Depending on how recipients are selected, there may be a variance in the Count of an email before it is sent and the Message Recipients. This variance can occur when multiple Recipients have the same email address, or if a Recipient is included more than once in a selection. Whether or not multiple copies of a Message are sent to the same email address is dependent on the Message content. If Contact Fields or Data Fields are included and merge in unique information, each unique Message will be sent. Churches can use this to their advantage, depending on whether they would like duplicate emails to be removed or conversely, they would like multiple emails to be sent.
Consider the following scenarios:
Let's continue with the examples above. Consider George and his wife Susie have two children: Olivia, 4th Grade, and Jonathan, 5th Grade. The children's ministry sends an update about summer camp to all parents of current participants in those two grades groups. The following scenarios can occur:
Send to Parents and Remove Bulk Email Opt-Out
Approach: Utilize Send to Parents feature along with a contact or data merge field but does not remove bulk email opt-out since children have already registered.
The email is personalized by giving it a friendly greeting: "Dear parent of [Nickname]." Assuming George and Susie both have unique email addresses in the database, they will each receive the email twice, one for each child for a total of 4 emails between the two of them.
If George and Susie share the same email address and the email is unique per child, they will get a total of 2 emails: one for each child to their shared email address.
Approach: Utilize Send to Parents feature Who Share an Email and Merge Fields are Not Used
If George and Susie share the same email address and the Children's ministry decides to do a broad Summer Camp update to all parents of 4th and 5th graders where no Contact Fields or Data Fields are used, making it non-unique to each child, George and Susie will receive just 1 email. The number of children will be displayed in the "To" field, but the number of messages that will be sent will be displayed in a badge on the send button.
When utilizing both the Send to Parents and Bulk Email Opt Out features in the New Message tool, only parents who have opted out of receiving Bulk Email will not be emailed unless you opt them back in.