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Email and texting

Connect email and texting, send messages to a group, tag or your whole church, and handle unsubscribes and STOP replies the right way.

Phyle can email and text the people in your church, a few at a time or all at once. Before anything goes out, you see exactly who will get it and who won't.

Connecting services is done by an admin under Settings › Connections. Writing and sending messages is open to admins and staff under Messages.

Connect email

Invitations, messages, receipts, form alerts and reminders all go out by email. Until email is connected, Phyle records each email but doesn't deliver it, and you'll see an Email isn't connected yet notice on the screens that send.

Churches on phyle.org

If your church signed up at phyle.org, email works from the start. Until you connect your own mail service, Phyle sends for you: the Email card says Sending through Phyle, emails come from "Your Church via Phyle" at [email protected], and replies go to the Office email in Settings › Church, so fill that in. On the free plan you can send up to 500 emails a day this way; the card shows how many are left today. If a message would go past that, Phyle tells you before sending anything.

To send from your church's own address instead, connect your own mail service with the steps below. The card then says Sending through your own SMTP. Clearing the SMTP server goes back to sending through Phyle.

Connect your own mail service

Go to Settings › Connections and look at the Email card. If its badge already says Connected, email is ready to go and you can skip to the mailing address step below. If it says Not connected, connect your own mail service:

  1. Any provider that offers SMTP works, such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Mailgun, Postmark or Amazon SES. Find its SMTP settings in that provider's help pages.
  2. Fill in SMTP server, Port (usually 587), Username and Password.
  3. Enter the Send from address people will see, like [email protected], and a Send from name if you want something other than your church's name.
  4. Click Save connections.
  5. Click Send a test email to your address, at the bottom of the Email card, and check that it arrives.

Add your mailing address

The law requires a postal address at the bottom of every bulk email, so Phyle won't send a message to your church until it has one. Go to Settings › Church and fill in Street address, City and ZIP.

Send a message

  1. Go to Messages and click Write a message.
  2. Under How should it arrive?, choose Email or Text message.
  3. Under Who is it for?, choose one:
    • Everyone, or only members, attenders, visitors or inactive people
    • A group, for its members
    • A saved list from People
    • A tag
    • An event, choosing Who came or Who registered
    • Specific people, chosen by name
  4. Write your message. For email, add a Subject. The Insert buttons add First name, Last name or Church name, filled in for each person. In email, a blank line starts a new paragraph and web addresses become links.
  5. For email, check Replies go to. When someone replies, their reply lands there.
  6. Watch the Preview beside the editor to see the message as one person will.
  7. Click Send me a test if you'd like to see it arrive first, or Save draft to finish later.
  8. Click Review and send, check the summary, then choose Send it now or Send it later with a day and time.

As soon as you choose an audience, Phyle counts who will receive it and who won't, and why: no email address, no phone number, or opted out. People marked as deceased are never included.

After you send

Open a message from Messages to see each person's delivery. If some failed, Retry failed tries them again. Duplicate copies any message into a new draft, which is the easy way to send something similar.

A scheduled message waits in Scheduled. To change it, open it and click Cancel send. It goes back to your drafts. Sent messages can't be called back or deleted. They're kept as a record.

Templates

Messages › Templates holds messages you send again and again. Click New template, give it a Template name (only your team sees it), choose whether it's Used for email or text, and write it. A Welcome to first-time guests template is ready when you start.

To use one, click Write from this, or pick it from Start from at the top of the message box while writing.

Set up texting

Texting runs through your church's own Twilio account, so your church pays Twilio directly for its number and the texts it sends.

In the United States, phone carriers require every organization that texts from a regular phone number to register first. This is called A2P 10DLC registration: you register your church (the "brand") and the kind of messages you'll send (the "campaign"). Texts from an unregistered number may be blocked.

Prepare your registration

Phyle helps you gather what Twilio and the carriers ask for. Go to Settings › Connections and, in the Text messages card, click Turn on texting. The page has five sections:

  1. Your church's legal details. The legal name and US address on your IRS records, your EIN, and your website. This draft is for churches with a US EIN. Use your church's EIN, never a Social Security number. It's encrypted when saved.
  2. A person who can speak for your church. An authorized staff member's name, job title, work email and phone number.
  3. What you'll send. Describe your messages and how often people will hear from you, and write two sample messages that use your church's name, like "Grace Church: You're serving Sunday at 9 AM. Reply STOP to unsubscribe or HELP for help."
  4. How people agree to receive texts. Explain where people sign up, the exact wording they see, and how their agreement is recorded. Add links to your opt-in form, privacy policy and texting terms. Church membership alone is not permission to text.
  5. Register with your church's Twilio account. Use your draft to register your brand and campaign in Twilio. Twilio shows the fees and approval status there.

Click Save draft as often as you like and come back to finish. Saving doesn't submit anything, charge fees or turn on texting. The registration itself happens in Twilio.

Connect Twilio

Once Twilio approves your registration and your number is attached to the approved messaging service:

  1. Go back to Settings › Connections.
  2. In the Text messages card, paste your Account SID and Auth token from your Twilio console, and your Twilio phone number, like +15551234567.
  3. Check the Country code. It's added to numbers saved without one: 1 for the US and Canada.
  4. Copy the Reply address. In Twilio, open your phone number and, under Messaging, set "A message comes in" to that address (HTTP POST). This is how STOP, START and HELP replies reach Phyle.
  5. Click Save connections.

Writing texts

Under the message box, Phyle counts characters and shows how many texts it will send as. One text holds 160 characters. Emoji and some special characters cut that to 70. Longer messages are split into several texts, which Twilio charges for separately.

People can reply to any text with a keyword. Phyle answers automatically:

  • STOP (or STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, OPTOUT, REVOKE) stops all texts to that number, on every record that shares it, and confirms they're unsubscribed.
  • START (or UNSTOP, YES) turns texts back on.
  • HELP (or INFO) replies with your church's name, how to stop, and the Office phone and Office email from Settings › Church.

A STOP always wins. Your team can't turn texting back on for that number. Only a START reply from the phone can.

Carriers also expect people to have said yes before you text them. Phyle keeps a record of each yes or no: replies by text, the Send me text messages switch in the member portal, and the Send text messages switch on a person's edit screen. Only turn that switch on if they've agreed. Each person's Messages tab shows what's on record.

When you write a text, Phyle warns you if some recipients have no record of agreeing. Automatic texts, like serving reminders, only go to people whose latest answer is yes.

Unsubscribing from email

Every email message ends with an unsubscribe link, and also carries a one-click unsubscribe that mail apps like Gmail and Yahoo can show. The link opens a page where the person can unsubscribe, or subscribe again later, without signing in.

Once someone unsubscribes, they're left out of every email message and shown as opted out in the count before you send. To change it by hand, edit the person and use Send church emails. Members can also change both email and texts themselves in the member portal.

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