What this helps you do
The league's messages reach people in two ways. By email, from your first send, with nothing installed: a person on your opted-in list receives every message sent to an audience they are in. On Blasts, when a person chooses to connect with your league 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. For a youth league the person here is the registration contact, a parent or guardian; a player is a person here only with their own email address, at an age your league decides.
When to use it
Set this up before registration closes, so the first thing people hear from the league here is useful. The natural moments are the ones your league already owns: the registration confirmation, the league website, the coaches' preseason packet and the board at each field or gym.
How to do it
- Create your divisions and teams under Audiences first (see Organize your league's structure).
- Prepare a communication-only export from your registration system: the email address, name and household of each registration contact who agreed to receive the league's messages, with an audiences column naming the division and team audiences you created. Open Participants and choose Import. Every other column is discarded before anything is saved.
- For one new registrant at a time, post them through the inbound webhook on Integrations from your registration 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 the registration confirmation, on the league website, in the coaches' preseason packet and on the board at each venue. Anyone who uses Blasts enters the code in the app, which sends your league a connection request.
- Accept requests under People who want to connect, or turn on auto-accept in Settings for registration season.
- Invite coaches, team managers and officials the same way, and put them in Coaches & Team Contacts or Officials.
Example
A multisport rec league exports its opted-in registration contacts with an audiences column naming U10 Division and U10 Tigers, audiences it created first. Everyone on the list receives the next message by email. Over the season some parents enter the enrollment code in Blasts with the same address the league 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 parent connects on Blasts with a different 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.
- Two guardians who registered the same player are two people here, each with their own address. Group them as one household if a send should reach only one of them on Blasts.
- In an adult league where you only have captains' addresses, the league reaches captains. Collect each player's email at registration if the league should reach every player.
- Connecting is consent-based: a person can stop at any time.
- Invitations are spread out at up to 200 a day.
- There is no connector to a registration, scheduling or league-management platform. Your list reaches the Hub as a CSV export, through the inbound webhook, or through Zapier.