From Feature Faves to Hidden Gems: See What We Love about eCatholic Connect

June 10, 2025 by

 Katie Clark

Discover the beautiful and easy-to-use features on a guided tour of our messaging and group management tool!

Communication efforts should go beyond sending a simple text message about your upcoming potluck. Good (dare we say great) communication in the church begins and ends with an intuitive and dynamic tool that helps you inspire community participation and build stronger connections, all before those members even reach your church’s threshold.

eCatholic Connect is the newest stop on our mission to help Catholic organizations communicate and evangelize more effectively. Connect is already turning heads—and today, we’re giving you a guided tour of some of our favorite features.

So grab your digital walking shoes and join us as we explore everything this powerful platform has to offer.
 

Tour Stop #1: Our favorite features within eCatholic Connect

There’s no hiding what we love! And, as we continue to grow and expand the possibilities with eCatholic Connect, here are a few features we think you’ll love too!

1

Streamlined Message Statistics

Connect offers you insight on the most commonly sought after statistics for reporting your communication impact. These simple insights will help you track performance and understand who’s getting your messages. A bonus? All of these stats refresh in real time, so you can see communication results quicker than you can say, “Pope John Paul the Second.” Here’s what you can track for each message in Connect:

• Open Rate
• Delivery Rate
• Number of Emails Sent
• Number of Emails Delivered

2

Email Multiple Groups at Once

While every message may not need to be delivered to your organization at large, sometimes you will need to inform multiple groups with the same message. Maybe the parish hall will be under construction during the weekly Knights of Columbus and Prayer Shawl meetings? Does Father need to cancel his attendance during Friday events, due to being sick?

In Connect, you can send one message to many groups—all at the same time. Simply create your message and add the relevant groups in the “To:” field. It’s seamless, and your members only get messages relevant to them.

3

Add Unlimited Members + Create Unlimited Groups

Even though our Catholic communities across the nation share a beautiful faith with many overlapping or similar ministries, we’re not all the same. Connect allows you to create and manage unlimited groups to streamline and simplify your staff and volunteer communications. So go ahead - let your administration dreams run wild. You’ll never be charged extra for the number of groups you create within your Connect account.

Whether it’s your weekly men’s group, youth ministry, or school faculty, Connect gives you a beautifully organized way to stay in touch.

Bonus Stop: 

Latest updates to the Groups Interface!

The Groups interface now defaults to displaying all members who are a part of that group, so you can see your entire list of members, at a glance. A scrollable and paginated view allows for better visibility and group management.

You can also let your group managers customize their own groups! Groups can now have a tailored icon and color to create a distinct look for each list!

Tour Stop #2: How Connect Integrates With Your eCatholic Website

Once people come to your digital front door (your website!) that you’ve worked so hard to build, you want to make sure it’s quick and easy for them to get in touch. That’s why Connect was designed to work seamlessly with your eCatholic website. Here’s what you can implement.

1

Global Sign Up Footer

Once you integrate Connect with your eCatholic-powered website, we recommend turning on the Global Sign Up Form in the footer of your website. Visitors use this form to add themselves to your communication list and receive updates.

Constant visibility is a great solution when it comes to getting more sign ups and increased engagement. Putting a sign up form in your website’s footer increases the chance visitors will see it on your site in order to get connected and engage with your mission and updates!

2

Sign Up Module for Individual Groups

In addition to a global sign up form, you can also get pretty specific by using the dedicated sign up module as well!

This integration turns on the Connect “Join Group” module, which can be added to any page that you choose on your eCatholic website. This module makes it easy for visitors to subscribe to specific group communication, so they can receive information and stay up to date with the details they want to know!

Bonus Stop: 

Let visitors join your email groups from any eCatholic form!

When you add any eCatholic form to your website, be sure to toggle on the Subscribe to Messages feature in order to let visitors opt-in to communications from your church, school, or ministry!

Tour Stop #3: Simple Branding Tools and Personalization Features

At its core, outbound email and text messaging helps you communicate. But what if you took it a step further? What if your communication efforts could be an opportunity to maintain your unique brand that builds trust with your members? With eCatholic Connect, it’s not a “what if”, it’s really possible! Here’s how you can build a lasting impression that makes communication personal for your members!

1

Create Beautiful Messages

Long gone are the days that you need a degree in graphic design or marketing to be an effective communicator. Connect’s easy-to-use message builder features familiar tools that help you build a beautiful message in minutes, not hours. Remember, you’re not just sending an email—you’re designing an experience! Here are a few we love best:

• Add an HTML button with one click and customize its shape, style, and color
• Adding columns and dividers that create impact when designing sections
• Endless formatting options for fonts, including preset or hex-value font color and font background color, text styles, and text alignment
• Personalization variables and customized organization logos to keep your messages on brand (Keep reading to learn more!)

2

Personalize with Branded Details

It’s time to empower your ministry with personalized communication! All messages in Connect sport the optional organization logo headers that are guaranteed to give every message a polished, professional look and strengthen your brand identity. This logo template automatically applies to emails, welcome messages, admin invites, and can be included in the branded logo header on any group message you create.

You can also take advantage of variables (also known as “merge tags” or “dynamic content”) to include three personalized tokens–first name, last name, or full name–that allow you to send customized messages out to your community in order to build relationships and show that you care!

Tour Stop #4: Message Sending + Delivery Details

When it’s time to actually send your message, Connect makes sure it gets where it needs to go—on time and on the right device. From scheduled emails to member-controlled preferences, Connect is all about delivery with purpose.

1

Schedule Messages to Send Later

Working for the Church sometimes means showing up on nights and weekends. And while we all strive to joyfully attend to after-hours needs (emphasis on the “strive”), technology can provide helpful solutions for keeping office hours during just office hours.

Every email and text message you send from your Connect account has the ability to be scheduled and sent at a future time and date of your choosing. Plus, you can always cancel or modify your “send time”, just in case anything changes.

 

2

Send Emails From Your Organization Domain

With eCatholic Connect, your emails don’t just look official—they are. By sending messages from your own domain, your communications reflect your organization’s identity, not ours. Connect ensures communications look like they’re coming directly from your parish, school, or ministry.

For example, a parish called Our Lady Catholic Church can use Connect to send emails from [email protected].

This builds trust with your audience, reinforces your brand, and protects your sender reputation—all of which improve engagement and deliverability. Connect supports secure email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to help keep your messages out of spam folders, and we’ll guide you through the setup to make sure everything is properly configured.

3

SMS Texting

In a world where the mobile phone is always accessible and never out of reach, the ability to send text messages can take your communication strategy to the next level.

Connect includes a single toggle that automatically formats your email into a text message*. There’s no re-building your message or complicated formatting because Connect automatically builds the text for you; all you have to do is click “send.” :) Plus, because Connect prioritizes your members’ choices; only those who have chosen to receive SMS messages will be texted, which means happier members and less inbox overload.

*Texting requires a Twilio Account.

Bonus Stop: 

Send text messages from a dedicated phone number!

With Connect, you can send text messages from a single local phone number. This also reinforces your brand and ensures your texts are more likely to be recognized and trusted by recipients when compared to using a shared or random number — or a rotating set of random numbers.

4

Member Preferences

Communication shouldn’t be a one-way street. From the beginning, Connect was designed with privacy and preferences in mind—so your members stay informed and in control.

When you add someone to a group, they’re invited to manage their own communication preferences and how they’d like to receive messages (though they’ll still receive your messages even without creating an account). This opt-in process protects both your members’ privacy and your sender reputation.

Already using another tool? No problem—you can easily import your list, and those members will start receiving messages right away.

Ready to take the next step?

We’ve walked you through just a few of the beautiful, easy-to-use features inside eCatholic Connect—a messaging and group management tool built specifically for Catholic ministry. But while this tour is over, you’re really at the beginning!

Remember, great communication in the Church is about inspiring participation, building real relationships, and creating a culture of connection—before your people even walk through the doors.

Want to learn more about Connect? Check out this blog post as we dive into what makes our communications tool perfect for your Catholic organization.

If you're ready to elevate your communication strategy and bring clarity and consistency to your outreach, we’d love to connect with you! Reach out to our team and let’s explore how eCatholic Connect can work for your parish, school, or ministry. Your people are waiting!