Renewal Reminders and Notifications

Renewal reminders are the friendly nudges that keep your members in good standing without you having to chase anyone by hand. Use Reminders/Notifications to edit the five renewal email templates that Clubistry sends during the dues cycle. You write the message content here, you set the reminder timing on Membership Types, and you can use Members when you want to send one of these messages by hand. These are just templates, so you can change the wording any time and see how it reads before it goes out.

Who can use these tools?

The Reminders/Notifications resource appears under Membership Tools.
This area is intended for Administrators and Super Admins.
Reminder timing is managed separately on Membership Types.
Email delivery results can be reviewed in Logs.

Where this workflow lives

Use Reminders/Notifications to edit the subject, body, and active/inactive status for renewal messages. To change the order the reminders appear in the list, drag the rows up or down and the new order saves on its own.
Use Membership Types to set when due-date reminders and end-of-grace-period reminders should be sent.
Use Members when you need to manually send one of the active renewal notifications to selected members.
Use Logs to confirm whether reminder emails were sent successfully.
For help finding action menus and bulk action dropdowns, see Actions.

The five renewal email types

Start of Renewal Notification is sent when a non-zero renewal is generated and the member enters the unpaid renewal period.
Renewal Due Date Reminder is sent on the reminder dates configured on the member's membership type while the renewal is still unpaid.
Start of Grace Period Notification is sent when an unpaid renewal becomes late.
End of Grace Period Reminder is sent on the reminder dates configured on the member's membership type while the renewal is still late.
Membership Lapsed Notification is sent when the grace period ends and the membership lapses.
Zero-dollar renewals do not use these reminder emails. They are auto-paid and send a payment confirmation email instead.

Fields in each reminder record

Name chooses one of the five standard renewal notification types.
Subject is the email subject line and supports tokens.
Body is a plain text message area and supports tokens.
Active controls whether that reminder can be sent by the live workflow.

What Clubistry adds automatically to the sent email

Clubistry inserts your subject and body into a standard renewal email layout.
Line breaks in the Body field are preserved in the sent email.
HTML is not rendered from the Body field, so write the message as normal text.
The sent email includes a Login to Your Account button that links to the member dashboard.
The footer uses your club name and the site's Default Contact Email.

Available tokens

Use these tokens in the subject or body to insert member-specific renewal information:

Token	What it inserts
`{first_name}`	Member first name
`{last_name}`	Member last name
`{display_name}`	Member display name
`{email}`	Member email address
`{club}`	Full club name
`{member_type}`	Membership type name
`{renewal_start_date}`	Renewal period start date
`{renewal_end_date}`	Renewal due date
`{grace_period_end_date}`	Grace period end date
`{late_fee}`	Late fee for the member's membership type

Configuring reminder timing on Membership Types

Renewal Period - Days Before Due Date determines when the renewal window begins.
Grace Period - Days After Due Date determines when the grace period ends.
Due Date Reminders lets you add one or more reminder offsets in days before the due date.
End Of Grace Period Reminders lets you add one or more reminder offsets in days before the grace period ends.
The email content does not live on the membership type. The membership type only controls the dates when reminder emails are triggered.

Sending a test reminder to yourself

Open Membership Tools > Reminders/Notifications.
Select one or more reminder records.
Open the Actions dropdown and run Send Reminder Test Notification.
Clubistry sends the test email to the email address on the account you are currently logged in with.
Review Logs if you want to confirm the send result.

A couple of things make the test succeed.

The account you are logged in with needs a membership type assigned, or the test won't go out.
That account also needs Receive Electronic Communications checked in its profile, since that's the same opt-in real members use.
The test runs whether the reminder is active or inactive, so you can preview wording before you turn it on.

Sending a renewal notification manually to members

Go to Members.
Select one or more member accounts and use the bulk Actions dropdown, or open a member detail page and use the top-right Actions menu.
Run Send Email Notification.
Choose the active reminder type you want to send.
Submit the action and review Logs if needed.

A few members are skipped automatically, which keeps your message from reaching people it shouldn't.

The manual send only uses reminders that are active.
Members with a Membership Status of lapsed are skipped.
Members without a membership type are skipped.
Members who have not checked Receive Electronic Communications won't receive the email, since that's their opt-in choice.

Good to know

A few things that help these reminders behave predictably.

Reminder content is shared across all membership types, while the timing is set separately on each membership type. So one message can serve every type, and each type can still send on its own schedule.
Marking a reminder inactive pauses it. The automatic workflow stops sending that type until you turn it active again, which is handy when you want to take one message out of rotation for a while.
A test send works even on an inactive reminder, so you can preview your wording before going live. Keep in mind the live workflow still won't send an inactive reminder until you activate it.
Keep one clear reminder per notification type rather than several for the same type. That keeps it obvious which message goes out and when.
If you ever wonder whether an email went out, Logs has the answer. It's the surest way to confirm a send rather than guessing.