send announcements from your own address.
• While an announcement is queued or sending, its send button is switched off.
• If you hide or delete the announcement while it is still going out, the rest are not sent.

On a self-hosted site

The page you have open does the sending: it asks the server for one batch of members after another until all are done, and shows "Sending... 10 of 24" as it goes. Keep the page open until it says "Sent to 24 members." If you close it or lose your connection part-way, the members not yet reached do not get the email, and the only way to reach them is to send again to everyone.

The speed is set on the server: EMAIL_BATCH_SIZE (15 members per batch unless changed) and EMAIL_PER_SECOND (8 unless changed). The emails come from EMAIL_FROM, or from ANNOUNCEMENT_EMAIL_FROM if announcements are sent through a different service. See Sender addresses, sending speed and testing and Send announcements through a different service.

If something goes wrong

What you see	What it means and what to do
This announcement is hidden. Make it visible to members before emailing it.	Edit the announcement, tick Visible to members, save, and try again.
The send button is grey	There is nobody to send to (no active members, or all have turned the emails off), or it is already being sent.
Enter a valid email address for the test	The test address is not in the form name@example.org.
The test email could not be sent	The mail service refused it. Try once more; if it keeps failing, see the last two rows.
Sent to 22 members. Could not send to: and addresses	The mail service did not accept those copies. Check each address for a typing mistake on the Members page and correct it. Then tell those members directly, or send again to everyone.
A problem, then "Sent to 10 members. The rest did not get it."	Self-hosted. The sending stopped part-way. Fix the cause, then send again; those who had it will get it twice.
A problem, then "Nobody was emailed."	Self-hosted. It failed before anyone was reached.
This announcement is already being sent	Hosted. Wait for the status line to show it has finished.
Email is not set up on the server (EMAIL_PROVIDER and EMAIL_FROM), so announcements cannot be emailed yet.	Self-hosted. The server has no mail service or no sender address. See Email: what the site sends and how to choose a provider.
Nothing was really sent: email is not set up on this server (EMAIL_PROVIDER is "log").	Self-hosted. The server is set to write emails to its log instead of sending them, which is how a new or test installation starts. The counts are what would have been sent. Choose a real provider.

"Accepted for sending" is not the same as "arrived". An email can be accepted and still land in a spam folder or bounce later. If members say they are not getting your emails, see Mail server errors and spam on a hosted site, or Nobody can log in, or emails do not arrive on your own server.