There are several ways to invite members into your Circle community. Use this tutorial to explore the different ways to send invites and discover the best approach for your community launch!

We'll cover how to automate this in a different tutorial but for now, let’s go over how to do this manually in Circle.

Click on the Member icon in the navigation bar — from here you can;

• Bulk-import members from a CSV file
• Share an invitation link, or;
• Invite members individually

Click on the Invite tab first to individually add members by inputting their Name and Email. You will see the out-of-the-box invitation email that gets sent by Circle.

Click on the ‘Customize email’ button to edit it and you'll be taken to the Onboarding tab in your Settings. This is where you can customize the email to members that have a circle account already and customize the email for people who don’t. It’s possible the member you are adding already has a circle account so it’s a good idea to customize both of these. Don’t forget to click ‘Save changes' after editing any emails.

Now go back to the Invite tab. Under Defaults, you can add Member tags if you’ve set some up already, and you can select which Space Sroups and spaces to add people to. Keep in mind that if you select a Space Group here, they will be added to all the Spaces within that Group.

Next, under Permissions, you can give your member admin privileges, and assign them as moderators of Spaces and Space Groups. Now you can either click ‘Invite,’ which will send an invitation with that invitation email we discussed or you can click on ‘Add without invitation’ if you want to add a member but don’t want to alert them yet. Keep in mind, if you have the Community Switcher turned on, they will see your community and have access from the Community Switcher bar. If you’re setting up your community and are not ready to welcome people yet, turn Community Switcher off for the time being.

This manual process is ideal if you’re adding some admins when first setting up your community, or need to add people in one-off situations.

To add multiple members at once, head to the ‘Bulk import’ tab. Here is where you can add a list of people at one time using a CSV. Circle provides a template but essentially you just need a CSV with 'name' and 'email' as column headers. Like before, you can assign Member tags and Spaces to your CSV. If you have groups of people who need different tags or to be added to different Spaces, then you should create different CSV files for these scenarios. Again, you can choose to ‘Send invites’ or ‘Add without invitation.’

Lastly, to create an invitation link, head to ‘Invitation Links.’ Links can work in different scenarios. For example, you might create an invitation link that gives non-paying members access to free areas, and a premium invitation link for members who should access locked areas. Invitation links give you greater control over how you invite people.

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