Create a mailing list in eNotify

This article refers to our legacy product, eNotify. For the best Finalsite experience, we recommend using our newest product, Messages. To learn more, read the Self-Enabling Messages Guide or contact the Support team for assistance.

A mailing list is an easy-to-use option for managing the recipients of your bulk mailings, because it helps you keep track of your data, control unsubscribes, and send messages to multiple groups.

When you use a mailing list, you only have to create it once. All of your recipients will be stored for the next time you want to send an email to that group of people. If you use dynamic filters or groups, it will always be up to date, too! If you uploaded a data sheet and want to upload a revised version of the same data sheet, eNotify will automatically skip the addresses that are already on the list. The next time you want to create an eNotice, just go to that mailing list and click the "New eNotice with this list" button.

Mailing lists also give you a better way to manage unsubscribes and prevent recipients from globally unsubscribing from all your emails. When an eNotice is sent from a mailing list, a user who clicks the "Unsubscribe" link will see the option "Unsubscribe from this mailing" in addition to the options that all users see, "Unsubscribe from all mailings from this organization" and "Report as SPAM." Users who are given the option to only unsubscribe from fundraising emails and not the weekly newsletter, for example, will frequently take it.

Once someone has unsubscribed from your mailings, it's important for you to no longer send messages to that person. Keeping that unsubscribe information together with the mailing list means that the user will not inadvertently be uploaded or filtered into an eNotice recipients list.

Just like adding recipients to an individual eNotice, there are four ways to create a mailing list.

Dynamic filters

Dynamic Filters allow eNotify editors to create a mailing list that always sends messages to constituents who meet a predefined set of parameters (such as "Parents of all current 7th and 8th grade students"). The parameters remain the same every time the dynamic filter is used, even if the people who fit the criteria change.

Find out more about Configure dynamic filters in eNotify.

Groups

Groups work much the same as dynamic filters, with the added benefit that you can both filter members into a group, as well as explicitly add members. Dynamic filters in Groups Manager are somewhat more sophisticated than eNotify dynamic filters, so a more complicated filter can be defined if necessary. This method is especially handy when the desired group already exists in Groups Manager.

Learn more about how to Create groups using Dynamic Filters.

Constituents

You can add constituents to a mailing list either individually, using search filters, or in bulk.

Uploading a data sheet is a highly efficient way to add a large number of email addresses to an eNotify mailing list all at once, including addresses that may not be in Constituent Manager. By listing all of the email addresses with the recipients' first and last names, you can include new recipients on your list and ensure that you are able to personalize any emails sent to them, without having to add names one at a time.

For information about uploading a data sheet, refer to Upload a data sheet to a mailing list.