Club email and announcements

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Your club can talk to its members four ways here: automatic membership emails, announcements, a mailing list in Mailchimp or Brevo, and your Discord server.

Where replies go

Emails about your club's auctions and memberships come from the club's own addresses on this site. They never change, however often your officers do. Emails, under Setup, lists them, and says who each one reaches.

Pick your auction chair for Auction replies and your membership chair for Contact replies. Leave Donation replies blank: vendors' replies are filed on the donation page either way. See Donations from vendors.

If the page asks for a Membership email address instead, replies to membership emails go to that address.

Membership emails

On Emails, below the boxes, each email is shown as a member will see it. Click into the preview and type your own opening and closing: "Our next meeting is the second Tuesday, and the pizza's on us." Then (probably) tick all four boxes:

Send welcome letter to new club members
Send membership renewal confirmation
Send expiration reminder 30 days before membership expires
Send expiration reminder the day before membership expires

Also include information about the next event adds whatever's next on your club calendar.

People you import from a spreadsheet don't get the welcome letter. Adding one person by hand, untick Send welcome letter on them to hold it until they first pay dues.
Somebody added without one, say from an auction with Send club welcome letter off, gets it when they first pay dues.
Every email has a link at the bottom where members pick all emails, essential ones only, or none. What they picked shows as their Contact status.

Tip A new member says the welcome email never came? Nine times out of ten it's in their spam folder.

Announcements

Announcements, in the club's menu, sends one message everywhere at once. It needs the Send announcements permission, because it goes straight to members' phones and inboxes with nobody checking it first.

Type it in Announcement. The whole thing goes out everywhere; there's no "read more".
Tick where it goes: Discord, Push notifications (members with the phone app), Mailchimp or Brevo, and Website: the top of your club page and the announcement snippet on your own site. A box you can't tick says what to connect first.
Send later to schedule it, or leave it blank to send now.
Send announcement.

Sent the wrong thing? You have 30 seconds to Retract it before anything leaves. After that, Retract still deletes the Discord post and takes it off your website; emails and phone notifications already sent stay sent. A scheduled one has a Cancel button until it goes.

The list of recent announcements counts how each one did: Discord, phones reached, emails opened, and times shown on your website.

Tip Keep announcements to a sentence or two. People read them on a locked phone screen.

AI: Ask "send the club an announcement that Thursday's meeting moved to the 14th".

Mailchimp and Brevo

Connect one and your member list keeps a mailing list up to date by itself: new members added, details changed, people who asked for no email dropped. You write and send newsletters in Mailchimp or Brevo, as you do now.

Mailchimp	Mailchimp settings, then Connect and sign in to Mailchimp. Choose an audience, or have one made for you.
Brevo	Brevo settings. In Brevo, make an API key (it starts `xkeysib-`), paste it, and Connect. Then choose a list. The free plan is decent, with no logo on your emails.

Every member with an email is on it, and each change goes across as it's saved, and again every night.
It only goes one way. Edit people here, not there. The one thing that comes back is an unsubscribe.
No non-essential emails counts as unsubscribed; Do not contact takes them off.

Tags, for sending to some members

Each member is tagged, so you can write to just the right people. In Mailchimp they're tags; in Brevo they're in the MEMBER_TAGS field.

expiring-soon, expired	Runs out within 30 days, or already has. Your renewal campaign.
new-member, long-term-member	Joined in the last six months, or five or more years ago.
nearby, medium-distance, long-distance	Under 10 miles from the club, 10 to 30, or further.
power-seller, power-buyer	Sold, or bought, over $1,000 in lots.
probably-inactive	No club activity in six months.
admin, auction-checkin, discord-connected	Helps run the club; has checked in at an auction; is on your Discord.
Categories	Up to five categories each member buys and sells most. Mail the cichlid people about the cichlid speaker.

Emails can also fill in each member's own details: their membership number, expiration date, barcode, and a link to renew. The settings page lists every field.

Tip Want the welcome and reminder emails to look like your newsletter? Turn them off on the Emails page and build them in Mailchimp or Brevo, triggered by the new-member and expiring-soon tags.

Discord

Discord, under Setup, links your club to its Discord server. Members get roles to match their membership, and your announcements and auctions post there.

Connect Discord server adds the site's bot to your server. Type /connect in the server and paste the code from the Discord page.
In Discord's role settings, drag the bot's role above every role it should hand out. It can't give out a role above its own.
Post the join button. Members click it and type their email; the ones already on your member list are matched, and anybody else is added.
Fetch roles from Discord, then click a role to decide who gets it: Paid membership role, Unpaid / expired membership role, or a BAP points threshold or HAP points threshold. Roles change by themselves as people renew, lapse or earn points.
Type /announcements_here in the channel for announcements, and /auctions_here in the one for auction news.

Tick Automatically create a Discord scheduled event for each promoted auction and each auction shows up in Discord's events, too. Meetings and other calendar events can do the same; see Events and your website.

Tip Emails people enter in Discord aren't verified in any way, so don't put anything private behind the paid-member role.