Email Campaigns

Email Campaigns let you compose and send rich-format email blasts to specific groups of people in your church -- all members, a single team or small group, a hand-picked list of people, or a filtered slice (e.g., "all visitors, female"). You can send right away, schedule for later, save as a draft, or save the campaign as a reusable template. Open and click rates are tracked automatically.

Accessing Email Campaigns

1. Log in to the Admin panel.
2. Click Email Campaigns in the sidebar.

The dashboard shows a paginated list of all campaigns and four headline stats: total emails sent, total opened, total clicked, and total campaigns sent. The dashboard also shows your average open rate and average click rate.

You can search by campaign name or subject, and filter by status: Draft, Scheduled, Sending, Sent, Cancelled, or Failed.

Composing a Campaign

Click New Campaign (or Compose) to open the campaign editor. The form has three sections.

1. Email Content

• Name -- A short internal label (optional; defaults to the subject line). Only your team sees the name.
• Subject -- The subject line that recipients see in their inbox.
• Body -- Full rich-text email content with formatting, links, and inline images.

You can also start from a saved template -- pick one from the template dropdown to pre-fill the subject and body.

2. Recipients

Pick one of the following recipient modes:

The form shows a live recipient count preview so you know how many emails you're about to send.

Important: People who have opted out of email are automatically excluded from every campaign, regardless of the recipient mode you choose. See Unsubscribe and Email Preferences for how members manage this.

3. Send, Schedule, or Save

Choose one of three actions:

• Save as Draft -- Stores the campaign for later editing. No email is sent.
• Send Now -- Queues the campaign for immediate delivery. The status moves from "draft" to "sending" to "sent" as TimelyChurch processes it.
• Schedule for Later -- Pick a future date and time. The campaign moves to "scheduled" status. TimelyChurch automatically dispatches scheduled campaigns once their time arrives.

You can optionally check Save as template and provide a template name to keep the subject and body for future reuse.

Pre-Filling from Other Modules

Email Campaigns integrates with two other admin tools:

• From the People list -- Use the bulk action "Email selected" to pre-fill the recipient list with the people you've checked.
• From an Announcement -- Use the "Send as email" action on a published announcement to pre-fill the campaign body with the announcement content.

Campaign Detail Page

Click any campaign name in the list to see its detail view. The detail page shows:

• Subject, body, and recipient summary
• Status with a colored badge
• Send timestamps (created at, scheduled at, sent at, completed at)
• Per-recipient delivery status -- one row per recipient, with their email, sent timestamp, opened timestamp, clicked timestamp, and any error message
• Aggregate metrics -- sent count, opened count, clicked count, open rate, click rate

Tracking

Every email is sent with two tracking mechanisms:

• Open tracking -- A 1x1 invisible pixel is included in the email body. The first time a recipient's mail client loads images, the open is recorded.
• Click tracking -- Links in the email body are routed through TimelyChurch, which logs the click and redirects to the original URL.

Note: Open tracking only fires when the recipient's mail client loads images. Some users disable image loading for privacy, so the actual read rate is typically higher than what's shown.

Editing, Duplicating, and Cancelling

Once a campaign has started sending, the body and recipient list are locked -- you cannot edit a sent or sending campaign.

Templates

Templates are saved drafts of subject + body that you can reuse across campaigns. Manage them under Email Campaigns > Templates:

• Create a template directly from the Templates page
• Save a campaign as a template at the time you compose it (the "Save as template" checkbox)
• Edit or delete templates from the Templates page

Templates are scoped to your church -- they are not shared across churches.

Permissions

Sending email campaigns requires the Email Campaigns permission. Church admins have this by default. Other roles can be granted access through the Roles & Permissions settings -- see Permissions and Broadcast Roles.

This feature is also gated by the church's plan: only plans with Email Campaigns enabled (typically Pro and above) can compose and send.

Best Practices

• Use a recognizable "From" name -- The from address is set by TimelyChurch. The sender display name uses your church name automatically.
• Send a test first -- Use the People recipient mode to send to just yourself before blasting to the whole church.
• Mind the schedule -- Avoid sending during dinner hours (5-7 PM). Mid-morning (9-11 AM) generally has the best open rates.
• Watch for unsubscribes -- High unsubscribe rates after a campaign signal that the content or frequency isn't matching your audience's expectations.

Related Articles

• Communication Overview
• Email Templates -- For automated, system-triggered emails
• Sending Emails -- Underlying delivery mechanics
• Email Logs
• Unsubscribe and Email Preferences
• Permissions and Broadcast Roles