Understand clients, forms and recipient lists

Choose your audience before writing a message. You can contact people from the record you are working on, or build a reusable list when you need to reach the same kind of group again.

Understand the three records

Record	What it is for	Example
Client account	Keeping a client’s account information and related activity together	A parent’s account with family registrations
Form response	Recording information submitted through a form	A registration, waiver or survey response
Recipient list	Gathering contacts for communication	Participants registered for selected classes

These records are related, but they are not interchangeable. A person can appear in several forms or lists. Creating a list does not by itself collect a new registration or obtain consent.

A recipient needs usable contact details for the channel you choose. A child’s registration may use a parent’s email or mobile number. Inspect both the participant context and the actual contact information before sending.

Start from the audience you already have

You need to contact…	Start here
People who answered a form	Open the form’s respondents and select the intended responses
Participants in a class or occurrence	Open the relevant class or attendance list and review its selection
Clients about their accounts	Use the client records
A reusable combination of groups	Build a recipient list or master list
Contacts in a spreadsheet	Create an Excel/CSV upload list and review the imported fields
Newsletter subscribers	Use a subscriber form and its audience
Yourself for a first test	Choose Myself in the message composer

Do not create an extra mailing list solely because you want to message a class or form. The contextual message action can already carry the audience into the composer. Recheck the resulting selection: a filter, selected rows and a complete list can represent different groups.

Audience choices and the separate BCC control in the message composer

Choose a list source

Use the source that matches where the information is maintained:

Excel or CSV for contacts you import. Map the correct email, mobile and optional second-contact fields.
Class registrations for an audience tied to selected classes and filters.
A master list to combine lists and apply its supported exclusions.
A subscriber form to collect newsletter signups.
Integration lists for Amilia, Sport-plus or Uplifter.

Give reusable lists a name that explains their purpose, such as “Saturday swim classes — current session.” A list based on registrations or an integration can change as its source changes; an uploaded file is not automatically connected to your original spreadsheet. Use the list’s available refresh/import actions and inspect the result.

Check the audience before sending

Confirm the source, filters and selected rows.
Inspect contact details, including any second parent or contact you want to include.
Check valid-recipient counts for the chosen channels. A total row count is not a delivery guarantee.
Classify the message correctly and respect unsubscribe settings.
Preview placeholders using the relevant context, especially when several registrations share a parent’s contact details.

Do not rely on duplicate prevention as a substitute for reviewing your audience. Registrations, participant-specific content and selected channels can affect how communications are prepared. Starting another send is also a separate operation.

Use tags and unsubscribe management to organize communications. Use Merge duplicate client accounts or Archive and restore clients for client-record maintenance; these are different tasks from selecting a message audience.

Next step