Sending an email to everyone with a certain role

Question

Me: Small business owner with no coding or Drupal background who wants to learn by doing instead of hiring a developer for every small thing.

Goal: I have a Drupal 7 website and would like to send different types of emails to users of specific roles using the Rules (or an easier way if you care to suggest it). I've explored using Rules to accomplish this with some success by cloning similar ones and making small changes, but making one from scratch is more challenging. I've wrapped my head around scheduling the event and creating the email in the action, but specifically editing the condition is a barrier. I assume that the element "User has role(s)" is what I should use, but I'm confused on how to drill down the "data selector" under the USER area. I'd like the system to evaluate all members of the site and email everyone with a specific role...I don't see an appropriate option. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong condition element. Little lost - I'm sure it is a painfully obvious to someone who knows what they're doing.

All constructive suggestions and guidance welcome on how to accomplish this - trying to learn!

Answer 1

If all you want to do is send emails to users of a certain role, you can use the Mass Contact module. It enables a user to send an email to users by role or taxonomy. It is very easy to use, without any coding knowledge necessary. I have used it on a couple of business-related sites.

The other alternative is to use Simplenews. This is used mostly for sending email newsletters to lists of subscribers, if that is the kind of email you want to send.

But if you really want to use rules, I suggest you go through some documentation like this. Under the "Add a new action" of your rule, under the "System" section, there is a "Send email to all users of a role" action. That may be what you need.