Mailing lists

Give your committee (or coaches, or captains) a real email mailing list — committee@yourclub.org.uk — that members post to from their own inbox and every list member receives, without anyone maintaining a BCC list or leaking the whole address book into a To field. Replies go back to the list, so it works as a conversation, not a broadcast.

A mailing list is for a group that talks among itself — your committee replying to each other, your coaches comparing notes. If you just want to tell members something, that's Communications: a message goes out to your whole club or a segment of it, and nobody can reply to the group.

Lists are closed: only the members you put on a list receive its mail, and only whoever you authorise to post — by default, specific designated senders — can post to it. There is no public archive and outsiders cannot subscribe or post.

Who can do this?

Creating lists, choosing who's on them, and moderating posts: Club Admin or Content Manager. In the admin panel, lists live under Members → Communications: Distribution Lists for the lists themselves and List Moderation for posts waiting on approval.

Asking for mailing lists

Ask us to switch this on for your club — mailing lists are not something you turn on yourself in Settings. Every list post is delivered through RunClub HQ's own email infrastructure and rides its sending reputation, so we enable the feature club by club. Until we have, the mailing-list options simply don't appear in your admin panel, and any email posts are politely refused.

Creating a list and choosing members

A mailing list is an ordinary distribution list with email posting turned on:

1. Go to Distribution Lists and create (or open) a list.
2. Choose who receives it — either pick members by hand (a static list) or use a dynamic list that automatically includes members matching criteria such as membership type or status.
3. In the Email Posting section, turn on Posting enabled. You can also turn on Require moderation (every post waits for approval before it is sent), turn on Send push notification (see Push notifications below), and set how long post content is kept — see Retention.

Who can post

Receiving and posting are separate. Being on the list means you get the mail; posting needs authorisation, and you choose how that's granted with the Who can post setting in the Email Posting section:

• Designated senders (the default) — only members you specifically add to the Senders section can post, typically your committee. Mail from anyone else, including club members who are on the list but not designated as senders, is refused and recorded, never sent.
• Any list member — every member who receives the list can also post to it, with no separate roster to maintain. Good for a small, trusted list where everyone on it should be able to start a thread. Switching back to designated senders later restores your senders list exactly as it was.

Posting rights are always personal, whichever setting you choose: we match the email address a post comes from against the poster's own account email. A parent managing a family account cannot post on behalf of a family member — only their own address can post, and only if it's actually authorised (on the senders list, or a receiving member under "Any list member").

To add or remove designated senders, open the list and use the Authorised senders field in the Senders section — search for a member and add them, or remove one with the × on their chip. Only members with their own login appear as options: a post is authorised by matching the sender's account email, so a family member with no login of their own has none to match against. Changes take effect as soon as you save. This section is hidden while Who can post is set to "Any list member", since it isn't consulted in that mode.

Push notifications

By default a post arrives by email and as a copy in the member app's inbox, but does not ping members' phones. Turn on Send push notification in the Email Posting section to also send a push notification to the mobile app, on top of those two.

This is off by default because most lists don't need it — email is the point of a mailing list, and a push for every post on a busy list gets noisy fast. It suits a small, low-traffic, time-sensitive list better than a general discussion list — for example, a "Race Day Alerts" list where members genuinely want to know the moment something is posted, rather than a general chat list where email is enough. Only members with the app installed and notifications enabled on their device receive the push; everyone else still gets the email and inbox copy as normal.

Setting up the email address

Anyone authorised to post can always post straight to the list's own platform posting address — there's no requirement to set up anything on your own domain first. If you'd rather members write to an address on your club's own domain — for example committee@yourclub.org.uk — that's supported too, as a forward into the platform address. You can use either, or both.

The quick way: post directly to the platform address

1. Open the list and find the Email setup section.
2. Press Get posting address. This creates the list's platform posting address and shows it on the page immediately — nothing else to configure.
3. Everyone authorised to post can now see that address on their own Profile → Notifications page and post to it directly (see Posting directly to the platform address below).

Giving members your own club address instead

1. Open the list and find the Email setup section.
2. Enter your Club forwarding address — the address on your domain that members will write to.
3. Press Send forwarding test. This creates the platform posting address if it doesn't already exist (so you don't need to press Get posting address separately) and emails a test message to your club address.
4. At your domain provider, set your club address to forward to the platform posting address, then send another test if the first one was sent before the forward existed.

Don't publish the platform posting address

Your club address is the list's public identity — the one to put on your website and in footers. The platform posting address is the direct route into the list: publishing it widely just invites junk mail (anyone unauthorised who finds it is refused anyway, but their attempts still arrive and get logged), and if it starts drawing spam you'll want to rotate it. We do show it to everyone authorised to post, on their own Profile → Notifications page in the member app — that's deliberate; see posting directly.

What the forwarding test tells you

The test does two jobs: it proves your forward actually works, and it checks whether your forwarder keeps email signatures intact.

• Verified — forwarding preserves signatures. The best outcome: members' posts can prove they are genuine, and flow straight through (subject to your moderation setting).
• Verified — but your forwarder breaks signatures. The forward works, but your forwarding service alters messages in a way that breaks the sender's email signature. The platform then can't verify who a post is really from, so every post through this forwarder is held for moderation — no mail is lost, but each post needs an approval. Cloudflare Email Routing preserves signatures; most registrar forwarders don't — if you see this result, moving the forward to Cloudflare Email Routing (free) usually fixes it.
• Nothing arrived — check the forward. The test never came back. Check that your club address really forwards to the posting address shown on the page, then send another test.

You can re-run the test at any time — for example after changing forwarding provider.

Posting directly to the platform address

Once a list's posting address exists, everyone authorised to post sees it in the member app (Profile → Notifications, under the list) with a compose link. Writing to it directly is completely fine — in fact it's the more reliable way to post: the platform address always accepts a post, whether or not the club forwarding address is wired up yet, and a direct email arrives exactly as the sender's own mail provider signed it, so it verifies as genuine even when the club's forwarder would have broken the signature. Mailing the club address works too, of course — the two routes lead to the same list.

Rotating a burned address

If the platform posting address leaks and starts drawing junk mail, open the list and press Rotate address. A new posting address is created and the old one stops working immediately — update your club address's forward to the new posting address and send a fresh forwarding test. The list itself, its members, and its history are untouched, and members' mail filters keep working. Anyone posting via the club address notices nothing; anyone who posts directly to the platform address picks the new one up from their Notifications page (the old one is dead, so tell them you rotated).

Moderation

Posts wait in List Moderation (the badge shows how many) when:

• the list has Require moderation turned on — every post waits;
• a post's sender couldn't be verified — the message may be genuine, but its email signature didn't prove it (common with signature-breaking forwarders, see above). These posts are always held for a human decision, whatever the moderation setting;
• one sender posts unusually often — more than 10 posts to one list within an hour are held rather than sent, which contains a runaway auto-responder without losing real messages.

For each held post you can view it, then Approve & send (it goes to everyone on the list) or Reject (it is sent to no one; you can record an optional reason, and the poster is not emailed a rejection). Two moderators acting at once can't double-send a post — the first decision wins.

Mail that fails outright — a forged sender, mail from someone who isn't authorised to post, automated mail like out-of-office replies — never reaches the queue. It is refused and recorded with the reason, so there is always an answer to "what happened to my post?".

What members receive

Every list member gets the post by email, plus a copy in their inbox in the member app, and — if the list has push notifications turned on — a push notification on their phone too. The poster receives their own copy too — that's the confirmation it went out.

• If the list has a subject prefix (say, Committee), every post's subject carries it once — [Committee] Track booking — so list mail is easy to spot and filter. Replies don't stack the prefix.
• The email's From shows the list and your club (for example "Committee · Winchester Running Club"), and replying goes back to your club address — and therefore to the list — so a reply reaches everyone, not just the original poster.
• All copies of a post thread together properly in members' mail clients.

How members unsubscribe

Every list email carries an unsubscribe link (and the standard one-click unsubscribe mail apps offer). Members have two levels of control, from the link or from Profile → Notifications in the member app:

• One list — stop email from that list only; other lists keep arriving.
• All lists — one switch stops email from every mailing list.

Either way, this affects mailing-list email only. Account email — invoices, receipts, renewal reminders, login links — is never affected, and the copy in their portal inbox still arrives. Members can turn any of it back on themselves from the same Notifications page — which is also where anyone authorised to post finds the posting address for each list they can post to.

For family accounts, list email for children and other family members without their own login goes to the account holder — so it is the account holder's Notifications page (and their unsubscribe link) that controls it.

The delivery report

When something about a post is worth telling the poster — some recipients were skipped, or the post waited in moderation — the poster gets a short delivery report by email: how many copies were sent, and who was skipped and why (turned mailing-list email off, opted out of this list, undeliverable address, or no email address on file). A post that went straight out to everyone sends no report.

Posting from your own domain

By default, list posts are delivered from our default sending address (with your club address as the reply-to). If your club has set up the custom email domain feature and enabled custom sending — and your club forwarding address is on that verified domain — list posts are sent directly from your club address instead. The list's Email setup section shows which address posts currently go out from, and why.

If your domain's verification ever lapses, list posts automatically fall back to our default sending address — nothing bounces, and replies still go to your club address.

How long post content is kept

Each list can set Keep post content for a number of days. After that window, the content of old posts — the message text and subject — is removed from our posting records. The record that a post happened (who, when, and what was decided about it) is kept for auditing. Leave the setting empty to keep content indefinitely.

This applies to the list's posting records; copies already delivered to members' inboxes are their own mail and are not recalled.

If a list is paused

Posting can be paused two ways:

• You pause it. Each list has a Pause posting action — an emergency stop. New email posts are refused (and recorded) until you resume; the list, its members and its history are untouched.
• It pauses itself. If recipients of a list's posts report them as spam — more than roughly 1 in 1,000 delivered, with at least two reports, over the last 30 days — we automatically pause posting on that list. This protects email delivery for your whole club (and every other club): spam reports damage sending reputation, and reputation is shared. If it happens, talk to your members about what and how often the list sends, then use Resume posting on the list.

While paused, posts are refused and recorded — not queued — so senders should be told before you resume.