Mailing Lists

Mailing lists are collections of contacts (both people and organizations) with whom you communicate as a group on a regular basis. One-time lists are mailing lists that you only need, as the name makes plain, for a one-off communication. When you send a communication to either kind of list, Populi sends it to the contact's primary email or mailing address.

Adding a new mailing list

1. Click Add Mailing List.
2. Give it a name.
3. Click Save.

Mailing List pages

To use your mailing list, start by clicking Actions. Provided the recipients have the appropriate contact info entered, you can...

• Send Email: Opens the email compose window with a message addressed to the recipients who have a valid, active email address.
• Send text message: Send a text to recipients with a verified text messaging number.
• Compose Letter: Prepares a printed letter and mail-merge addressed to the recipients.
• Print Labels: Sets up a print job of mailing labels.
• Apply/Remove Communication Plan: Adds or removes the selected plan from the mailing list recipients.
• Delete...: Shuffles the mailing list off this mortal coil.

The mailing list page includes...

• Recipients: This list is populated by the include/exclude choices you make in the right column (see below). Every ten minutes, the list is refreshed in case more people merit inclusion/exclusion (for example, you add or remove tags in a Data Slicer report). You can also manually refresh the list if need be. Examine the list to find people with missing contact info; you can use the drop-down to show people who are missing particular info types.
• History: See a history of the emails, letters, and texts you've sent to this list. Click to see a list of the recipients of a particular communication.
• Include/Exclude (and other options): In the right column, use the various options to populate your mailing list and set up things like mail-merging for spouses, etc. More on all that below.
• Export: Create a CSV or XLS of the mailing list recipients (exports respect your spouse and organization options). Use the export helper to add data columns to your export.

Adding people to your list

To add people to your mailing list:

1. Click the list's name to go to its page.
2. In the right column, click one of he include/exclude/edit actions.
   • You can include or exclude roles (active or inactive), tags, individuals, or organizations from the list.
   • Excluding something over-rides including something. In the above example, if someone has both the 17-18 Donor and Active Donor tags, he will be excluded from the list.
   • Spouse options lets you include the spouses of list members—which simply adds them to the list. You can also merge spouses, which combines a married couple into one recipient (e.g., John Adams and Martha Adams become Adams, John and Martha).
   • Organization options lets you include all members of an included organization. You can also include any organizations to which belong any of the individual people on the list.

One-time Lists

One-time lists work just like mailing lists, except that you can't save them for re-use.

1. On the main mailing lists page, click Make a one-time list.
2. Select the list's recipients just as you would for a regular mailing list (see above).
3. You can then email, text, or send a letter to the recipients: click Actions and choose what you want to do.
4. From the Actions menu you can also save the one-time list as a mailing list.
5. Click Clear to empty your selections and start over.
6. Click Export to create a CSV or XLS of the recipients.