How Broadcasts work, and what your church controls

A Broadcast is not a separate tool. It is a channel: the push notification channel of an ordinary Hubb message send. That is worth knowing up front, because it means you already know how to send one. You choose your recipients and write your message exactly as you would for an email, and you pick Broadcasts as the channel it goes out on.

It arrives on people’s phones in your church app, a little like a text message, but delivered inside the app you already have. There is nothing for anyone to install beyond the app itself.

What a Broadcast is good for

Broadcasts suit the things everyone needs to know and nobody needs to discuss.

• A service cancelled because of the weather.
• A change of venue or time, on the morning it matters.
• A prayer request that cannot wait until Sunday.
• A reminder the day before an event.
• News the whole church will want, like a birth, or a building project passing a milestone.

Because it reaches people who are not in any chat group, it is the right choice when the message matters more than the conversation. If you want people to reply and talk to each other, a group chat is the better home for it. See Broadcasts, email or SMS: which to use when.

What your church controls

• The channel itself. Broadcasts is a mailing channel, switched on for your site in Config, then Consent, alongside your other channels.
• Who is subscribed. People choose which channels they receive, in the same way they choose whether to receive your newsletter. Somebody who has not consented to the Broadcasts channel will not get one.
• Who you send to. The usual recipient selection: groups, queries, individuals.
• Who can send. The same permissions that govern your other mailings.

What people need for one to arrive

Three things, and all three have to be true.

1. They have your church app installed on their phone. See installing the church app on your phone.
2. They allowed notifications when they installed it.
3. They are subscribed to the Broadcasts channel.

If one of those is missing the Broadcast simply does not reach them, with no error and no bounce. That is the cause of nearly every “I did not get it” report. See Why didn’t my Broadcast arrive?

Broadcasts and children

If your church uses Safe Messaging, a Broadcast is treated exactly like any other message to a child. When your recipients include anyone under 18, each child’s copy is held and sent to their parent or guardian for approval first. Approved copies go out; rejected or expired ones never do, and you are told.

Two practical points follow. Children under 13 have no login of their own, so a push notification has nowhere to land for them: they only ever receive the email copy, and only once a guardian has approved it. And if what you actually want is to tell the parents of a children’s group something, use the Substitute children option when you send, which swaps the children for the adults in their family. See Sending a mailing or Broadcast to a group that includes children.

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Good to know

• A Broadcast is a notification, not a conversation. Nobody replies to it. If you want replies, use a group chat. See How to turn on chat for a group.
• Keep them rare. The value of a Broadcast is that people look when one arrives, and that only lasts while they are uncommon.
• Write the first line as though it is all anyone will read, because on a lock screen it often is.
• Because Broadcasts and your email newsletter are separate channels, someone may be subscribed to one and not the other. For anything genuinely important, sending on more than one channel is sensible.
• Broadcasts are part of Messaging, which is included at no extra cost on church management plans. See What you can do with Messaging.