Removing email addresses from email broadcast list.

Members who have asked not to be contacted, still receive broadcasted emails. I have tried changing their privacy settings to leadership only, but their emails are still shown on email broadcast lists. I could , of course contact them and ask if they want to remove their email address but I was hoping for a less permanent solution.( we would actual still have all contact info on a spreadsheet we maintain). I am not sure if members who are not leaders can send broadcast emails, and if so, would the privacy restrictions remove the names?? I could test that? any other thoughts. .I understand , it is church policy not to alter member records or mark as DNC in any way.

I think that setting is in the ldsaccount. (Subscription settings) I don't think leaders have access to that.

I checked the Subscriptions in ldsaccounts. There is no option to opt out of messages from Send a Message

I don't see anything labeled as such, but it seems strange if there is no opt out at all.

There is no way to opt out from Send a Message.

Where is the policy that states we should not mark member records as DNC in any way. I understand not changing their name or address to have "DNC" in it, but is there another way to do it that doesn't alter the data?

marjhan77 wrote:Where is the policy that states we should not mark member records as DNC in any way.

It was a message sent out via MLS. You can read about it in this thread.

It should also be pointed out that DNC also goes against the spirit of Handbook 2: 5.3, first paragraph.

I think the general consensus is that it's acceptable to not assign them Ministers (or at least assign them to a special district assigned to the EQ or RS president). As well as setting their privacy settings in the directory to "private" to prevent accidental contact from other ward members. But any other notation that's visible on their record quickly gets into a gray area.

If the person no longer wishes to be a member, then the process is outlined in Handbook 1: 6.14.

There is also guidance in 3 Nephi 18:30.

I think there's a difference between labeling a member as "DNC" and removing them from an email distribution. I just got a similar request from one sister that still comes to church, she just doesn't want to receive the emails. I suppose I could go in to LCR and just remove her email entirely, but that approach feels too similar to a "DNC" type of solution.

Can we make this a feature request? We could even have some kind of indicator that "such-and-such email has been suppressed from receiving this communication, click here to include."

olsonle wrote:Can we make this a feature request?

Sure, but this is a user-to-user forum and the developers rarely frequent these topics. If you will send your suggestion through Feedback, they will receive it for possible consideration.

olsonle wrote:I think there's a difference between labeling a member as "DNC" and removing them from an email distribution. I just got a similar request from one sister that still comes to church, she just doesn't want to receive the emails. I suppose I could go in to LCR and just remove her email entirely, but that approach feels too similar to a "DNC" type of solution.

Can we make this a feature request? We could even have some kind of indicator that "such-and-such email has been suppressed from receiving this communication, click here to include."

One thing the clerk can do is remove her individual email address. If she has no household email, you can put her individual email address there to avoid losing it. I hate to recommend removing any contact information but if the church is unwilling to make and opt-out option and if ward/branch leaders are unwilling to honor requests by members to not be contacted with everything they want to send out, this should work. As I understand it, the send a message function only sends to individual email addresses, not household email addresses.

Another way to deal with this is to add "NO_MASS_EMAILS_" or something like that to the beginning of the email address. So, for example, if the person's email address is asdfwardmember@gmail.com, you could update it to NO_MASS_EMAILS_asdfwardmember@gmail.com. That way, mass emails will bounce, but a leader looking up the email address can still find it.

I’ve run into this exact issue as well. Almost all organizations that have the ability to send mass emails also have the ability to allow participants to “opt out”. Allowing a member to opt out of mass emails is a far better alternative to either (1) having them request, out of frustration, to have their records removed from the church, or (2) exercise their ability to go online and simply remove ALL of their contact information from their record.

Jasonbkel wrote:I’ve run into this exact issue as well. Almost all organizations that have the ability to send mass emails also have the ability to allow participants to “opt out”. Allowing a member to opt out of mass emails is a far better alternative to either (1) having them request, out of frustration, to have their records removed from the church, or (2) exercise their ability to go online and simply remove ALL of their contact information from their record.

Many of us have "felt your pain" and no one on this user-to-user mutual support forum has any ability to force any changes. The church is not just another organization and for whatever reasons, the Brethren apparently have not instructed the programmers to code in an "opt-out" option. If your unit insists on using the Send A Message tool to broadcast emails with disregard to what the members want to receive, some will have ruffled feathers and the stake/ward/branch will have to work through that.

Personally, I don't believe the Send A Message tool was built to make it easy for wards and branches to do full membership email blasts with impunity. I believe it was built primarily for small-group communication (in a quorum or organization). Each ward and branch is different and it is the responsibility of the local leadership to understand their members and communicate in a way that THEY want to receive communication (or none at all). There are a couple of ways to make individual members invisible to the Send A Message tool listed elsewhere in this thread which ward leaders can employ if they insist on blasting mass emails. Our example is the Savior, who communicated one-by-one (or in small groups) in a way that was meaningful to those He was communicating with.

But this is my personal opinion - others may disagree...

With respect, we are neither broadcasting emails that “disregard what the members want to receive” nor making full membership email “blasts”. To the contrary, my point was that respectfully requesting this additional tool (which may or may not have been requested in the past) through the appropriate channels could assist in member engagement and prevent the “ruffled feathers” that you reference above. Given the church’s organization with it’s constant turnover, it can be expected that any temporary removal of a member from a specific email list (no matter how limited) will almost inevitably find it’s way back into use. I’ve submitted the request through the feedback function and will see if there’s any interest from SLC.

Dealing with this issue now, sort of.

So when we went to a two hour block, our bishopric determined that the best way to reduce time at the pulpit making announcements, that would would send out weekly announcements by email. In the email, we explain that if you wish to be removed from the list, to just say so.

In order to appease, the bishopric directed me to simply remove their email addresses from their record, otherwise, I would have to manage a DNC list which would become a nightmare for me and anyone proceeding me that had the task of emailing the ward.

Anyway, I've got a new dilemma. In the age of text messaging, I had one poor member put in charge of organizing an event and he has been contacting members by way of text messaging. So where this couple has had their email address removed and getting contacted by the ward members by email was eliminated, he unwittingly sent them a text and got huge blow back because of it. It's one thing to remove their email address, but in the absence of a DNC feature for members that wish to not be contacted, do I take their phone numbers off of their records too?

I feel bad. If they become so incensed at a member reaching out to them like that, why are they content to not go to their bishop to have their records removed? Clearly there is no love lost in so far as their regard for members of their ward ever reaching out to them again. I suspect they don't even consider themselves to be members anymore, just hasn't taken the necessary steps to make that official.

bschroader wrote:If they become so incensed at a member reaching out to them like that, why are they content to not go to their bishop to have their records removed?

Most people don't realize that's what it takes or how to go about it.

One benefit of the new Handbook is that process is now public, even if it's not easy to find.

russellhltn wrote:One benefit of the new Handbook is that process is now public, even if it's not easy to find.

The process has been publically available for years, though not by the church unless a member asked their bishop. The real reason members do not do it is because when they get down to the point of signing their name, they suddenly realize what they are losing.

As to the question at hand, I believe the phone number is a free-form field and a number such as 99 at the beginning of a phone number might work the same way as an email address that began donotsendtoemailaddress@nomail.com. You still have the phone number and email address, but they do not work if you click on them.