Communications

Overview

The Communications workspace gives your team everything needed to reach members at scale. Build reusable templates, define audience segments, and send campaigns across email and SMS — all from one place.

Enabling SMS

SMS is an optional add-on that requires a one-time setup by an admin. Once enabled, your church is assigned a dedicated local phone number — members text it to opt in, and campaigns are sent from that same number.

How to Enable

1. Go to Settings → Integrations
2. Find the SMS Service card and click Enable SMS
3. Ecclesly automatically provisions a dedicated local phone number for your church
4. Your number appears in the card — members can begin texting JOIN to opt in immediately

Disabling SMS

To release your SMS number and stop all outbound SMS, click Disable SMSin the same card. All subscriber consent records are retained — if you re-enable later, active subscribers are preserved.

Campaigns

A campaign is a single message send — to a segment of members or your entire congregation. Each campaign targets one channel (Email or SMS) and is sent once or on a scheduled date.

Creating a Campaign

Click New Campaign from any Communications page. The composer walks you through four steps:

1. Channel — Choose Email or SMS.
2. Audience — Select a saved segment to narrow your recipients, or leave as All eligible members to reach everyone with consent on file.
3. Content — Enter a campaign name and compose your message. For SMS, a live counter shows character count, encoding (GSM-7 or Unicode), number of segments, and a cost preview based on your current audience. For Email, use the rich-text editor with subject line and from address. You can load a saved template from either channel at this step.
4. Review & Send — Confirm recipient count, estimated cost (SMS), and monthly usage before sending. Optionally schedule the campaign for a future date and time. Click Send Now or Schedule Campaign.

Personalization Variables

Insert dynamic placeholders that are replaced with each recipient's data at send time:

Campaign Status

SMS Limits & Cost Visibility

Each plan includes a monthly SMS allowance. Ecclesly tracks usage in real time and shows your remaining balance before every send — so there are never surprise overages.

Monthly Allowance

Your plan includes 500 SMS segments per month. Usage resets automatically on the 1st of each month. Your current usage is shown on the Communications dashboard and in the cost preview on every SMS campaign.

What Is an SMS Segment?

Carriers split long text messages into segments at the network level. Each segment counts toward your monthly allowance:

The composer automatically detects encoding and displays the segment count as you type. Messages over 3 segments cannot be sent — shorten the message or remove special characters to reduce the segment count.

Cost Preview

While composing an SMS campaign, the Cost Preview card shows:

• Recipients — number of eligible members in the selected audience
• Segments / message — how many segments your current message uses
• Total SMS — Recipients × Segments (total segments consumed)
• Monthly used / After send — your balance before and after this send

If a send would exceed your monthly limit, it is blocked with a clear error. Contact support to increase your limit if needed.

Phone Deduplication

When multiple members share a phone number (e.g. a family), Ecclesly sends only one message to that number and counts it as one SMS segment — not one per member record.

Templates

Templates are reusable message drafts. Create a template once and select it when composing a campaign to pre-fill the subject and body — saving time on recurring messages like weekly newsletters or service announcements.

Creating a Template

1. Go to Communications → Templates and click New Template
2. Give the template a name and select the channel (Email or SMS)
3. For email, enter a subject line and compose the body using the rich text editor
4. Click Save Template

Using a Template in a Campaign

In the Content step of the campaign composer, click Start from templateto select a saved template. The subject and body are pre-filled — you can edit them before sending without affecting the original template.

Segments

Segments let you target a specific subset of your congregation based on rules. Each campaign can be sent to a saved segment instead of all members.

Building a Segment

1. Go to Communications → Segments and click New Segment
2. Enter a segment name
3. Add one or more rules using the rule builder. Each rule consists of a field, operator, and value
4. Rules are combined with AND logic — a member must match all rules to be included
5. Click Preview to see the estimated member count
6. Click Save Segment

Available Filter Fields

SMS Subscribers

The Subscribers page shows every member who has opted in to receive SMS messages from your church, along with their current status and how they opted in.

How Members Opt In

Members opt in by texting JOIN to your church's dedicated SMS number. The system automatically creates a consent record and links it to their member profile if a matching phone number is found.

Staff can also add subscribers manually on behalf of a member who has given verbal or written consent.

Consent records created via SMS keyword opt-in are the authoritative source for SMS eligibility. Members without a keyword opt-in can also be marked as consented directly on their member profile by a staff member.

Managing Subscribers

From Communications → Subscribers, staff can:

• View all subscribers with their status (Active or Unsubscribed), opt-in source, and joined date
• Filter by status — All, Active, or Unsubscribed
• Search by member name or phone number
• Unsubscribe a member on their behalf (e.g. if they changed phone numbers)
• Resubscribe a member who previously opted out

Analytics

The Analytics page gives a high-level view of your communications performance over the last 30, 60, or 90 days.

What's Tracked

Top Campaigns

The top campaigns table shows your 10 most-sent campaigns in the period, including send count, open rate, and click rate — useful for identifying what content resonates best with your congregation.

SMS Compliance

Ecclesly handles SMS compliance automatically in accordance with TCPA regulations and carrier requirements. You do not need to manage opt-outs manually.

Opt-In Keywords

Members can text any of the following to your church's number to opt in:

Opt-Out Keywords

Members can text any of the following to immediately stop receiving messages:

When a member texts STOP, Ecclesly immediately blocks that number from all future sends — even if a campaign targets a segment they belong to. The block is enforced at the moment messages are dispatched, so a STOP received while a campaign is mid-send is honored for any remaining messages.

Consent Records

Every opt-in and opt-out is recorded with a timestamp and source (texted keyword, staff entry, etc.). These records are retained indefinitely for compliance purposes, even if a member is later removed from your database.

Consent is tracked through two sources: the SMS Subscribers list (keyword opt-ins) and the member's profile (staff-set consent flag). Either source qualifies a member to receive SMS campaigns.

Permissions

Permissions are assigned per staff member under Settings → Staff. Global admins always have full access.