Ability to send email from OUR OWN email address | Voters

Ability to send email from OUR OWN email address

Myke Harbuck

This works fine in Sites and in ChMS, so I'm not sure why Tithely thinks its problematic for Messaging. But I think messages would be more widely read if they come from our church domain.

August 13, 2020

Justin Johnson

Just trying to revisit this again.... I think its fine to leave it as messaging.church for those who don't have the technical abilities. But being able to set this up and make the necessary DNS settings isn't that hard and allows the church to continue to control our brand. I agree with all the previous comments. I wouldn't trust an email from the Messaging platform. I wonder if the real issue is then integrating the replies back to a custom domain into the Messaging platform to keep it in one place instead of going to an actual email inbox.

Jamison Jones

Please add this. A total deal breaker for us. Not to mention, if someone curious visits "messaging.church" it takes them to the tithely.com homepage where they're greeted with "Increase giving. Grow your church." Can't think of a worse message for new guests to see, honestly. I came back to this hoping that there would be some action on it after my first comment a year ago. :(

Justin Johnson

Yeah, this feels like a deal breaker. But the rich messages look so good, just like a mailchimp or constant contact. Once we made the DNS changes from your Sites newsletter provider SendGrid to authenticate the emails from our domain, we have not had issues that I am aware of sending out our newsletters.

Josiah Olhava

I agree! Elvanto already does this. Please incorporate the best features of Elvanto email/sms with Messaging. We cannot use your great looking new App because of a lack of integration and features from what you already offer. There are a number of 'features' like this missing in Messaging that exist in Elvanto.

FYI - one option would be to allow an advanced setting for a custom SMTP server to send email. Then we could all use any email we want and there would be no alias on your end.

Matt Morrison

A decision was made that too often messages are blocked when we try to alias the sender as a custom domain. Using @messaging.church allows us to ensure a much higher rate of deliverability which we put a lot of value in with Messaging. 
Sites experiences weekly reports from customers letting us know that their Email Newsletters were blocked for this reason. In hindsight, I feel it would've been better for Sites to take this same approach that Messaging did. 
Very much appreciate your suggestion here, but I don't think this is a route will be taking with Messaging, at least not in the near future.

Myke Harbuck

Matt Morrison: Matt, I think you guys have fallen victim to some tunnel vision. I say this because only allowing a generic "from" address is actually going to lessen readability and discourage use. Our members are MUCH more likely to read messages that come from an address they are familiar with (ie byroncity.church) than they are to read message from "messing.church." Sure, it maybe more expensive for you guys to set up, and may involve some inconveniences and hurdles, but your users will appreciate the feature more if there's a consistence feel to it. With texting, we have to use a number different from the ChMS number, and a different email from the ChMS. We then wind up with all these different numbers and emails that members can get messages from. Makes things to complicated.

Also, we've NEVER had an issue with blocked messages with ChMS or with Newsletters, and I havent read where other users have either.

Jamison Jones

Matt Morrison: I completely agree with Michael.
This for us is really a deal-breaker for messaging. Elvanto/ChMS is very capable of doing exactly what is being asked for here (as are the myriad of mass messaging platforms out there), and we have never had a problem with it.
It's not ideal, and very impersonal for guests to get emails from an address like this. In addition, when they reply and we reply personally, it will come from a different email than they originally received. This is confusing, and not a good user experience.
The idea behind automated messaging is that it simply automates the personal touches. To add this extra layer of confusion with new numbers and emails is confusing for everyone.
I really think this needs to be reconsidered.
In addition to using our own email, ChMS users should have the option to use our existing SMS number as well.