Texting instead of emailing from "Send a Message"

[andypoulsen]

I know that for many years now, the Seminaries and Institutes program has had the ability to send bulk texts for announcements (with control over which folks to send to, when desired). When I was working with our seminary kids (years ago) our S&I admin said that the Church was going to bring this to the "Send a Message" function.

As we all know, the "Send a Message" function has plenty of its own issues, including losing formatting (relatively minor) and messages not being delivered with no notification of the failure (HUGE problem -- in my previous ward, we had about 40 people that didn't get the messages and there was no indication that delivery had failed.

In any case, we currently have a lot of folks in our ward that hardly ever (never?) check their email, and we'd love to have a way to get in touch with them via texting rather than email.

Does anyone know if this has actually made it onto the roadmap for Send a Message?

Alternatively, do people have recommendations for a cost-effective texting service for this type of thing?

Thanks much!

[ambldsorg]

... "Send a Message" [has] messages not being delivered with no notification of the failure (HUGE problem -- in my previous ward, we had about 40 people that didn't get the messages and there was no indication that delivery had failed.

Actually, there is an indication of delivery failure. It is delivered to the person who sent the message via LCR, however, if it gets filtered into SPAM, or they ignore it, then you wouldn't know about it. Also, if the Church is blocking[1] delivery to the sender's address then no failure notification will be sent to the sender. I've attached an example failure notification that shows up if you're using a mobile device for email.

lcrfailure.png

Alternatively, do people have recommendations for a cost-effective texting service for this type of thing?

You can send an email directly to their cellphone number and you don't need to spend any money for this alternative, you just have to know to which carrier the cellphone number belongs. For example, AT&T uses @txt.att.net, T-mobile uses @tmomail.net, Verizon uses either @vzwpix.com or @vtext.com, etc. So if your member's phone number is XXX-555-2368 and they are using a Verizon phone, you could send them a Text message directly to their phone by addressing it to XXX5552368[@]vtext.com (with the brackets removed obviously).

God Bless


Footnotes:

[1] I believe blocked email addresses is (or should be) the number one problem to be addressed and fixed with LCR "Send a Message". When a member has their email address added to the Church blacklist, it is nigh unto impossible to get it removed. I know because I have not yet had mine successfully removed for years and there's nothing wrong with my email service or address. You can find numerous examples of people wondering why they suddenly stop receiving email from LCR and while people generally assume that it is the recipient's mail service, I believe it is due to the presence of an email suppression list in use with Amazon SES (the tool/solution that the Church uses for sending emails from LCR) for mail.churchofjesuschrist.org.

viewtopic.php?t=45138

[ambldsorg]

You can send an email directly to their cellphone number

Keep in mind that some of these SMS email gateways are SMS only which means you'll be limited to 160 characters in some cases. There are also MMS email gateways provided by many of the carriers, if you look for them.

[andypoulsen]

Thanks for your replies.

Actually, there is an indication of delivery failure. It is delivered to the person who sent the message via LCR, however, if it gets filtered into SPAM, or they ignore it, then you wouldn't know about it. Also, if the Church is blocking[1] delivery to the sender's address then no failure notification will be sent to the sender. I've attached an example failure notification that shows up if you're using a mobile device for email.

In my previous ward, we did have some addresses that had the notifications you showed. However, the 40 or so members I mentioned had no notification of any kind, and the messages were not delivered at all (including being flagged as spam). When our boundaries were redrawn, I sent multiple messages to everyone through LCR as a test to see who was getting those messages and who were not, and we announced this test so people were being vigilant. I repeatedly followed up with those whom I hadn't heard from, and they (also repeatedly) checked to make sure they messages hadn't been flagged as spam, etc. In all of those cases, the messages were just never received. Addresses that went into the black hole included yahoo, excite, and even gmail, plus others. In other words, these 40 members were legitimately NOT getting any messages through the Church system and NO delivery issues were reported from LCR.

While sending to their phone number sounds possible in theory, in practice it's just not realistic to get the carrier for everyone (or to maintain it if they change carriers), so we're not going to pursue that.

My main question is why don't they take the texting functionality from the WISE system and implement it in LCR?

[ambldsorg]

However, the 40 or so members I mentioned had no notification of any kind, and the messages were not delivered at all (including being flagged as spam).

That's interesting. It could be a bug in LCR that it doesn't always return a failure report for some addresses. Or it's also possible that the recipients mail system would actually route the messages to /dev/null (aka the bit bucket). I've seen the latter, never seen evidence of the former, but of the 2 choices, I would lean towards the first---that there exists a reporting bug in LCR. I know that Hotmail used to accept and then disappear certain messages if they failed their SmartScreen checks---they wouldn't go to a spam folder, they didn't get rejected, they just disappeared, but I haven't seen any similar behavior from other providers that you mention.

I suppose there exists a 3rd option and that is that the members whom you asked to check their spam didn't really bother or didn't know how. Human nature is quirky sometimes.

My main question is why don't they take the texting functionality from the WISE system and implement it in LCR?

Nobody here will be able to answer that unfortunately. Have you submitted Feedback from the LCR "Send a Message" tool? That's about the only mode of communication available to us.

[ambldsorg]

While sending to their phone number sounds possible in theory, in practice it's just not realistic to get the carrier for everyone (or to maintain it if they change carriers), so we're not going to pursue that.

It's really not that difficult and people don't change carriers that often. There are websites where you can enter a phone number and it will tell you the carrier so you wouldn't have to come up with some clever way of asking each member the uncomfortable question, "Hey, by the way, what phone carrier do you use on your phone?" But, if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work, I just thought I would provide an alternative since you asked.

God Bless

[andypoulsen]

[1] I believe blocked email addresses is (or should be) the number one problem to be addressed and fixed with LCR "Send a Message". When a member has their email address added to the Church blacklist, it is nigh unto impossible to get it removed. I know because I have not yet had mine successfully removed for years and there's nothing wrong with my email service or address. You can find numerous examples of people wondering why they suddenly stop receiving email from LCR and while people generally assume that it is the recipient's mail service, I believe it is due to the presence of an email suppression list in use with Amazon SES (the tool/solution that the Church uses for sending emails from LCR) for mail.churchofjesuschrist.org.

viewtopic.php?t=45138

This is very interesting. The fact that your address generates the notice, but so many others don't is very puzzling. There's clearly a whole lot more going on behind the scenes. It's puzzling that there doesn't seem to be much effort (from an outsider's perspective, of course) from the Church to ensure that their communications are getting through to the members (especially when some of the messages can be addressing critical issues).

In my previous ward, we (actually I -- 2nd C bprc at the time) maintained that list of 40 folks on a google sheet, and told all folks who used LCR to send a message that they would need to send a separate message to any on the list if they wanted them to receive it. If I received a church-wide broadcast message, I would just forward it to those 40 with a note something like "I'm guessing you didn't receive this?" and none of them had. Definitely a problem!

That's interesting. It could be a bug in LCR that it doesn't always return a failure report for some addresses. Or it's also possible that the recipients mail system would actually route the messages to /dev/null (aka the bit bucket). I've seen the latter, never seen evidence of the former, but of the 2 choices, I would lean towards the first---that there exists a reporting bug in LCR. I know that Hotmail used to accept and then disappear certain messages if they failed their SmartScreen checks---they wouldn't go to a spam folder, they didn't get rejected, they just disappeared, but I haven't seen any similar behavior from other providers that you mention.

I suppose there exists a 3rd option and that is that the members whom you asked to check their spam didn't really bother or didn't know how. Human nature is quirky sometimes.

The 3rd option, while likely for some folks, definitely wasn't the case with all, as we have some very high-tech people on that list that were very frustrated with the whole thing, and we spend a bunch of time trying to work around the issues, all to no avail.

In any case, thanks for your replies!

[ambldsorg]

If I received a church-wide broadcast message, I would just forward it to those 40 with a note something like "I'm guessing you didn't receive this?" and none of them had. Definitely a problem!

What's the definition of "church-wide" in this particular case? Do you mean at the Ward or Stake level (e.g. someone in the Ward or Stake) sent it to everyone in your area? Or do you mean "official" communications coming from outside your Ward or Stake units like the "Inspiring Messages" and "Practical Tips" messages that come from somewhere in "headquarters"?

If it's from outside your Ward/Stake, then they should check their preferences to see if they have perhaps unchecked the options to receive those messages. Of course you may no longer be in a position to do this, but if the problem persists you could relay to the new member responsible for those who are not receiving the communications.

If it's the Ward/Stake level, if the person using LCR to send a message to others is also unable to receive emails from LCR then they won't be able to receive the failure report either.

The 3rd option, while likely for some folks, definitely wasn't the case with all, as we have some very high-tech people on that list that were very frustrated with the whole thing,

Even high-tech people can get frustrated, and perhaps more easily so because they may be capable to understand what's really going on, but are left powerless to do anything about it.

[ambldsorg]

There's clearly a whole lot more going on behind the scenes.

While it may be possible that there is a lot going behind the scenes, there is a lot of suppression of information happening---information that is vital to resolving issues. The LCR system would be much more useful if it actually returned the causes and reasons given for email rejection. Gmail in particular provides quite verbose error messages that are intended to be read by the sender and are meant to be read by a human who is capable of reasoning and responding to the address the problem. Instead, LCR swallows any useful error messages that might help members figure out what needs to be done to correct problems.

Here are some example failures from Gmail that are currently intentionally left "behind the scenes" that could make the experience better:

451-4.7.24 [123.45.67.890] The SPF record of the sending domain has one
451-4.7.24 or more suspicious entries. To protect our users from spam, mail
451-4.7.24 sent from your IP address has been temporarily rate limited. For
451-4.7.24 instructions on setting up authentication, go to
451 4.7.24 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/ ... entication 3ea13074880a8-70188f1a739si54278a9193.183 - gsmtp

550-5.7.26 Your email has been blocked because the sender is unauthenticated.
550-5.7.26 Gmail requires all senders to authenticate with either SPF or DKIM.
550-5.7.26
550-5.7.26 Authentication results:
550-5.7.26 DKIM = did not pass
550-5.7.26 SPF [example.dom] with ip: [123.45.67.890] = did not pass
550-5.7.26
550-5.7.26 For instructions on setting up authentication, go to
550 5.7.26 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/ ... entication ea6e89d161a35-12f8719a910siaab92879f7.69 - gsmtp

If an LCR sender got those instead of a generic "rejected by the server", they could at least know that it's Gmail that's causing the headache. Don't get me wrong, I think that what Gmail has done to email is as bad as what SPAM has done to email. Their "cure" is often worse than the disease, if there is one. I no longer recommend Gmail to anyone, and instead recommend ProtonMail when my opinion is asked (if ever).

There are likely many other causes of all of these problems, but we don't know what they are because they are suppressed. If it's actually Gmail that's causing problems, then those who are Gmail's "customers" need evidence that they can take back to Gmail to tell them that they are incorrectly blocking messages.

Here are some examples from outlook.com:

550 5.5.0 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable (S6085651795). [AE74F98236BBEAB.namprd04.prod.outlook.com 2025-01-12T00:07:31.609Z C858172802BBD487]

550 5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied. [292C42E25A704CF.namprd02.prod.outlook.com 2024-10-21T20:31:44.137Z B633E90FF1482A69]

And here's one for a text message sent via an SMS email "gateway":

550 5.1.1 <XXX5552368@txt.att.net> recipient address rejected

In all these cases, had this information been reported back to the sender, instead of a generic and unhelpful message, it would have been much easier to determine what's going wrong and what needs to be done to address it. Some of these have specific identifying information that can be taken to the mail administrators of these domains to assist in learning more if necessary. We would not be guessing as to what's really going on "behind the scenes" if this information were present.

Communication is hard enough without hiding information.

[andypoulsen]

What's the definition of "church-wide" in this particular case? Do you mean at the Ward or Stake level (e.g. someone in the Ward or Stake) sent it to everyone in your area? Or do you mean "official" communications coming from outside your Ward or Stake units like the "Inspiring Messages" and "Practical Tips" messages that come from somewhere in "headquarters"?

If it's from outside your Ward/Stake, then they should check their preferences to see if they have perhaps unchecked the options to receive those messages. Of course you may no longer be in a position to do this, but if the problem persists you could relay to the new member responsible for those who are not receiving the communications.

If it's the Ward/Stake level, if the person using LCR to send a message to others is also unable to receive emails from LCR then they won't be able to receive the failure report either.

This was primarily from the stake level (since we had quickly figured out how to work around it at the ward level). There may have been some more general broadcast messages, but I'm not sure.

In any case, for our testing, I was the one sending them, and was able to receive any church-sent messages (both stake and general) just fine, but didn't get any error messages for any of those folks. They all wanted to be on the list, and (supposedly) actually did all the spam-checking, etc. Perhaps some did not (but said they did) -- however, I think it's unlikely that all of them would be in that boat... (and some of them were *very* interested in trying to help debug the situation).

Thanks for sending those error messages, too -- very good to know. I would have thought that the LCR folks would be interested in that (or, as you say, at the very least pass it back to the sender), but apparently there's additional stuff happening (or not happening)...

Thanks again for your thorough answer. It's clear this is frustrating to many of us! I'll keep hoping for a solution, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a priority.

Have a great week!