Email marketing best practices
Email marketing is tool to reach your intended audience. If you do not have an email template created, please contact OMC. The following best practices are for units that already have email communication setups.
- Newsletters are not the only way to engage in email marketing. Other uses of email marketing include single-story emails, e-vites, special news announcements or upcoming events. Your email strategy should go with your communication goals. Contact OMC to ensure your marketing efforts are on target.
- Marketing is a distinct method of reaching an audience, separate from print or direct mail campaigns. Do not consider email marketing solely to save the cost of print material. In many cases, email can be less effective than print because of the amount of email people receive and the preference by some for other media.
- Templates are typically set up and tested by OMC. When creating a new email campaign, please use the template to ensure accurate delivery and content rendering.
- Ensure the timeliness of your content. Relevant and recent information is more useful than outdated content. If the news happened before your previous e-communication, it's outdated.
- Determine how frequently you would like to have email campaigns. Don't send too many, but make sure you're sending them often enough. Sending too often may result in unsubscribes.
Managing email lists
- If you have alumni on your mailing list, please coordinate with University Advancement. UA needs to be aware of your mailing schedule to ensure that alumni are not inundated with communication from different parts of the university.
- When creating an email campaign, make sure to include ways for users to subscribe or unsubscribe from a list. Areas to include subscribe and unsubscribe actions are in the email template’s throw and catch pages and on your website. A template's throw page is the actual email displaying in an email client. A template's catch page is an html page within a website.
- If your mailing list unsubscribe rate is 1-2 percent, you may need to review your content and intended audience. Unsubscribes most often occur when your targets are not interested in the content or they receive mailings too often.
- If your email campaign receives abuse reports, there is a problem with your mailing list — and the university as a whole could be at risk. Please contact OMC as soon as possible if you are receiving abuse complaints.
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