Overview

The Messages area lets you email board members across your entire district or council in one go. It’s your main way to share announcements, reminders, and outreach with the unit leaders you support.

Instead of typing out email addresses, you pick one or more Recipient Groups — saved, named audiences — and Connect gathers the matching board members for you.

Recipient Groups

A Recipient Group is a saved combination of filters describing who should receive a message — for example, “Unit Treasurers” or “In-Council Units.” Once saved, a group is available on every message you send going forward, so you don’t have to rebuild the same audience each time.

Four ready-made groups are available and can’t be edited or deleted, shown only where they can actually reach someone:

• District Board Members (districts only)
• Council Board Members
• Unit Board Members

Building a Group

1. Go to your district or council, open Messages, and click Manage Groups.
2. Start a new group and give it a name.
3. Add one or more filter rows:
   • Position — one or more board roles (President, Treasurer, and so on).
   • Organization level — the levels you can reach from your position (a district can reach Councils and Units; a council can reach its own board and its Units).
   • Council — for districts, one or more specific councils.
4. Rows are joined with And — a board member must match every row to be included.
5. A live count and a sample of up to five matching people update as you add filters, so you can confirm the group before saving.
6. Click Save.

Open Manage Groups any time to edit or delete a group you created. The predefined groups can’t be changed.

How to Send a Message

1. Go to your district or council and open Messages.
2. Click Send Message to start a new message.
3. Pick one or more Recipient Groups. The form shows how many unique people you’re about to reach and how many duplicates were removed, so someone who matches more than one group is only emailed once.
4. Set the From/Reply-To address. This controls where replies go. Your choices include your district or council’s reply-to address, your district or council name with a no-reply address, and your own name and email.
5. Type a Subject.
6. Write your message in the rich text editor. You can format text, add links, and create lists.
7. Attach any files if needed — click to expand the Attachments section (images, PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and CSV files are all supported).
8. Under When would you like to send this message?, choose Send Now or Send Later. If you pick Send Later, enter the date and time you’d like it to go out.
9. (Optional) Click Send Test to email a copy to yourself first so you can check how it looks.
10. Click Send to deliver your message.

Good to know about recipients

• Recipients come entirely from the groups you pick — build a group that includes your own board if you want them to receive the message too.
• A person who would receive the message more than once (for example, they match two selected groups) only gets one copy.
• If no one matches your selected groups, Connect will let you know there are no recipients so you can adjust your choices.
• Messages sent before Recipient Groups launched keep showing the original audience they were sent to.

Additional Features

• Rich text editor — format your messages with bold, italics, links, and lists.
• File attachments — attach images, PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and CSV files.
• Send Test — send a test copy to yourself before sending to everyone.
• Scheduled sending — choose Send Later to schedule a message for a future date and time.
• Delivery tracking — after a message sends, view counts for Recipients, Delivered, Opened, Clicked, Bounced, Unsubscribed, and Spam.
• Message history — every message you’ve sent (and any scheduled to go out) is listed in the Messages area.

Tips

• Save a Recipient Group for any audience you message often, like “All Unit Presidents,” so you don’t rebuild it each time.
• Watch the live count and sample while building a group to make sure it matches who you expect.
• Use Send Test to preview formatting and attachments before sending to everyone.
• Schedule important announcements with Send Later so they arrive at the start of the day.
• Check your delivery tracking to spot bounced addresses, then follow up to get updated contact information.
• Keep messages short with a clear call to action, especially when asking units to complete tasks or submit documents.