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Setting Up Automatic Birthday and Anniversary Emails and SMS

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Sending automated birthday and anniversary messages is a great way to engage with your church members and show them that you care. Follow these steps to set up automatic occasion messages in Elvanto.

Setting Up Automated Messages

To set up automatic birthday and anniversary messages:

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Select Communication.
  3. Click on the Occasions tab.
  4. Select your parameters for sending messages.
  5. Click Save to confirm your settings.

Filter Options

Within the settings, you can filter who receives automated messages for their birthday or anniversary. By default, messages are sent to all active members in your account. However, you can customize this by filtering recipients by people category or demographic, and choose whether to send messages to contacts as well.

If you’ve applied filters to both demographics and people categories, recipients must belong to one of the selected people categories and demographics to be included.

Examples:

  • Example 1: Only individuals in the Lower Primary demographic who are in the Congregation people category will receive messages.
  • Example 2: Only individuals in the Lower Primary demographic who are in either the Congregation or Visitors/New People categories will receive messages.

Message Types

You can choose to send messages via Email, SMS, or both.

  • Email: Sends messages via email.
  • SMS: Sends messages via SMS.
  • Both: Sends messages via both email and SMS.

If you choose to send both, there is an option to send SMS only to people who don’t have an email address. This helps reduce costs associated with sending SMS.

To customize the content of the messages, go to Settings > Built-in Contact Templates and edit the relevant templates.

Requirements to Send Anniversary Messages

Unlike birthday messages, which are automatically sent to anyone having a birthday on that date, anniversary messages have a few extra requirements:

  • A family must have both a primary and spouse relationship.
  • The individual receiving the message must be listed as either the primary or spouse in their family relationship.
  • Both the primary and spouse must have their marital status set to Married.
  • Both the primary and spouse must share the same anniversary date.

If these requirements aren’t met, the anniversary messages will not be sent.

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