An announcement is the way to tell your church something that will not wait until Sunday.
Sending one
Open Notifications and stay on the Send Alert tab. The form is called New Update. Write a title (up to 120 characters) and a message (up to 1,000), pick a category, choose who gets it, and press Send update.
The audience is either All members or a Specific group. That is the whole choice, and the group option is the one to reach for more often than you do. The youth trip's departure time is not news to the whole congregation, and every irrelevant message makes the next relevant one slightly less likely to be read.
There is an optional deep link field: tapping the notification opens that page in the app. Leave it blank and it opens the home screen.
It sends right away
An update goes out the moment you press Send. There is no schedule picker and no draft yet, so write it when you are ready to send it. A group leader can also send to their own group from that group's page.
What happens to it
It reaches members by email, and as a push notification to anyone with the app who has notifications on. See How members receive notifications.
Email goes only to members whose address is confirmed and who have email turned on for that kind of message, and it counts against your church's monthly email allowance. The form shows both before you send: how many members have a confirmed address, and how much allowance is left.
The form also shows an Also send this as a text message option. Text messaging isn't available yet, so the option is greyed out and says why. Adding someone's number to their profile is not permission to text it, so a text only reaches members who opted in themselves.
Reading the numbers
Each update you send is listed under Sent history, with:
- Recipients: how many members the audience resolved to. The denominator.
- Emailed: emails the provider accepted.
- Not delivered: rejected, suppressed, or refused. This only appears when it is above zero.
Emailed means accepted for delivery, not read. It is the honest number available, not a proxy for attention. There is no count of who opened it.
A not-delivered count that is not near zero usually means bad addresses in your member records rather than anything wrong with the send.
Write it for a lock screen
Most people meet this as a notification on a phone, and see roughly the title and one line.
Put the actual information first. "Sunday service moved to 10am" works. "An important update regarding this weekend" makes somebody unlock their phone to find out something you could have told them in six words, and next time they will not bother.
How often
The fastest way to lose this channel is to use it for things that could have waited. Notifications are switched off in phone settings, and you cannot ask again.
A useful test: if it could be an email, make it an email. Save the buzz for cancellations, changes, and things happening in the next twenty-four hours.