Build your email list
What you’ll do: Get the right email addresses into EBENEZER so your weekly newsletter reaches your congregation.
Depends on your list
Go to Settings → Newsletter Email. The top of the page shows your current subscriber count.
Adding people one at a time
- Under Add New Subscriber, enter the email address.
- Add a name if you have it. This is worth doing — each newsletter opens with “Hi” and the person’s first name, and without a name that greeting falls flat.
- Press Add.
Importing a spreadsheet
Export your existing list as a CSV with two columns, email first and name second, then press Import CSV.
- jane@example.org,Jane Smith
- tom@example.org,Tom Baker
A header row is fine but not required — this importer works it out either way. Anything that doesn’t look like an email address is skipped and reported, and anyone already on your list is left alone rather than duplicated.
The phone number importer does require a header row. This one doesn’t. If you’re doing both in one sitting, that’s the thing that trips people up.
Syncing from Planning Center
If your church uses Planning Center, choose a list and press Sync Now to bring those email addresses across. You’ll need to sync again when the list changes — it doesn’t update by itself.
Removing someone
Press Delete on their row and confirm. They come off the list immediately.
People who unsubscribe themselves
Every newsletter carries an unsubscribe link in the footer. Anyone who uses it is removed automatically and shows as unsubscribed in your list. You don’t need to do anything, and you shouldn’t add them back.
An email list is more forgiving than a text list, but the principle holds: people should have given you their address knowing you’d write to them. Adding everyone you have an address for is how a church newsletter ends up in spam folders, which then affects delivery to the people who genuinely wanted it.
Where your newsletters come from
EBENEZER sends on your behalf from an address ending @ebenezer.rest, using your church’s name so it looks right in the inbox. There’s no mail service for you to set up or pay for.