What this helps you do
Your messages reach members in two ways. By email, from your first send, with nothing installed: a member on your opted-in list receives every message sent to an audience they are in. On Blasts, when a member chooses to connect with your organization on a device they choose: once that connection uses the same email address you have for them, their messages move there on their own. Nobody is required to install anything, and you never manage two lists.
When to use it
Set this up before your first real message, so the first thing members hear here is useful. The natural moments are the ones your organization already owns: the join confirmation, the renewal confirmation, the member site, the chapter meeting table and the annual member meeting.
How to do it
- Prepare a communication-only export from your membership system: the email addresses (and names) of members who agreed to receive your messages, with an audiences column naming audiences you already created. Open Members and choose Import. Every other column is discarded before anything is saved.
- For one new member at a time, post them through the inbound webhook on Integrations from your join form (the same rules apply). Adding one address by hand with Invite one person sends an invitation instead of making a subscriber.
- Click Sync connections once so your enrollment code is published, then put the code, the QR code or the printed kit in your join and renewal confirmations, on the member site and at the chapter meeting table. Anyone who uses Blasts enters the code in the app, which sends your organization a connection request.
- Accept requests under People who want to connect, or turn on auto-accept in Settings.
- Put each person in the parts of the organization they belong to (see Organize by your organization's parts).
Example
A surveyors' society exports its opted-in members with an audiences column naming Capital Chapter, Coastal Chapter and Awards Committee, audiences it created first. Everyone on the list receives the next message by email. Over the following months some members enter the enrollment code in Blasts with the same address the society has for them, and their messages start arriving on Blasts without anyone doing anything.
Good to know
- The move to Blasts needs the SAME email address. If a member connects on Blasts with a different address (say a personal address when you imported a work address), that is a separate person here: the audiences the first address is in do not move to it, and the first address keeps receiving by email. Marking the two addresses as the same person on the person page does not stop duplicates across channels: it only skips the second address when both would receive the same Blast, and the audiences still don't carry over.
- For a trade association or a chamber, each contact at a member company is a person here with their own address. There is no member-company record: the Hub doesn't know which company a person represents or whether the company's membership is current.
- Connecting is consent-based: a member can stop at any time.
- Invitations are spread out at up to 200 a day.
- There is no connector to a membership or association-management system. Your list reaches the Hub as a CSV export, through the inbound webhook, or through Zapier.