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Your church decides who to email and what to send, so under privacy and anti-spam laws your church is responsible for having permission to email the people on your lists. Flowforth handles the technical requirements of those laws on every email you send.
This article is general information, not legal advice. If your church has questions about how these laws apply to you, talk to a lawyer.

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What Flowforth handles for you

  • An unsubscribe link in every email. Block, HTML, and plain-text emails all include one, and mail apps like Gmail and Apple Mail get a one-click unsubscribe button too.
  • Unsubscribe requests take effect immediately. Someone who clicks unsubscribe or replies to the unsubscribe address won’t get your emails again. Only they can resubscribe, by confirming over email. See Subscription Types.
  • Spam complaints are cleaned after 3. An address that marks your emails as spam 3 or more times is cleaned and stops receiving them. See Understanding Email Bounces.
  • Your mailing address in every email. It’s shown in the email footer, and added to HTML emails that don’t already show it. Keep it current in Organization Details.
  • Planning Center blocks are respected. Emails marked as blocked in Planning Center are never sent to.
  • Bounced addresses are cleaned so you aren’t repeatedly emailing addresses that don’t work. See Understanding Email Bounces.

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What your church is responsible for

  • Only email people who expect to hear from you. Members, regular attendees, donors, volunteers, and event registrants usually do. Never email purchased, rented, or scraped lists. This is part of our Terms of Service.
  • Use accurate sender names and subject lines that make clear the email comes from your church.
  • Respect opt-outs you receive another way. If someone asks in person or by phone to stop getting emails, unsubscribe them from their person page.

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If you have recipients in Canada (CASL)

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) requires consent before sending most email.
  • Implied consent generally covers people with an existing relationship with your church, such as members, volunteers, and recent donors. For many relationships it lasts two years from the person’s last donation, volunteering, or attendance, so keep your Planning Center lists current.
  • Express consent is a clear opt-in, such as someone signing up through a signup form. It doesn’t expire until the person unsubscribes.

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If you have recipients in the EU or UK (GDPR)

Under GDPR, your church is the data controller for the people you email, and Flowforth is your data processor.
  • You need a lawful basis to email people. For churches this is usually consent, or legitimate interest for people in an ongoing relationship with your church.
  • Our Data Processing Agreement applies automatically, and includes the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum for data transferred to the United States.
  • If someone asks to see or delete the data you hold about them, Planning Center is where their record lives: deleting them in Planning Center removes them from your Flowforth people and lists. For anything else, contact support.
  • You can turn off open and click tracking for each sending domain if you prefer not to track opens and clicks.