Sending email broadcasts and SMS to families

Broadcasts are one-off announcements. A journey is automated. A broadcast is "send this now to these people."

Common broadcasts

• Schedule changes ("No class Monday for the holiday.")
• Weather closures ("Studio closed today due to ice. See you Wednesday.")
• New offerings ("New Wednesday adult class starting next month.")
• End-of-month nudges ("Tuition cards on file: please confirm yours is current.")
• Event reminders ("Bring your green tape for tomorrow's seminar.")

Sending an email broadcast

1. Go to /communications and click New email.
2. Pick the audience. Common segments:

• All active families.
• One specific program (everyone in Youth Karate).
• One specific class (everyone in Tuesday 5pm).
• Families with past-due tuition.
• Lapsed families (no attendance in 30 days).

1. Write the subject and body. You can use the rich-text editor for formatting.
2. Preview a sample (Rosterra renders your email as a family would receive it).
3. Send now, or schedule for later.

Sending an SMS broadcast

Same flow at /communications, but with SMS as the channel. SMS has hard size limits, so keep it short and put the link to the long version on the parent portal.

When to use which

• Email for anything longer than a sentence, anything with formatting, anything that does not need to be read in the next 15 minutes.
• SMS for urgent same-day messages: closures, last-minute schedule changes, "we're 5 minutes from start, where are you?"
• Push notification for transactional reminders: class is starting soon, your child has been checked in, tuition charged.

Throttling and delivery

Email is sent through ZeptoMail and lands in inboxes within a minute or two. SMS goes through Twilio and lands in seconds. If you broadcast to thousands of families, Rosterra throttles the send so you do not trip carrier limits.

Watching results

Every broadcast shows you delivery, open rate (for email), click rate, and bounce count. If your bounce rate is climbing, your contact list has stale emails. Run a clean-up pass on /students before your next big send.

What not to broadcast

• Promotional messages to families that have opted out. The unsubscribe list is honored automatically.
• Transactional messages (a tuition receipt, a class reminder) as broadcasts. Those should be journeys so they fire for the right person at the right time, not for everyone at once.