We recently announced that we're proactively working to prevent common email typos across Planning Center and Church Center. With this change, we now warn users when they mistype an email address, such as bob@gnail.com, prompting them with "Did you mean @gmail.com?"
So, what about the typo'd email addresses that are already in your database?
Happening today, August 29th 2024
This morning, we initiated an automated cleanup to fix the most common and obvious email address typos. The total number of email addresses being repaired exceeds 137,000 across all of Planning Center so we expect this operation to take all day to finish.
Viewing the results
Tomorrow, August 30th, you'll be able to review the results. If you had emails that were repaired, you'll see a message like this at the top of Planning Center People:
In that message, you'll also find a link to download a CSV file for each and every change. You can download that file any time over the next month.
Additionally, the changes will be noted in the Activity Feed for each profile. We've also left a link back to this news update for posterity.
Our conservative approach
With an operation like this, we wanted to make absolutely certain we're repairing emails with a high degree of confidence. Here are the criteria that we used:
The typo is obvious to the eye.
The typo is known and common.
Email sent to the typo'd email addresses would actually bounce. For you techy folks out there, this means we actually checked MX and DMARC records to make sure the domain being replaced is actually non-functional for email.
The domain for the typo'd email address isn't a legitimate mail provider. For example, "mail.com" is a common typo for "gmail.com" but not always! Mail.com is actually a legitimate email provider.
The full list of corrections
Given our criteria above, what started out as list of hundreds of common email typos ended getting whittled down to just 48 corrections we can make with high confidence. Here are the changes:
gmail.con >> gmail.com
gamil.com >> gmail.com
gmai.com >> gmail.com
yahoo.con >> yahoo.com
gnail.com >> gmail.com
hmail.com >> gmail.com
gmil.com >> gmail.com
hotmail.con >> hotmail.com
ail.com >> aol.com
icloud.con >> icloud.com
gmail.om >> gmail.com
gamail.com >> gmail.com
gmail.comm >> gmail.com
gmail.vom >> gmail.com
icoud.com >> icloud.com
hitmail.com >> hotmail.com
fmail.com >> gmail.com
gmail.cim >> gmail.com
gmail.clm >> gmail.com
tahoo.com >> yahoo.com
gmail.com**.com** >> gmail.com
iclould.com >> icloud.com
gmaol.com >> gmail.com
outlook.con >> outlook.com
aol.con >> aol.com
yshoo.com >> yahoo.com
gmail.coom >> gmail.com
yahoo.om >> yahoo.com
gmail**.net** >> gmail.com
yahoo.vom >> yahoo.com
hotmsil.com >> hotmail.com
hotmail.co >> hotmail.com
gmail.come >> gmail.com
uahoo.com >> yahoo.com
gmail.coml >> gmail.com
msm.com >> msn.com
hotnail.com >> hotmail.com
gmail.ca >> gmail.com
gmail.cpm >> gmail.com
gmail.comn >> gmail.com
gmaiil.com >> gmail.com
hotmil.com >> hotmail.com
yahoo.comm >> yahoo.com
gmqil.com >> gmail.com
gmail.ccom >> gmail.com
gmail.comp >> gmail.com
sncglobal.net >> sbcglobal.net
gmail.xom >> gmail.com
A few things to note
1. Your members might be surprised to start getting email.
For example, if Bob Donor set up a recurring donation years ago and entered bobdonor@icoud.com as his email address, then Bob hasn't been getting his weekly donations receipt emails. He will now!
2. Now is a good time to tidy up your people data.
Some people in your People database may have mistyped their email address years ago, possibly when filling out a visitor form or registering for an event on Church Center. Before your next church-wide email blast, review your recipient list and mark profiles as "inactive" if needed.
More to come
The theme of this and the last update is reliable email delivery. It's important to us because it's important to you. When Planning Center sends a service request, event confirmation, or donor receipt, you expect these critical emails to reach the recipient's inbox. More updates on email deliverability are coming. Until then, remember to clip your gnails! 💅
~ Planning Center