Church Admin Plugin

Send an email

⭐ Premium

The Send Email screen lets you compose and send a bulk email to any group of people in your directory — filtered by member type, people type, small group, ministry, or any combination. Emails can be sent immediately or scheduled for a future date and time.

Go to Church Admin → Communications → Send email.

Step 1 — Choose recipients

The top of the form shows the people filter — the same filter used throughout the directory. Tick the member types, people types, small groups, ministries, or sites you want to include. The filter determines who receives the email.

Alternatively, you can type specific names into a recipients field to send to named individuals rather than a filtered group.

Only people with a valid email address and bulk email opt-in enabled will receive the email — anyone who has opted out is excluded automatically. See Address list filtering for the full filter options.

Step 2 — Thumbnail image

Drag and drop an image onto the upload area to attach a thumbnail — this is used when the email is shared as a link, for example in the app chat. This is optional and does not affect the email body itself.

Step 3 — Post to app chat

A dropdown lets you optionally post the email to a Ministry Chat room at the same time as sending. Select which chat room — General or a specific ministry — and a link to view the email content will be posted to that room when the email sends. Select Do not post to chat to skip this. See Ministry Chat.

Step 4 — Compose the email

Subject

The email subject line. Keep it clear and relevant — this is what determines whether recipients open the email.

From name and from email

These default to your Church Admin default sender settings. A Use me as from name and email link appears if your directory record has an email address — click it to use your own name and email as the sender for a more personal feel.

Message body

The email is composed using the WordPress editor, so you can format text, add images, and create links in the same way as a blog post. Images should be uploaded to the WordPress Media Library and pasted in as links — file attachments are not supported for security and performance reasons.

The following shortcodes are available in the message body and are replaced individually for each recipient:

  • [FIRSTNAME] — the recipient’s first name
  • [LASTNAME] — the recipient’s last name
  • [NAME] or [FULLNAME] — the recipient’s full name
  • [subject] — replaced with the email subject line
  • [BLOGINFO] — a link to your church website
  • [HEADER_IMAGE] — inserts the email header image configured in settings
  • [year] — the current year, useful for copyright footers

Step 5 — Send now or schedule

Send now is ticked by default — the email goes out as soon as you click Send, subject to your email queueing settings.

To schedule the email for a future time, set a date and time using the date picker and time field. Scheduled emails are queued and sent using WordPress Cron — they go out after the scheduled time when the website is next visited. Set the time to something like 9:00am to ensure they reach inboxes at a reasonable hour.

Step 6 — Send

Click Send. The screen shows how many recipients the email is being prepared for, then confirms the send or schedule. The email is saved to the sent emails log so you can review it later. See Sent emails log.

If no email addresses are found

If the screen reports no email addresses found after sending, the most likely causes are:

  • The selected filter returned no people matching those criteria
  • Everyone matching the filter has opted out of bulk email
  • The people matching the filter have no email address stored in the directory

Check the filter selection and review individual records in the directory to diagnose which applies.

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