Send Campaigns

Introduction

With campaigns in ChurchDesk, you can communicate with your members in a targeted and personalised way — either by email or by letter. Campaigns combine a target audience with a message template and a communication channel, allowing you to personally reach thousands of members with just a few clicks.

Campaigns can be created by individual parishes, or they can be prepared centrally (e.g., by the diocese or national church) and carried out locally by the individual parishes. They are automatically personalised with the name of the local church and the priest.

Application EXAMPLE
Personalised birthday wishes can be sent automatically using a campaign on the church member's birthday, on behalf of the priest or the church office.
This can also be easily used for welcoming new residents when they move into the parish, for individual anniversaries, baptisms, and many other occasions.

Benefits of Campaigns

• Reach members during important life events such as birthdays, anniversaries, or baptisms.
• Run multiple campaigns simultaneously.
• Use centrally created templates — or create your own.
• Personalise every campaign automatically with your parish's branding settings.

Contents

• Was is a campaign?
• Activate campaigns in the People module
• Create a new campaign
• Recommendations for filter configuration
• Execute a campaign: Preview and test message
• Run multiple campaigns simultaneously
• Run campaigns for one or more brands
• View campaign history
• Cancel a running campaign
• Sent and scheduled messages
• Access and permissions

Access & permissions

Portal host:

• Organisation administrators can create campaign templates centrally

Local community:

Who can run campaigns?

Any standard or custom role that has access to at least the following aspects may run campaigns and view sent and scheduled messages:

1. Access to ‘Manage contacts’ with ‘Advanced information’
2. ‘Send SMS, newsletters and emails’
3. ‘Enter consents manually’

Who can configure brand settings?

• Organisation administrators

What is a campaign?

A campaign is a communication package that combines four elements:

• Target audience — who should be reached (e.g. all members with a birthday in the current month)
• Message — the message template with brand-compliant design and content
• Channel — how communication takes place: via email, via email and letter, or only via letter
• Timing — when the campaign is sent, either immediately or on a specific trigger date (e.g. on their birthday)

EXAMPLE
Sending a personalised birthday message: The diocese creates the template. Each parish automatically sends the message in its own name using the local sender. The recipient experiences a personal message from their parish.

Create a new campaign

A campaign combines a target audience filter with a message template to send messages via one or more communication channels.

To create a new campaign:

1. Navigate to Campaigns in the People module.
2. Click on "Create new campaign".
3. Define target audience: Use standard criteria for contact data to determine who should receive the campaign. Examples: Members with a birthday, anniversary, or new residents.
4. Set schedule: Choose from two options in the trigger drop-down menu:

• "Send immediately" — The message is sent directly when the campaign is executed. A time is not relevant here.
• Trigger date — The message is automatically sent on the selected date field of the contact (e.g. on their birthday or baptism date) at the specified time.

5. Set up message template: Create the creative material or select an existing template. Use Studio templates for brand-compliant design.
6. Choose channel: Select email as the primary channel. If no email address is available, you can fall back on a print export for letter delivery. This creates a contact list and sends it to your email. You can then forward this to your print provider.
7. Check legal basis: Different legal bases apply depending on the campaign type. Campaigns based on registration data do not require explicit consent — an opt-out option is offered. Other campaign types require explicit consent (opt-in).

ChurchDesk automatically filters out all contacts during sending who have not agreed to your organisation's default consent for member communication. This ensures that only people with valid consent receive emails. Organisation administrators can specify which consent applies as the default in the settings.

Recommendations for filter configuration

Choosing the right filter is crucial to ensure that your campaign reaches exactly the right recipients — and no one twice or by mistake.

Run filters monthly instead of for an entire year

We recommend executing campaigns with a trigger date (e.g. birthday greetings) monthly — i.e. for the upcoming month. This also captures newly added contacts who were not yet in the database when you last executed the campaign.

EXAMPLE
In April, you run the birthday campaign for all members who have a birthday in May. In May, you run it again — this time for birthdays in June. As a result, members newly added in May will also receive their birthday message in June.

Common pitfall: Filters without time reference

Make sure your filter clearly limits the time period. A filter like "Birthday is entered" includes all members with a saved birthday — including those who have already had their birthday this year. If the campaign is executed with the trigger date "Birthday", these people will not receive the message again, but all upcoming birthdays of the year will be pre-scheduled.

Execute a campaign: Preview and test message

Before you actually send a campaign, you can use two functions to ensure everything is correct.

Preview function

With a click on "Preview", ChurchDesk shows you before sending:

• How many emails will be sent to contacts with a stored email address
• How many letters will be created (via print export)
• A breakdown per parish (for multi-brand campaigns)

This allows you to see at a glance whether the recipient numbers are plausible. If you change a setting (e.g. the brand or the parish selection), the preview is reset — click "Preview" again to see the current figures.

Send test message

Before you execute the campaign, you can send yourself a test message. This allows you to check:

• If the correct sender is stored
• If the correct brand (logo, colours) is displayed
• If the parish assignment is correct
• How the message looks in the recipient's inbox

For multi-brand campaigns, the test message is only sent to the first selected parish. To check a specific parish brand, please deselect all others and send the test message again.

Run multiple campaigns simultaneously

You can select multiple campaigns and run them together. Depending on the settings of each campaign, messages will either be sent immediately or scheduled for a later time.

To run multiple campaigns simultaneously:

1. Go to the campaign overview.
2. Select the campaigns you want to run.
3. Click on "Run campaigns".
4. Confirm the selection.

EXAMPLE
You want to send birthday campaigns and welcome letters for new members at the same time. Select both campaigns and start them with one click. The birthday campaign schedules the emails for the respective birthday, while the welcome letters are sent immediately.

Settings are saved per campaign

When you execute a campaign a second time, you do not have to select the parish, brand, and sender again, and the personalisation text is also saved — ChurchDesk remembers your last configuration and applies it automatically. You can adjust the settings at any time, but you do not have to.

Run campaigns for one or more brands

With the Multi-Brand add-on, you can run campaigns on behalf of different parishes. Each parish has its own brand settings (logo, name, social media information) that are automatically integrated into the campaign.

Campaign for a single brand

When you start a campaign, you specify the parish, the brand, and the sender. The email subject line is defined in the email template.

Cross-brand campaigns

When you start one or more campaigns, you will be asked whether the campaign should apply to one brand or to multiple brands by default. For cross-brand campaigns, every message is automatically personalised with the brand settings of the respective parish.

To set up the brand settings:

1. Go to ChurchDesk settings via your profile in the top right corner.
2. Select Parish & resources on the left side.
3. Click on the parish for which you want to create a brand.
4. Click on "Action" and select "Edit brand".
5. Enter the details: public name of the parish, logo, and social media information.

View campaign history

In the campaign history, you can see who executed a specific campaign, when, and via which communication channel. You can find the campaign history by clicking on "More". Under "More", you can also copy or edit a campaign.

The history shows you:

• Date of execution
• Name of the person who started the campaign
• Communication channel (email or letter)
• Number of recipients reached

When you click on "Recipients", you get more information about the individual recipients and can track the status. You can also search for a name in the search bar.

Cancel a running campaign

If you want to adjust or stop a campaign after it has started, you can cancel the ongoing dispatch at any time.

To cancel a campaign:

1. Open the campaign history.
2. Select the corresponding campaign run.
3. Click on "Cancel campaign" and confirm the cancellation.

What happens upon cancellation?

• Emails that have already been sent remain sent — they cannot be recalled.
• Scheduled emails (e.g. for campaigns with a trigger date scheduled for a future date) are stopped and will no longer be sent.
• In the campaign history, the cancelled messages are marked as "cancelled". When hovering over the status, you can see the cancellation date.

After cancellation, you can make changes to the campaign, template, or filter and then execute the campaign again.

Sent and scheduled messages

For each campaign run, you can view the sent and scheduled messages.

• Campaigns with a trigger date (e.g. birthday): Emails are scheduled for the member's respective date. You can view the scheduled messages in advance.
• Campaigns with "Send immediately": Emails are sent as soon as the campaign is executed.

To view the messages:

1. Go to the campaign history.
2. Select the desired campaign run.
3. You will see an overview of all sent and scheduled messages.

Access and permissions

Every standard or custom role that has at least access to extended personal data is allowed to:

• Run campaigns
• View sent and scheduled messages

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Updated on: 28/05/2026