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 Page — how members read it in the app and how it looks on your public page — and a second tab, Email, shows how it arrives in the inbox.

• 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 public page. 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; 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.

Who receives it

Under Who receives it, choose the audience:

• Whole church — everyone in your church (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 public page.

Before you send, Psalmly shows roughly how many people it will reach — that's your member count, 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.

Announcements only ever go to people already in your church (or the chosen group). There is no way to type in outside email addresses — to reach someone new, invite them to the church first, then announce.

Your public page

Under Visibility, Show on your public page is off by default. Turn it on and this announcement also appears in the News section of your church's public 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 as long as it's a draft. (There's 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 couldn't be delivered to, Psalmly tells you how many; those are bounced or invalid addresses, not opt-outs, and there's nothing to retry. If the send fails completely, nothing goes out and a Retry send button appears.

A sent announcement can't be unsent

Once an announcement is sent it can't be edited or unsent, because the emails are already out. You can Delete from history on the announcement's page — that clears the record and takes it out of members' in-app announcements, but it can't recall an email that already went out. If you need to correct something, send a short follow-up announcement. (Drafts, by contrast, are fully editable — that's the place to get the wording right before it goes live.)

Unsubscribes

Every announcement email has an unsubscribe link in its footer. A member 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 member, and no way for you to re-subscribe someone. If a member wants your emails back, they turn them on themselves under Account → Notifications, where every church they belong to has its own switch.

What members see

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

• By email, with your church's name on it, sent from Psalmly.
• 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.