Emailing group members

Any member of a group can email the other members via the web site. This is better than trying to keep personal email lists because:

  • Members' email addresses are accurate and kept up-to-date automatically - you don't need to know them
  • You will automatically include any new members, and exclude members that have left the group (particularly important in the case of deceased members)
  • You will honour requests made by members not to be emailed
  • You will not reveal members' email addresses to each other
Start your email

To start sending am email to your group, go to the main group page and click 'Membership list' just below the page heading (the link will read 'Membership list and management' for group leaders and editors). You will see a list of the current group members.

To email just one member click the 'Contact...' link next to their name. You will see a simple form that asks you for a subject and the text of your message. The web site will send your email for you.

To email all the group members, click 'Email group members' towards the bottom of the list. The rest of this note assumes you want to email your group's members.

Select your group(s)

When you ask to send a group email, you will see a page asking you to tick which groups you want to email. It will list all the groups you belong to together with any for which you are an editor, the group you started from is ticked for you...

Select email group

If you have access to multiple groups, you can select more than one to email all members of each group. The web site automatically detects and suppresses duplicate email addresses.

Create your email

Having selected one or more groups you can send your email using this form:

There are two ways to create an email:

  1. You can enter a subject and message into the form.
  2. You can specify the id of a web site posting, normally a news item so your email content also appears as news attached to the group. Emails created this way can use formatting such as headings and bullet points.

The web site will automatically suggest the email comes from you and your email address.

You can add an attachment up to 2Mb - a restriction imposed by our hosting company.

You can send a test email before mailing the group(s). Again the site suggests the test email is sent to your address.

You see a confirmation page like this when you click the 'Proceed' button:

Email confirm

If you specified a post id on the previous page, the confirmation page shows you the post's title so you can confirm you picked the right one.

Click 'Confirm your request' to see this page that tells you how many emails were sent and details of any problems encountered:

Email results

Test messages

We strongly suggest you send a test message (as described in the previous section) before sending your email to the group. You can then open the test message in your email software to make sure it looks OK. You can then click 'Restart' to return, via the group selection page, to the email detail page with all the same information you supplied before filled in for you. You can then choose to send a new test email, having made some changes, or to send your email to the group members.

Request a copy email

When you opt to send your email to group members you will see a 'Request copy' check box. Tick the box to get a copy sent to you. Note that you are probably in the list of people you are emailing so you will get a copy that way, but if you tick the box you will get an extra copy that lists all the recipients of your email. Note that the list will not include retired members or members that have opted not to receive your group emails.

Adding links and images to your email

If you enter a posting id, you can use the standard editing features we provide to include links, images, formatted text, bullet points, etc.

If, instead, you enter your text in the 'Message' box, you can enter only simple text. However you can use special tags to include links and images in your message.

To provide a simple link, use:
[link link-address]

For example:
[link https://haylingu3a.org] generates: haylingu3a.org

To link a piece of text, use:
[link link-address text-to-link]

For example:
[link https://haylingu3a.org Click me] generates: Click me

To insert an image into your email, use:
[image image-address]

The image address can be a link to a picture of a document (normally one ending .pdf which indicates a document that can be read by just about everyone).

Note, however, most email programs suppress images in emails by default.

In addition, you can select an option to 'Email selected group members'. This adds an extra page that allows you to select which members of the group you want to email.