Announcements - Soul Help Center

Share news, offers and reflections on your portal, and send them to your audience by email or text, now or later.

Audience → Announcements: "Share updates, news, and insights with your community." An announcement is a post on your portal. You can also notify people about it, which sends it by email (or text) to the audiences you choose, straight away or at a time you pick.

Two layers

Every announcement has a post, and can have a broadcast.

Layer	What it is	When it happens
The post	Your announcement on your portal, in the Community Notes section. A draft until you publish it.	Live when you click Publish, or at the broadcast's send time if you scheduled one.
The broadcast (optional)	An email (or text) of the post, sent to the audiences you pick under Send to.	Immediately (within seconds of publishing) or Scheduled for a date and time.

"Scheduling an announcement" means scheduling its broadcast. A published post with a scheduled broadcast stays hidden from your audience until the send time, then appears on your portal as the emails go out.

When to use announcements

If you want…	Use
News on your portal that everyone can scroll back through	An announcement, published without notifying
To email or text your subscribers, leads, customers or community	An announcement with Notify members on
A conversation inside your community	A community post
A message to everyone registered for one event	The event's Blasts
A series of daily messages	A Private Path
One automatic email when something happens	An automation
An automatic reply on Instagram	AutoDM

Where it lives

Screen	What you do there
Audience → Announcements	Published and Drafts tabs, Search announcements, Customize Emails and Create New. Nine cards per page.
Create New	The editor: write, preview, save a draft or publish.
An announcement card	Opens the announcement: the post, its Broadcast panel, sharing, and Make Public or Make Private. Edit opens the editor.
Settings → Email Settings	The header, footer and title setting for every announcement email. Customize Emails opens it.
Community → Overview	"Send an announcement" starts a new announcement already addressed to All Community Members.

Each card shows the title, an excerpt, the image (the thumbnail, or the first image in the post), the date, Sends [date] when a broadcast is set, and how many files are attached. Its ⋯ menu has Edit (Edit Draft for a draft) and Delete.

Anatomy

The editor

Part	What it does
Title	"Your post title..." Required. It's also the email's subject line.
Thumbnail Image	Optional 16:9 image, "Used for previews and social sharing." If you skip it, the first image in the post is used.
Who do you want to send to?	Visibility on your portal: Public, Private or Unlisted.
Notify members	On by default. Choose audiences under Send to, and Immediately or Scheduled.
Email Header & Footer	Shows whether your emails have a custom header or footer, with a button to Email Settings. These apply to all announcement emails.
Body	Rich text with images. Required to publish.
Add to your post	Audio File or Record Voice Memo. More Options (images, videos and documents as files) is marked "Coming soon".
Email Settings	Opens Email Settings in a new tab.
Preview	Sends a test email of this announcement to any address you enter.
Save Draft	Saves without publishing. Only possible with notifications off.
Publish	Asks "Ready to publish?" and whether to notify people. On a published announcement this button reads Save Changes.

See Write an announcement for each part in detail.

Who can see the post

Visibility	On your portal
Public	"Anyone can see this post." The default.
Private	"Only subscribers can see this post." Hidden from everyone without an active membership.
Unlisted	"Only those with the link can see this post." Opens from the email or a shared link, never listed.

Who gets notified

Turn on Notify members and choose one or more audiences under Send to ("Choose recipient sources..."):

Audience	Who
Everyone (subscribers, customers, leads)	Everyone in your People list. Community members who aren't also contacts aren't included.
All Leads	Everyone in People who hasn't bought anything.
All Subscribers	People with an active membership.
All Customers	People who bought something and have a Soul account.
All Community Members	Active members of your community.
"Leads from [form] form"	People who submitted one form.
"Subscribers from [place] city", "[place] state" or "[place] country"	Subscribers in one place.
"People tagged [tag]"	People with one tag.
"Guest from [event] event"	People registered for one event.

Someone in more than one audience gets it once. See Send an announcement to a segment.

Status

You see	Means
Draft	Not published. Lives on the Drafts tab.
Public / Private / Unlisted	Published, with that visibility.
Sends [date]	The announcement has a broadcast set for that day.
Broadcast: Scheduled	Waiting for its send time. Cancel Broadcast is available.
Broadcast: Sending	Going out now, with a progress bar and "[n] of [total] sent".
Broadcast: Sent	Finished, with how many were sent, skipped and failed.

See Track a broadcast.

How the parts connect

You write the post and set its visibility.
With Notify members on, you choose audiences and a send time, then click Publish & Notify.
At the send time, Soul works out who is in those audiences, removes duplicates, and sends each person one email, or a text if it only has their phone number.
The email links back to the post on your portal, so visibility decides whether the reader can open it.
Your header, footer and title setting from Email Settings wrap every email. The sender name is your portal name.

Rules and good-to-knows

Drafts can't notify. To send, you must publish. Soul offers Disable Notifications & Save Draft.
Community-only announcements are unlisted. If the only audience is All Community Members, visibility switches to Unlisted and is locked: "Community-only announcements are unlisted and cannot be made public."
Sending to leads locks visibility to Public: "Visibility cannot be changed because you are sharing to a lead."
A scheduled broadcast sends what the post says at send time.
Each person gets an announcement once. Notifying again from the same announcement only reaches people who haven't had it yet. To send the same news to everyone again, create a new announcement.
A sent broadcast can't be recalled.
Header and footer changes apply to future emails only.
Every announcement email carries an unsubscribe link. People who unsubscribe are skipped from then on.
Show the feed on your portal. Turn on the Community Notes section in My Portal, or only a highlighted announcement shows.
Deleting an announcement is immediate and also removes it from your Highlights.

Email results

The dashboard shows delivery counts (sent, skipped, failed). For opens and clicks, ask Soul AI, for example "How did my last announcement perform?" It can report deliveries, opens, clicks, unsubscribes and bounces, with open and click rates. See Track a broadcast.