Email & Texting

Sending Emails

Video

This training video demonstrates the basics of sending an email via TouchPoint.

See also

Email/SMS Replacement Codes

Basics Steps for Sending Emails

Emails are sent using the Blue Toolbar. The process is basically the same whether you are sending to an individual or to a group of people. You start with your target audience.

Step 1

Go to your target audience:

  • People Record - Send to an individual.

  • Manage Tags - Send to a Tag.

  • Organization - Send to the entire org, or filter to send to specific individuals.

  • Search Builder results - Send to a target group.

See also

Tags
How to Use Search Builder
Step 2

From the Blue Toolbar > Envelope icon select one of these options:

  • Individuals - Send to each person in your list.

  • Parents - Send to the Primary Adults in the families represented in your list.

  • All Current Members - Available only on when viewing an organization. Send to those who are members at the time the email is sent. Use this when you are going to schedule an email to send at a future date.

    See also

    Schedule Email

  • Child with Parents CC’d - Send to the child and copy both Primary Adults in the family,

  • Single Email Addresses - Send only one email per email address, even if multiple people in your recipient list have the same email address.

Warning

When using Single Email Addresses option, do NOT use email replacement codes - not even {track} - as these are dependent on email being sent to an individual, not merely to an address.

This single email type of option is designed for use when sending out general information that is not specific to one individual.

Example: Your search is for children enrolled in any of several organizations and there are multiple children with the same email address (probably a parent’s). Only one email will be sent to that address. So, you obviously would not want to include, for example, a name or class assignment type of replacement code.

Note

When you use the Individuals or Child with Parents CC’d options, the email will also be sent to the Register Email, if one exists. An Involvement member will have a Register Email if an email address was entered at the start of a registration and it differs from the email address stored on the registrant’s record.

See also

Toolbar Options - the section labeled Email and Texting (envelope icon)

Step 3

Select your email option.

  • Empty Template - This is the most common option.

  • Saved Template - A User with the EmailTemplates role can create these for your database.

  • Saved Draft - Any User can save his own draft. Drafts can also be shared.

See also

Email Drafts
Using Email Templates
Step 4

Compose your email.

Subject You will not be able to send without entering something in both the Subject and the Body.

Body of the Email Click in the body of the email where you see Click here to edit content and type your message.

Step 5

Click the blue Save button.

Step 6

Send Test to Self.

If you are satisfied with the email, click Send.

Note

If you want to add a prompt that will appear after you click Send, asking “Are You Sure?” add the administration setting EmailPromptBeforeSend and give it a value of true.

Options for Adding Recipients

There are 2 options for adding other recipients to your list at the point you are ready to send your email. These can be used regardless of which email option you have selected - Individuals, Parents, or other option. The rules for those options will still apply to any added person, but not have any effect on a CC’d email address.

  • Add Person to Email

  • Add CC/Reply-To

Here is a 2-minute demonstration.

Add Person to Email

This option allows you to search for an individual in the database, who is not in your existing list, and add that person as an extra recipient.

Step 1

Before sending your email, click the blue + symbol to the right of the To: field, where you see your recipient list. This opens a search dialog box.

Step 2

Use the normal search procedures to find, select, and commit and add. This will add the person as a recipient.

Repeat as needed until you have added all the extra recipients you want.

The added names will display above the Subject.

Step 3

Send the email.

FAQ re Add Person to Email

These recipients are treated like all other recipients, in that they display on the Email Details in the list of recipients. And this email will display in that individual’s list of Received email.

Any personal Email Replacement Codes will work correctly for them as well. These are items such as name, first, employer. However, if you are emailing from an organization and are using replacements codes specific to that org, its registration or sub-groups, these will not apply to your added recipients, as they will not be in that org. So, they will see the actual code as you have entered it. You will probably want to avoid using those when adding extra recipients.

You can remove an added recipient by clicking the red X beside their name.

If you select someone who is already in your existing list of recipients, you will see a message to that effect, and that person will not be added again.

If the person you have selected to add does not have an email address, you will see a message to that effect, and they will not be added.

Add CC/Reply-To

This option allows you to enter an email address(es) for someone to receive a copy of the email. This person does not need to be in the database, and will not only receive a copy of the original email, but will also receive any replies to the sender of the email.

Step 1

Check the box Add CC/Reply-To?. This will cause a new text field to display for this purpose.

Step 2

Enter the email address in the text field. If entering more than one address, separate with a comma.

Step 3

Send the email.

FAQ re CC/Reply-To

Each regular or added recipient will see a message similar to this at the bottom of the email:

“This email was CC’d to the email addresses below and they are included in the Reply-To Field. johndoe@nowhere.com, pastor@mychurch.org”.

When a recipient replies to the sender, each CC’d person will receive the reply.

Even if the email address is on the record of a person in the database, this email will not display in their Received Emails. Using this feature, we are not sending to a person per se (like when you Add Person to Email), only to an email address.

The Email Details will contain the same message that the recipients see re the CC’d email. So, anyone viewing that email in TouchPoint will clearly see who received it.

If you change your mind and do not want to add someone to CC, just remove the check mark from the box. That will remove any data in that field, and will no longer display it.

Use Cases for CC and Reply-To

There are a number of uses for these options.

  • Accountability/Transparency. Normal recipients are told that the email was CC’d to specific addresses.

  • Add a Mailing List Address to an email. For example: You can copy the Finance Team on an email to congregation about the upcoming Budget.

  • Add outside person who is not in the database. Example: Youth Pastor sends an email about upcoming outing at a Laser Tag facility and wants to copy the manager of the Laser Tag facility for their information.

  • Respond to Mailing List. The congregation can reply to the entire finance team with questions about a budget email.

  • Facilitating Co-Leaders. Children’s Camp is being coordinated by two people and they want to both be copied on responses to an information email they sent about camp.

You will probably find many more uses for these features.

Creating a New Email from an Existing One

TouchPoint has a couple of methods you can use to take an existing email and either Create New Draft or View HTML Source and copy the code and paste into a new email. Both of these options are performed from the Email Details page. Click here for details on these two methods.

TouchPoint has many other features relating to sending and tracking emails. Click the Email and Texting index link below to view a list of other help articles.

See also

Email and Texting

Sending to More Than 150 Recipients

If you are sending to more than 150 recipients, when you click Send, the dialog box will let you know that your emails have been queued and will be sent, and the Send button will disappear (so you will not accidentally click it again and send the email again). This is the same message you see if you use Scheduled Emails.

For this many emails, it is more efficient for us to use our batch processor. This runs every 5 minutes on the hour. So, if you queue your email at 11:03 AM, it will start sending at 11:05.



Latest Update

6/23/2022

Removed Grammarly warning