Constant Contact Sync

Version 11.1 of PowerChurch Plus added a utility to sync contact lists to Constant Contact. We know many churches and nonprofits use Constant Contact and most PowerChurch users keep email addresses in their Membership database. 

These days, it is getting harder and harder to get bulk mail sent out successfully, be it through PowerChurch Plus or other programs. Email providers spend so much time fighting off spammers that they can't help but make it difficult for everyone else to send e-mails successfully. And that's only the first half of the fight!

Once you are able to get the email sent out, you then need to make sure that people will receive it. The only thing worse than an email server that won't let you send mail is one that won't accept your message once it has been sent.

Constant Contact simplifies all of this by keeping you separated from all the technical stuff. You choose or customize your email template, type your message, and choose the contact list. The integrated sync tool in PowerChurch Plus ensures that you won't be maintaining two separate databases of contacts. You can sign up for a 60 day free trial at:

powerchurch.constantcontact.com/features/signup.jsp

After the free trial, nonprofits qualify for pricing as low as $10.50 per month, which allows you to keep up to 500 e-mail addresses in your contact list. They also offer a 30 day money-back guarantee.

In PowerChurch Plus, you will find the Constant Contact Sync program under Utilities > Constant Contact Sync. You will first be prompted for the username (or email address) and password used to log in to your Constant Contact account. On the next screen, you set up the different Contact Lists that you will be working with in Constant Contact.

The Constant Contact Sync allows you to query information from Family Mailing List, Personal Profiles, Activities & Skills, and Parents of children in Activities & Skills. To add a new Contact, do the following:

1. Click the Add button on the right of the form.
2. In the Title field, assign a name for this Contact List.
3. Select which area of the PowerChurch database you are querying from the four options below.
4. Click OK.
5. You will now see the familiar Selection Criteria form that is used when running reports or mailing labels from that particular area of the software. Choose the selection options and click OK to finish.

Your new Contact List is now shown in the grid along with a "quantity" or count of email addresses that will be sent over to Constant Contact. Only those emails that have the "Include in bulk mailings" option checked on the family or profile will be included.

Click the Edit, Delete, or View buttons on the right of the form to edit the Selection Criteria, delete, or view a list of those names and email addresses that will be included in the next sync of the selected Contact List. Click Finish to start the sync process.

You will see the Processing screen go through four steps:

1. Getting current email addresses from Constant Contact. PowerChurch Plus requests a list of all contacts from Constant Contact.
2. Getting changed email addresses from Constant Contact. Each of the addresses in your PowerChurch Plus data is compared to the list of contacts from Constant Contact.
3. Updating Constant Contact with changes made in PowerChurch. If any of your contacts have changed their email address through the Constant Contact system, the address will be updated automatically in PowerChurch Plus.
4. Updating contact list on Constant Contact. New or changed addresses in PowerChurch Plus are then inserted into your contact list at Constant Contact.

When the sync process has completed all four steps, you will see a Constant Contact Sync report appear onscreen, completing the sync.