SOAR

EBlast Settings

An icon is available under Administration/Email/Eblast called Settings. This page allows you to setup your EBlast options.

• Enable EBlast
  • This will turn on/off the EBlast feature

• Email Address
  • All EBlast emails will come form the email address: eblast@
  • This is an alias to the email address defined by this option
  • This design was chosen to assist in EBlasts not being flagged as SPAM

• Day of the Week
  • You get to pick the day of the week EBlasts will be generated on
    

If you are using the Group filters and have your Roster setup, EBlast gets even better. EBlast email will be personalized for each member. Only content that applies to that member will be included in their EBlast email. If Filters are used, you will see a listing of them in the individual EBlasts.

A couple of examples will explain this better.

Your website contains two special filters:

• Group
  • This filter cannot be changed
  • It should be used for content that effects the entire organization
• Committee
  • This filter cannot be changed
  • It should be used for content applicable only to organization leaders
    

Each EBlast consists of two columns

Column #1 - Content added/updated in the last 7 days

• Announcements & Events
  • These are displayed first to emphasize importance
  • Summary details (including teasers) are shown
  • Links to any file attachments are included
  • If an item contains more detail than shown in the EBlast, a link to the full content on the unit website is displayed
• Files, Links, Custom Pages, and Photo Albums
  • A link is provided to the added/updated item on the website

Column #2 – Upcoming Events

• Events in the next 7 days are shown in the first section
  

If you would like to use the EBlast feature, we recommend following these steps.

1. Make sure you have the Advanced Package
   • You can check this (or upgrade) by going to Administration/Account
2. Make sure you have created accounts (Active or Blocked) for all organization members, including their email addresses
   • You can import accounts via the SOAR Roster or Member Import functions
   • You can add accounts manually at Administration/Members
3. Check that you are using the special Committee Filter for all leader content
4. Select your EBlast settings - but do not turn EBlast on
   

Communicating with members is one of the most important and time consuming tasks organization leaders have.

A typical member will receive multiple emails each week with reminders, information on new events, final details on upcoming events, changes in meeting schedules, volunteer requests, etc. For each of these, a leader will post content to the unit website AND send an email to the appropriate group.

SOAR EBlast simplifies communications in the following ways.

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There are a few limitations to Email Lists that you should be aware of.

• List Names need to be all lower case and should not include an characters other than a-z.
• List Names cannot be longer than 24 characters
• Email messages to Email Lists cannot be larger than 6MB. It is better to put a file in the Files section of your website and send a link to it.
• Email messages to Email Lists cannot contain more than 20 recipients, i.e. the TO or CC lines. The email system is designed to treat such emails as SPAM and reject them.

The meaning of the Authorized Senders list for each Email list is dependant upon the EMail List type.

Public

• No Auhthorized Senders are required
• No Global Senders are required
• Anyone, including non members, can send email to this list type

Member

• List Members are already authorized to send email, no need to add them to Authorized Senders
• Global Senders are already authorized
• Add any specific members that are not List Members or Global Senders

Restricted

• List Members are not authorized to send email
  

List Members are those members who will receive email sent to the Email List. You can add/remove List Members from an individual Email list from the Email List page.

If a member has multiple email addresses defined, email from the Email List will be sent to ALL of their email addresses.

You should add a member to appropriate Email Lists independent if they have an email address defined or not. If you add members without email addresses now to the proper Email Lists, when you add an email address for that member they will immediately start receiving email from that list. No need to update the Email List.

When creating Email Lists you can also control the display of whom the message is coming from and what happens when a unit member replies to an email message from an Email list.

The following Return Address Types are available for your use.

Sender

This is the default
• This is the standard behavior you will experience with the majority of email you receive
• Email is shown coming from the original sender of the message

Email List

• All mail is displayed as coming from the email address of the Email List
• This protects the email address of the original sender

Other

• With this option you can define the display of an email address where email comes from
• This protects the email address of the original sender
• Care should be taken to use a valid email address for this option
• Email Alias and Email List addresses SHOULD NOT be used for this option

The exact details of how each option works is desribed in the following table.

	Sender	Email List	Other
Who does email come from?	Original Sender	Email List	Defined Address
Where does email go with Reply?	Original Sender	Email List	Defined Address
Where does email go with Reply All?	Original Sender read more « first‹ previous123456789next ›last »