Members360° includes a sophisticated communication tool that allows you to send emails out to any individual member or subset of your membership you wish to define. The history of correspondence with each member is tracked for your convenience in the History area of the member's record (see Member details page).
There are several different ways to send email through Members360°. Here are a few examples:
Click a member's email address from the Member Detail page to send email to one member
Check off several members from a member search and use the email link on the Member Search page (see Using member search results)
Send email to all members included in a Smart Group (see Smart Groups for more information)
You can create a new email message that will go to any membership subset you have defined, and you can either send it immediately or save it as a template for later sending.
To begin, navigate to Members > Email to get to a screen like this:
Follow these steps to create and your email:
In the To: area, you can either send to an individual member or a Smart Group.
Member name: This field will be
auto-filled with a member if you clicked a member's email address or 
link from elsewhere in the system to get here. If
you checked off several members and used the send email feature from the
Member Search page (see Using
advanced member search results), this area will be autofilled with
the members you checked off.
Otherwise, the field will be open as in the screenshot above, and you can type the first few letters of the member's last name or the organization name. Then choose the matching member from the list that pops up.
Smart group: You can choose any of your existing Smart Groups from the list to send email to everyone in that group. This allows you to use Smart Groups as dynamic address books. See Smart Groups for more information.
Example: If you want to send a conference invitation email to members who have not already registered for a conference, you could create a Smart Group that consists of all active individual members and that excludes those who have already registered for the conference.
For the Email Address Type pulldown, choose which email address you wish to send to. You can choose among any of the email fields in your system (see Contact information fieldsfor more information). By default, this field will be set to Preferred Email Address, which means the email address selected as preferred for each member. (See Member details page - Phone, email, address, and web address fields for more information.) Feel free to try different types and see how the total email count changes.
Below the Email Address Type pulldown is a scrollable list of every email address that will receive the email. Feel free to check this list for accuracy. If you change the email address type or Smart Group, the list of email addresses will update to reflect what you chose.
In the From field, enter the email address from which you'd like to send this message. This will be the email address that receives any bouncebacks or replies to this email.
Note: Make sure to enter only one email address in this field.
In the Subject field, enter the subject line for this email. You cannot leave this field blank.
In the Priority pulldown, you have the option of selecting a priority, which will flag the email with the chosen priority for recipients using Outlook and similar programs. For most messages, you will leave this as Normal, which will not flag the email with a priority.
In the Message field, feel free to choose a previously-saved template from the list if you desire. If you do, it will fill in the content editor below. If not, then you can start composing from a blank slate.
Note: Loading a template will remove anything you have typed into your email. Be careful!
Use the supplied editor to compose your message. You can add formatted text, links, symbols, and more, and you can even access and modify the underlying HTML code if you have that expertise.
Hint: You can increase the viewable size of the editor by clicking the Increase Size button (in the upper right of the editor) as shown in the following screen shot.
Note: If you prefer to send a plain text message, choose the Plain Text option underneath the editor. This will bring up a text box instead of the editor, and will strip away any formatting from what you have typed already. You can switch back to Rich Text if you change your mind, which will reload the editor again.
As you type your email, you can add a merge field from the (Select a merge field) pulldown. You can select from most database fields (with a few exceptions, such as Password, that are inappropriate to send through email). When you choose a field, you'll be prompted with alternate text (which will display if a member has a blank for that field). When the email is sent, each member's database information will replace the merge fields. This is a good way, for example, to add a Dear [Member Name] greeting to your emails.
If you wish to save this email as a template, check off the save as a new template box. Then give the template a name. Doing this will allow you to use the email as a starting point for future emails by adding the template to the list referenced in step 7 above.
If you wish to send an attachment, use the Attachment: field and click the button to choose the attachment from your computer.
If you wish to send the email to additional email addresses that do not exist within Members360°, you can add them to the Additional recipients field.
Click the appropriate button at the bottom:
: Use this button to send
the email to the address(es) selected. If
you checked to save the email as a template, this button will both send
the email and save it as a template.
: This button only appears
if you checked the option to save the email as a template. Use
this button to save the template without
sending the email to anyone. This
is useful for creating templates to use later, as well as for creating
templates for form notifications, member notifications, and more.
: Use this button to abandon
your email without sending or saving any changes.
When you send an email, each recipient will have a Communication history item automatically added to their member history with the contents of the sent email (text only - the formatting is stripped to avoid display conflicts). See Member history for more details.
It's easy to edit and re-use an existing email template. From the Send Email page, look on the left-hand side of the screen under Related Links, and you'll see a manage email templates link as shown below.
This brings up a screen like the following.
From here, you can click the name of the email you wish to edit. This loads it into the Send screen, and automatically fills in the template name so you can save changes to it.
To view the sending history for any template, click the 
icon to the right of the template name. This
will show you the complete sending history for the template.
To delete a saved email template, just click the 
button
to the right of the template name. This
permanently deletes the template,
so use this feature cautiously.
You can also create a new email template from this page by clicking add email template in the upper right corner. This simply returns you to the Send Email screen as discussed above.