"Send a Message" Function on LCR

[davesudweeks]

Keep in mind that systems like Mailchimp are typically sending mass emails to people who REQUESTED the emails. They also typically have an easy opt-out process for those who don't wish contact. There is no such option with the Send A Message tool without removing the member's email address or modifying it so it does not arrive at the members in-box.

With the explosion of usage of the Send A Message tool over the past couple of years, I would imagine some members (especially those who request no contact from the church) will begin marking those messages as spam. I wouldn't be surprised if an ISP begins blocking the sender if many of their customers are reporting the sender as spamming them.

My personal opinion only: this could be part of the problem and would be made worse by senders who don't respect the contact wishes of members. When I use the Send A Message tool as EQP (and I use it very sparingly), I go through the list and uncheck members in our ward who I know have requested no church contact. This is a little more time consuming than just hitting the "select all" button and sending the message, but I believe leaders have an obligation to respect the privacy wishes of individual members. It does little good to frustrate members who just want to be left alone right now.

[chriswoodut]

My personal opinion only: this could be part of the problem and would be made worse by senders who don't respect the contact wishes of members. When I use the Send A Message tool as EQP (and I use it very sparingly), I go through the list and uncheck members in our ward who I know have requested no church contact. This is a little more time consuming than just hitting the "select all" button and sending the message, but I believe leaders have an obligation to respect the privacy wishes of individual members. It does little good to frustrate members who just want to be left alone right now.

We use the tool and also maintain a manual opt out list. We have to manually uncheck every person we know has requested not to receive the emails.

It really is a hard problem to solve as the issue of delivery is really an issue of the receiving server's configuration/spam filtering and there's not much that can be done on the sending side. We have a member that uses his work address of @familysearch.org and he doesn't get the emails. There is only so much you can do.

[wrigjef]

My personal opinion only: this could be part of the problem and would be made worse by senders who don't respect the contact wishes of members. When I use the Send A Message tool as EQP (and I use it very sparingly), I go through the list and uncheck members in our ward who I know have requested no church contact. This is a little more time consuming than just hitting the "select all" button and sending the message, but I believe leaders have an obligation to respect the privacy wishes of individual members. It does little good to frustrate members who just want to be left alone right now.

I know is a related but slightly different subject but several leaders in my stake have stated that members can't dictate the condition of their membership. We have followed the counsel not to keep a no-contact list. We contact those that we haven't seen in church for a while (usually via text or email) and invite them to come back. If they respond that they don't want contact we let them know that we can instruct ministering brothers and sisters not to visit in person but that they will still get the occasional email or text. If they respond that they don't want any contact, we let them know that the first step to having their records removed is to contact the Bishop personally.

[sebastian.buck]

If a member does not want to receive any emails from church leaders I would kindly ask him to delete his email address from the church system. He or she can do this on his or her own. The same is true for phone numbers. If members do not want to be contacted by phone I would also kindly asked them to delete their phone number.

To maintain a manual opt out list is administrative overkill. At least in my opinion.

Back to the problem with emails not being delivered. In most cases receiving email servers do not just delete received emails. They can bounce an email. In this case the sending email server gets notified. And so whoever uses LCR and sends messages out will be notified about any bounce. This is the correct way to handle emails that cannot be delivered.

Any email server which just deletes received emails without notifying the sender is male configured. I am aware that some email servers in some instances might do this anyway. But in the case of the member with his job’s email address … well he could simply ask his IT staff whether or not the email was received and silently deleted. I’m pretty sure it was not.

[wrigjef]

I was told that if the Church wanted us to keep no contact lists, they would include the ability in LCR

[chriswoodut]

I was told that if the Church wanted us to keep no contact lists, they would include the ability in LCR

There is a reason to keep an opt out list (it is not a do not contact list in our case):

- If a clerk or the member themselves remove their email address, they won't get ANY emails from our unit OR from church headquarters.

- A ward unit emails much more than HQ. Maybe they want HQ but not ward emails.

- Knowing their contact info is useful for emergency preparedness. Here in Utah, many cities have the emergency reporting organized by the church units in the city.

- Less active members won't just keep marking everything spam and training their ISP's email system to mark EVERYTHING as spam for all their users

- Telling them to remove their address themselves or remove their membership is much more drastic of a measure (and likely creates bad feelings) than just maintaining a do not email list. It's kind of weird to suggest to that not emailing them is worse than upsetting them or pushing them to remove their membership.

[sebastian.buck]

Okay, this sounds reasonable. However I still find it to be an administrative overkill to maintain an opt out list that you have to manually check every time you send out messages. Especially if there are more than two or three members who opt out. But as with so many other things this of course depends on the situation in the ward and how large it is and how many members opt out and so on and so on

[wrigjef]

The bottom line is if the church wanted it to happen, it would be an included function in LCR.

[russellhltn]

Any email server which just deletes received emails without notifying the sender is male configured. I am aware that some email servers in some instances might do this anyway.

There are valid reasons for doing it that way. If the message is truly spam, the return address is likely forged and sending a response does no good. Also, someone could use that feature to harass someone else by spoofing their email address as the sender. Then the target gets a flood of "bounce" messages from valid email systems for a message they never sent.

Personally, I think the church is caught between how they want to treat less-active members and the worldly reality of email systems.

[garystroble]

Someone above said we get a bounce list back. That is normally not true and rarely happens, even though I know some church emails do not go through.