Sending announcements

Announcements are how you share news with your congregation — a service time change, a potluck this Saturday, a building update. Each one always does two things: it emails everyone it's for, and posts inside Psalmly so it shows up on their dashboard and your church's home. You can also send a push notification to members who use the mobile app. You'll find them under Announcements in the admin sidebar.

Writing one

Click New announcement to open the composer. It's a split screen: you write on the left, and a live preview on the right. It opens on Email, how it arrives in the inbox, because that's what most people get. The other tab, In the app, shows how members read it in the app, and how it looks on your website when you've turned that on.

• Title — the headline. It's the subject line of the email and the heading in the app.
• Message — the body. A small toolbar lets you add a heading, a bulleted or numbered list, or a quote, and make words bold or italic or turn them into a link — just select the text and click the button (Ctrl/⌘+B, I and K for bold, italic and link). There's no special code to learn. Your formatting shows everywhere the full message is read — in the email, on the announcement's own page in the app, and on your website. The short preview cards on dashboards strip it back to plain text so they stay tidy.
• Write with AI — churches on a paid plan get a helper under the message box that drafts an announcement from a few notes, or polishes what you've written. You review and edit before it's saved, and Undo on the notice that follows puts your own words back. If an answer would come back cut short or with your words changed, nothing is replaced and the credit is returned. It uses your church's AI credits.

You can add one image. Drop it into the Image field, drag the circle to choose what stays in frame on cards, and add a short description for screen readers. The whole image shows on the announcement itself and in the email; cards and list previews trim the edges. There are no file attachments — an announcement is a short, readable note.

Don't have a picture? Choose or make a graphic under the Image field opens your church's graphics library — reusing one is free — or designs a new one from the title and message you've already written. Either way it goes out with the announcement. There's also a Make a graphic button on a sent or draft announcement's own page; that one gives you a graphic to post or print rather than putting it on the announcement. Both are covered in Adding a graphic to an event, announcement, or campaign.

Who receives it

Under Who receives it, choose the audience:

• Whole church — your members, and the people on your roster with an email address (the default).
• A specific group — only the members of one group you pick, when the news is just for them. It stays with that group: a group announcement is never gathered into a bulletin, so it can't reach the printed sheet, the church-wide email, or your website.

Before you send, Psalmly shows roughly how many people it will reach — your members and the people on your roster it goes to — so the number of emails actually sent can be a little lower once anyone who unsubscribed is left out. The result screen after sending tells you the real figure, and the announcement's page shows how many were members and how many were on your roster. Only members get it in their Updates.

Announcements only ever go to your members and the people on your roster (or the chosen group). There is no way to type in outside email addresses — to reach someone new, invite them to the church, or add them to your roster with their email address.

Your website

Under Visibility, Show on your website is off by default. Turn it on and this announcement also appears in the News section of your church's website, where anyone can read it — a good fit for a service-time change or a community event, not for anything internal. Group announcements always stay private, so the switch is turned off for them.

Email and push

Under Channels, you choose how the announcement goes out:

• Email is always on. It's the dependable channel — it reaches everyone the announcement is for, whether or not they've installed the mobile app.
• Push notification is an optional toggle. Turn it on to also send a notification to the phones of members who have the Psalmly mobile app with notifications turned on. Tapping it opens the announcement.

Email and push are independent. A member who unsubscribed from your announcement emails can still get the push, and a member who has muted announcement notifications still gets the email. Each member controls their own phone notifications in the mobile app — there's nothing for you to manage per person.

Drafts and sending

A new announcement starts as a draft — only you and other admins can see it. Save it, come back, and keep editing it. (There is no way to delete a draft yet — an unsent draft simply sits in your list until you send it.)

When you're ready, Send it. Because an announcement goes to real inboxes, sending is not a quiet background action:

1. You confirm first (a quick "Send to ~N people?" check).
2. Psalmly sends, showing a progress state.
3. You get a result — how many it reached. If a few addresses were refused when it went out, Psalmly tells you how many; those aren't opt-outs, and there's nothing to retry. Emails that bounce later show on the announcement's page (see When an email bounces). If the send fails completely, nothing goes out and a Retry send button appears.

If sending is paused

If your church has more people than its plan includes, sending pauses two weeks after it goes over (see Managing your plan and billing). You can still write, save, and preview announcements. Send shows a lock; press it to see what's needed. As soon as you upgrade or remove people who've left, Send works again on the same draft. Announcements you've already sent stay where they are, and you can still fix them.

You can fix a sent announcement — but the email is already gone

The email can't be unsent. The announcement itself can still be corrected.

Open a sent announcement and press Edit announcement. Fix the wording, the date, the image — whatever was wrong. Your changes show up on your website and in the app, which is where people read it after the email has been and gone.

No new email or push goes out when you edit. That matters: if the mistake is something people need to know about — the wrong date, the wrong room — correcting the record isn't enough on its own. Send a short follow-up announcement as well. The edit screen offers a Send a new one button for exactly that.

Psalmly keeps a copy of what actually went out. On the announcement's page, under Delivery, you'll see the email exactly as it landed in inboxes, and a note telling you the announcement has been edited since — so you can always see both versions.

You can also Delete from history, which clears the record and takes it out of members' in-app announcements and their Updates. It still can't recall an email that already went out.

Show on your website stays available after sending. “We emailed this to the church, and now we'd like it on the website too” is a normal thing to decide later, and turning it on can't retroactively hide anything from the people who already got the email.

One thing you can't change after sending is who it went to, or whether it was emailed or pushed — those already happened, so Psalmly hides those controls rather than showing switches that do nothing.

Unsubscribes

Every announcement email has an unsubscribe link in its footer. Anyone who uses it stops receiving announcement emails from your church — and nothing else:

• They still see your announcements inside the app. Unsubscribing is about email only, never their in-app feed.
• Their account and security emails are never affected.
• It's per church — unsubscribing from one church's announcements doesn't touch another's.

You don't manage a preferences list — there's nothing to configure per person, and no way for you to re-subscribe someone. Anyone who wants your emails back can sign up again from the page the unsubscribe link opens; a member can also turn them on under Account → Notifications, where every church they belong to has its own switch.

When an email bounces

If a church email bounces or is marked as spam, Psalmly stops sending to that address and shows you who. A sent announcement's Delivery lists the emails that bounced, with a Check the address link to each person on your roster: change their address in their profile and the next email goes to the new one. A member whose address bounced reads Still sees it in the app: there's nothing for you to fix, and they still get the announcement in the app. A bounce counts as undelivered. Someone who marked your email as spam is unsubscribed from your church's email, and only they can sign up again.

Psalmly also checks an address before its first church email. One that can't get email at all (a typo in the domain, or a domain with no mail server) is left out of the send, and Delivery lists it under emails not sent: "That address can't get email, so we left it out." It was never a recipient, so it isn't in the counts. Use Check the address to fix it in their profile.

What members see

The same announcement reaches your congregation in more than one place, so it's hard to miss:

• By email, from your church ("Your church via Psalmly"), with its logo and colors. Replies go to your church's email address from your website's contact details; the email preview shows where, or tells you when there's no address yet. People on your roster get the email too, with no link into an app they don't use, and its footer says they get it because your church has them in its directory.
• In the app, on each member's personal dashboard, on your church's home screen, and in the church's Announcements list.
• As a push notification on the mobile app, if you turned that on.
• In this week's bulletin, if you build one — a bulletin gathers your recent church-wide announcements so you never retype them. See Creating a bulletin.

Members read announcements — there are no replies or comments, by design, keeping the feed calm. For the member's-eye view, see Announcements you receive.