Creating an Email Distribution List

Distribution Lists are lists of your stakeholders, often sorted by a shared interest, demographic, or how they are affected by your organisation’s work. These lists are typically used to send communications to your stakeholders.

In this article, we will look at Email Distribution Lists. These lists can be used in the Email module to send communications to your stakeholders.

Creating your Distribution List

Go to the Distribution List module. From the left-hand menu, click Add Distribution List. Complete the five fields that appear to create your list:

• Title: The name for your Distribution List.
• Record Type: The type of records your list will contain. You can choose between Contacts and Organisations.
• Source Type: You can pick between Static List or Dynamic List. (For more information, see Adding Recipients below.)
• Format: Select Email for this option.
• Owner Teams: You can use this field to give (or restrict) editing permission for your colleagues. By default, all users will be able to edit your List, including adding new recipients.

Account Group, Global Interests and Project Interests may also appear on this page, depending on how your system or Project has been configured.

• Account Group shows the team or department that manages (and will likely be using) this List.
• The Interests option can be used to filter any stakeholders without a matching interest from being included in any communications sent using this List.

Click Save once you’re ready to proceed. Your Email Distribution List will now be ready to use.

Adding Recipients

There are two ways to add recipients to a Distribution List, decided when choosing the Source Type (see above). We have two articles that explain these two options:

• Adding Recipients with a Static List
• Adding Recipients with a Dynamic List

Valid and Invalid Recipients

Back on the View Distribution List page, you can see four more tabs: Recipients, Invalid Recipients, Not Subscribed and Activities.

Stakeholders you have attached this list will appear under one of the first three tabs. For an Email Distribution List, stakeholders will only appear under the Recipients tab if they meet both of the following criteria:

• They have an Email Address recorded against their Contact or Organisation record. This address must be valid. (You can check this on the View Contact/Organisation page.)
• They are marked as “Subscribed” under their Email Subscription Preferences.

Any stakeholders marked as “Unsubscribed” or “Awaiting Response” in their Email Subscription Preferences will be placed under the Not Subscribed tab. Any stakeholders that do not have a valid Email Address will be placed under the Invalid Recipients tab.