Welcome To Nucleus People + Messages

While many other products offered in Nucleus are powerful on their own, the people database in Nucleus is what really makes them shine.

With each submission that has an email address associated with it, a person record is created and added (or automatically updated!) in your church’s Nucleus people database. (And for those who don’t participate digitally, don’t worry - you can manually create records for them too!)

In short, Nucleus People offers the best way for your church to easily manage your entire database of people records - from profile information, to their submission records, and more! - and perhaps most importantly, send messages to specific groups of people using the email campaign manager.

But enough chit chat. Let’s dive in!

In this guide, we'll cover the following topics. Click on any one to jump ahead.

Replace Your Old ChMS

If you’re moving from another ChMS (that’s Church Management Software), you should be able to enjoy many of the same features that you’re familiar with. And if you’re just entering the world of a ChMS, welcome!

Under each person’s record, you can enjoy the ability to manage a person’s profile, lists, and activity.

For each profile, that includes everything from contact information, to personal information, to custom member IDs, to manual notes added by an admin.

For lists, that includes any Connection Type or custom lists a person has been added to. (More on that down below.)

For activity, that includes any submissions a person has personally submitted via a PrayerFlow, GivingFlow, or custom Flow. (More on that below.)

And with the ability to manually create people records, you can maintain and manage records for every single person in your church - even if they never send a digital submission or create their own My Nucleus account.

Note: Now before moving on, it’s super important to understand how people records and profiles are created. We have an entire guide explaining those details, so click here to learn more.

A Robust Hub For Your People Database

While each product has their own specific list of people records (i.e. anyone who has submitted something or otherwise used that particular product with your church), Nucleus People is the central location for people and profile records from across all your Nucleus products, making it a robust hub of all the info you need.

For example, if someone gives through the GivingFlow, but doesn’t submit a prayer request through the PrayerFlow, their person record will show in Nucleus Giving, but not in Nucleus Prayer. This makes it easy, for example, to know that everyone listed in Nucleus Giving has donated through one method or another, and you don’t have to sort through or filter out people to find your real donors. It’s done automatically for you!

So again, at the risk of repeating ourselves, Nucleus People shows you the “big picture” of all digitally created people records for your church.

Group People In Lists

There are two types of lists in Nucleus: Custom Lists and Connection Lists.

While Custom Lists are a way to organize your people records into specific groups (e.g. all teenagers in one list, all members of a particular small group in another list, etc.), custom lists also act as a way to easily create an Audience with Nucleus Messages. (But more on that later.)

Custom Lists are unique to Nucleus People, as a way to manually organize people.

In contrast, Connection Lists are specific, automated lists that interact with all products and are inherently linked with your church Connection Types. Whatever Connection Types you create will also automatically create corresponding Connection Lists (i.e. They will always stay in sync).

As such, Connection Lists can also be used as an organizational tool in the same way that Custom Lists do, and you can also generate an Audience with Nucleus Messages based on a particular Connection List.

A Connection Type is a categorization  you can add to each person’s profile that define’s the person’s relationship with your church (e.g. visitor, regular attender, member, etc.). Whenever you add a Connection Type to a person’s profile, they will automatically be added to the corresponding Connection List.

Note: Connection Types are important to understand because they power Nucleus Privacy Controls throughout your products. To learn more about Connection Types, click here.

To learn more about grouping people into lists, click here.

Create & Send Email Campaigns

A major feature of Nucleus People is Messages, a convenient way to send emails to a specific group of people.

Need to send a one-off message? Done. Need to schedule some emails in advance to send on a future date? Done. Need to create an auto-sequence so that everyone receives the same emails in a specific order with certain time delays no matter when they’re added to the Campaign? Also done! 

In short, Nucleus Messages is a purposeful replacement for bulk email sending services (like Mailchimp or Constant Contact), which also means spending less time managing two different databases. Instead, keep track of both your people records and email campaigns under one roof with Nucleus People + Messages.

Creating Audiences is simple. While you can manually add a subscriber one at a time, or import subscribers in bulk, you can create an Audience by using the custom lists (or Connection Types) created in Nucleus People. Want to send an email to only those part of a specific small group? Just add those people to a unique custom list, and you can create an Audience with only them in it.

Need to send emails to people who submit a Flow? No sweat! With Nucleus Messages, you can create an Audience based on people who submit a Flow - whether that’s a custom Flow you made, or the Nucleus GivingFlow, or PrayerFlow. And because you can create an automated system, you don’t have to worry about people slipping through the cracks!

A fantastic example of this is keeping connected with new visitors. If you have a Campaign set up with a sequence of emails, and a dynamic Audience linked to an “I’m New” Flow, anytime someone submits that Flow, they’ll be sent all those emails, in a timely manner, without missing a beat!

There’s a lot more you can learn about this, including how to set up and schedule emails, so click here to see our entire section of help resources specific to Nucleus Messages.

What Next?

Now that you’ve been given an introduction to Nucleus People + Messages, it’s time to dive in and learn the specifics of how to best create and maintain your people records and manage your Message Campaigns. Below are some guides to get you started:

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