Email a concert's ticket holders

You can email everyone who holds tickets for a concert: to tell them about a change of time, or to tell them about your next concert. Any admin can do this.

On a site we host

Emailing ticket holders is part of the Premium plan, along with ticketing itself.

Write and send a message

1. In the admin panel, open Ticketing and press the concert.
2. Open the Mail tab.
3. Press Write a message to ticket holders.
4. Under What is this message?, choose About this concert or News or promotion. The next section explains the difference.
5. Read the line that says "This will go to" and a number of people. Nothing has been sent yet.
6. Type a Subject (up to 200 characters) and your Message. See Format text with the editor.
7. Send yourself a test: type your own address under Send yourself a test first and press Send test. Check how it looks in your inbox. The test's subject begins "[Test]".
8. Press the send button, which reads, for example, Send to 40.
9. A box asks, for example, "Send "Doors open at 7" to 40 people?" and warns "This cannot be undone." Press Send to 40 to confirm.

A concert's Mail tab in Ticketing with the message form open: the question 'What is this message?' with the two choices 'About this concert' and 'News or promotion', the line saying how many people it will go to, then Subject, Message, the test box and the 'Send to 40' button

Choose the right kind of message

	About this concert	News or promotion
Use it for	What ticket holders need to know about the concert they are coming to: a change of time or place, when the doors open, where to park.	Anything else: your next concert, a season brochure, an appeal.
Who is sent it	Everyone holding tickets.	Everyone holding tickets, except anyone who has asked not to be sent news.
A link to stop these messages	No	Yes, in every copy
The line at the foot	"You are receiving this because you hold tickets for" and the concert	"You are receiving this because you ordered tickets for" the concert "from" your choir

Why the choice matters

People who bought a ticket expect to hear about that concert. They did not necessarily ask for your news. A message about the concert is part of what they ordered, so it goes to everyone and cannot be stopped by its reader. News and promotion is different: each person can say no to it, and your site leaves them out once they have.

So use About this concert only for what ticket holders need to know. If you use it to advertise, you are writing to people who have asked you not to.

How people stop and restart your emails, and how you are told, is explained in How people stop your emails.

Who receives it

• The buyer of every order for this concert that is Paid or To pay on arrival, if the order has an email address. That includes orders you recorded yourself and complimentary tickets.
• Each email address once, however many orders it has.
• Not buyers whose orders were cancelled or refunded, or are still being paid for.

The count shown before you send is the number of addresses. If it is 0, the send button cannot be pressed.

Every copy ends with your choir's name, the Public email address and Address or location from Site Settings → Contact, and the line saying why the reader has it.

Watch it go, or stop it

Messages you have sent are listed under the button, newest first, with the date, the kind of message and how it went:

What the list says	Meaning
"Sending: 30 of 80"	Still going out.
"Sent to 80"	Finished.
"Stopped after 30 of 80"	You stopped it.
"2 could not be delivered" followed by addresses	Those addresses were refused. Check them for typing mistakes on the orders.

The list of messages sent on a concert's Mail tab: one line reading 'Sent to 80' and one reading 'Sending: 30 of 80' with a Stop button beside it

To stop a message that is still going out:

1. Press Stop beside it.
2. A box asks "Stop sending" and the subject, and says "Those already sent it have it." Press Stop sending. Press Carry on to leave it sending.

Stopping cannot recall copies already sent, and a stopped message cannot be started again.

On a site we host

Your message joins a queue and is sent in the background. You are told, for example, "Queued for 40. You can leave this page: it shows how it is going whenever you come back." The list brings itself up to date every few seconds while a message is going out.

On a self-hosted site

There is no queue: the page you are on sends the message a batch at a time. You are told "Sending to 40. Keep this page open until it is done."

If you close the page or lose your connection part-way, nothing is lost. Open the Mail tab again and press Carry on sending beside the message. It picks up after the last batch that finished.

How many go in each batch and how fast is set by EMAIL_BATCH_SIZE (default 15) and EMAIL_PER_SECOND (default 8). See Sender addresses, sending speed and testing.

When email is not set up

If your site cannot send email, the Mail tab says "Email is not set up on this site's server, so messages cannot be sent from here." and the button cannot be pressed.

On a self-hosted site

Set up an email provider. See Email: what the site sends and how to choose a provider. These messages are sent as announcement email, so if you send announcements through a different service, that is the one used. See Send announcements through a different service.

If something goes wrong

Message	What to do
"The message needs a subject"	Fill in Subject.
"The message needs some text"	Type something in Message.
"The message is too long"	Shorten it.
"There is nobody to send this to"	No ticket holder fits. For News or promotion, everyone may have asked not to be sent news.
"Enter a valid email address for the test"	Check the address in the test box.
"The test email could not be sent"	Your site could not send email just then. Try again shortly.
"Sending stopped. Open this page again to carry on."	A batch failed. Open the Mail tab again and press Carry on sending.
"That message is not being sent"	It had already finished or been stopped.