Introduction

A key design feature of NGX-Ramblers is that many areas of functionality have email integration built in, providing the ability for emails to be rapidly created and sent to members. Much of content of these emails can be auto-generated based on walk, social event or committee events and little if any copy/pasting is required in order to generate the required email content. Below is an example screenshot of the Email Composer:

How Emails Are Sent

Every email a committee member sends now goes through a single tool - the Email Composer. You work through a few short steps: who the email is from, who it goes to, the content, any events to include, a preview, and then send.

Behind the scenes there are still two ways an email can be delivered, but you no longer pick between them as separate tools. The Email Composer chooses the right one for you, based on who you are sending to:

To selected people - the email is sent individually to each recipient (a transactional send). Use this for a message to a handful of members, or to one or more email addresses you type in.
To a whole mailing list - the email goes out as a single campaign to everyone subscribed to that list. Use this for newsletters and group-wide announcements.

So "transactional" and "campaign" are best thought of as how an email is delivered, not as two separate features you have to learn.

Emails the Site Sends for You

Separately from anything the committee composes, the site sends a number of emails automatically, each triggered by something happening. These are always transactional - they go to one person at a time. Examples:

A welcome email to a new member.
A reminder to a member whose membership has expired.
A password-reset email when someone uses the Forgot Password link in the website header.
A notice to a walk leader, or the Walks Co-ordinator, when a walk they are involved with changes.
A notice to a member, or to committee members, when the status of an expense claim changes.

You do not compose or send these yourself - the site does it as the relevant event occurs.

Sending to a Whole List: Campaigns

When the Email Composer sends to a whole mailing list, the email goes out as a campaign. Committee members use this to:

Advertise new committee events (for example AGM announcements, meetings or agendas).
Advertise Social Events.
Send periodic newsletters to the whole group.

After a campaign has been sent, the committee can view statistics about its delivery, opens and link clicks in the Marketing Campaign view in Brevo.

Mailing List Concepts

A Brevo list contains a number of subscribers that are interested in a certain topic that will be delivered by email.
Lists are maintained in Brevo, but are created automatically by your NGX-Ramblers site, based on data pre-loaded by the Member Bulk Load process.
Within the constraints of the size of member databases typically held by Ramblers groups, there is no limit on the number of lists that can be created in Brevo. When you send to a whole list from the Email Composer, you choose which list on the Recipients step.
Depending on the type of message you are sending, you might send to a list that contains all members (for example a periodic newsletter), or to a smaller subset of your group (for example walk leaders or committee members). If you need a subset, you can create a list and add the relevant members to it.