Michelle Dassen
You manage communications for a school, sports club, music academy, or university of applied sciences. Then you know: your contact list is not a list. It's a web.
Dad receives the newsletter, but mum wants to receive the payment reminders too. They have three children in the club, each in a different age group. And somewhere in a spreadsheet, the same email address appears five times, because that's just how your system worked.
Good news: this is a setup problem, not a Flexmail problem. And it resolves itself faster than you'd think. In this article, we explain how to structure your communications smartly, which types of emails to distinguish, and how to send professional and relevant emails from day one.
Dad receives the newsletter, but mum wants to receive the payment reminders too. They have three children in the club, each in a different age group. And somewhere in a spreadsheet, the same email address appears five times, because that's just how your system worked.
Good news: this is a setup problem, not a Flexmail problem. And it resolves itself faster than you'd think. In this article, we explain how to structure your communications smartly, which types of emails to distinguish, and how to send professional and relevant emails from day one.
The mindset shift: stop thinking in people, start thinking in communication
Most organisations come to Flexmail with an export from their membership administration. That export is built around the pupil, the member, or the student: each child or enrolment has its own row. The result? The same email address appears multiple times.Flexmail works differently: an email address is unique per subscriber. This is not a limitation, but a deliberate choice that prevents duplicate profiles and confusing reports. It does require you to take a step back before importing.
The question that changes everything is not: who are the people involved with child X?
The question is: who needs to receive which communication, and about what? Once you answer that question, your contact structure will naturally fall into place.
Does mum need to receive the class newsletter? Then mum is a subscriber, with an interest or a contact field indicating which class she belongs to. Does dad need those emails too? Then dad is also a subscriber, with the same interest. Every email address that needs to receive communications appears once in your contact list. Through the assigned interests and fields, you can group them into segments.
The point is: you build your list not around the pupil or member, but around the recipient of your communication.
How to structure your contacts in Flexmail
Option 1: Interests
Interests are labels you assign to a subscriber. They are ideal for group communication: you create interests such as Class 3B, U12 Football, Guitar beginners or Summer Camp Module 2025, and send campaigns only to contacts with that interest.Does a parent have children in two groups? Then that person receives two interests and gets communications for both groups. Simple and scalable.
Tip: through a preference centre, subscribers can manage themselves which groups or topics they want to receive emails for. This reduces unsubscribes and increases relevance.
Option 2: Custom fields
Custom fields are fixed attributes you store per subscriber. In addition to the standard fields such as First name, you can also create custom fields such as: Class, Group, Team, Enrolled module. They are useful when the structure is fairly stable and you also want to filter on them in reports.Does a parent have two children in different classes? Create two separate fields: Child 1 – class and Child 2 – class. This preserves the link to the correct context per child.
Interest or custom field?
For dynamic, changing group structures, interests work most smoothly. For fixed attributes that you also want to use in personalised email content, choose custom fields. In practice, you often use both.
Multiple contacts per child or member
Sometimes you want to make sure that all the adults involved receive a specific email: a report, an individual follow-up, a reminder for an activity. The approach: save both contacts as separate subscribers with the same child-related custom field or the same interests. They both receive the same communication, each to their own address, with their own name in the salutation.Someone in multiple roles
A situation that occurs more often than you'd think: someone is both a parent and a coach. Or a student is also a volunteer or supervisor at the organisation. That person needs two types of communication, but has only one email address.The approach: one subscriber, multiple interests. You assign them both the interest Parent U10 and the interest Coach. This way, they receive communications for both roles without you needing to create a second profile. Through their profile (preference centre), the person can also decide which communications they want to keep receiving.
Four types of emails: why the distinction pays off
One of the most common mistakes: sending everything mixed together from the same list, with no distinction in type or purpose. The result is that people unsubscribe from communications they actually wanted, but can no longer tell apart from the rest. And that can have unintended consequences.Consciously choosing which type of email you send makes your communication more relevant and keeps your list healthier.
A good rule of thumb to make the distinction:
Is this email necessary for the membership or service to function? Then it's a transactional email. If not, it's a marketing email.
1. Informational and educational emails
Newsletters, updates about the offering, announcements of new classes, enrolment periods, events. These are sent broadly to (prospective) members, parents, or students.→ Send these as regular campaigns in Flexmail. Use interests and custom fields to segment by group.
2. Follow-up and nurturing
Someone signed up for a trial lesson but then went quiet. A student requested information but didn't complete their enrolment. After an open day, you want to keep interested parties engaged. These are ideal moments for an automated flow.→ Set up an automation triggered by a form submission or an updated custom field. This way, people receive the right email at the right moment — without you having to think about it.
3. Group communication
The weekly update for a class. Training news for the volleyball team. The schedule for a specific course. Targeted communication for a defined group, based on interests and custom fields.4. Transactional emails
Enrolment confirmations, payment reminders, invoices, password resets, level transitions, changes to the training schedule, cancellations: emails triggered by a user action or an external system. These emails are not dependent on your subscriber list — they are sent based on a trigger.In Flexmail, you set this up via the transactional email module. Want to connect this to your membership administration or sign-up tool? You can do this via the Flexmail API or via an intermediary automation tool.
→ Membership fee reminders and enrolment confirmations belong here, not in your regular newsletter. To find out why this matters for GDPR, read this blog.
Four real-world scenarios
Primary school
Situation: 400 pupils divided across 16 classes. Many parents are separated, and some pupils have a guardian as their primary contact. The school wants to communicate per class and also send a general newsletter to the whole school.Approach: every parent or guardian becomes a separate subscriber. A custom field Child's class is filled in per subscriber. No filter is applied for the general newsletter. For class messages, the filter is applied to that custom field. Payment reminders for school invoices are handled via transactional email, connected to the accounting system via the API.
Football club
Situation: 250 members divided across 8 age groups. Parents of youth players want information about training sessions and matches. Adult members want information about their team and club life.Approach: an interest is created per member for their team (U10, U14, First team, …). Parents of youth players are assigned the same interest as their child. Match updates and training changes are sent to the relevant interest. Membership fee reminders are handled via transactional email.
University of applied sciences
Situation: students are enrolled in multiple programme components. The communications department wants to send emails per programme and per campus, as well as general campaign communications.Approach: students are imported with custom fields for Programme and Campus. Specific programme communications are filtered on these fields. General campaign communications are sent to the full list. Enrolment and exam confirmations are handled via transactional email from the student administration system.
Sports federation
Situation: a federation with tens of thousands of members deals with complex family and role structures. A father is a coach and has two children enrolled: one recreational swimmer, one competitive. Each child follows a different pathway and needs to receive different communications. In the event of a separation, both parents and step-parents need to be reached. The federation also has officials, volunteers, and club administrators, each with their own communication needs.Approach: each person is set up as a separate subscriber based on their email address. Roles are combined via interests: the father receives both the interest Coach and Parent Recreational and Parent Competitive. All (step-)parents are added as separate subscribers with the same child-related interests. All communications directly linked to the membership — such as level transitions, match updates, training changes, and payments — are handled via transactional email, connected to the membership administration system via the API. General federation news and promotional communications are sent as regular campaigns in Flexmail.
Practical tips to get off to a good start
- Choose a consistent naming convention for your interests and custom fields before importing. Class_4A and class 4A are two different things in Flexmail.
- Request consent per communication type at the point of sign-up. This is also the right approach from a GDPR perspective — more on this in part 3 of this series.
- Use a preference centre so that subscribers can manage which communications they receive themselves. This reduces unsubscribes and gives you a clearer picture of who wants what.
- Schedule fixed campaign moments. Consistency creates recognition and better open rates.
- Always use double opt-in. One typo in an email address and your communication reaches the wrong person — or no one at all.
- Create separate templates per communication type. This way, recipients can tell at a glance whether it's a newsletter, a group update, or a payment reminder.
Ready to get started?
A good setup takes some time upfront, but quickly pays off: fewer mistakes, greater relevance, and fewer unsubscribes. That is the foundation of email marketing that truly works.Want to know how to convert your existing data into a Flexmail-ready import list? We walk you through it step by step in this blog: From member list to Flexmail: how to prepare your data.
And everything about GDPR and communications involving minors can be found in this blog: GDPR and communications involving minors: how to get it right.
