Your guide to crafting and sending effective email messages
The basics
IUAA recommends sending a minimum of 1 email per month with a maximum of 2 emails per month. If you want to send a reminder about an event, try sending only one. Look at your open and click-through rates. If stats show less engagement than expected, the email wording or design may need to be revised before the next send. An “ask-a-friend” chain of personal calls or emails or a Facebook event or advertisement might be viable options to boost promotions.
Photos, logos, and words are important. Remember that you’re an official representative of IU. Please consider the event’s title, the purpose, and how it’s being positioned.
Use the checklist below and refer to style and policy guides to help you stay on track.
- This message is relevant, timely, and written in a friendly, warm tone.
- The content focuses on the needs and interests of recipients.
- The subject line is fresh (not a repeat), short, descriptive, and entices recipients to read further.
- This is new information. Sending too frequently causes open rates to drop. This is especially true when recipients see the same information repeatedly.
- This email is brief and to the point. It includes a max of three to five blurbs of information.
- The reader has a call-to-action. Information leads to a website, a form, or the events calendar.
Make sure your email is accessible for all users. This includes alt text, copy that describes images for people with vision impairment or people who have turned off the images in their browser, and video captioning. Please refrain from using images that contain words, due to issues with accessibility. If an image containing words must be used, make sure to include all of the words in the alt text for that image. Learn more about website accessibility.
The necessity of leaving your header and footer unchanged
Your header and footer contain crucial elements that are required to be on every email. Therefore these sections of the email should not be edited under any circumstance. These are the sections with a Crimson background on the top and bottom of every email.
Header contents: the IUAA lockup, sender organization (group), and a link to view the message in a browser for accessibility.
Footer contents: A call to action to update a users profile, a series of tokens that will be automatically filled in when you send a preview/test email and final versions.
The tokens appear as ##token_name##.
Please do not make any adjustments to these tokens. Some are even required for CAN-SPAM compliance.
Attempting to send messages without these elements will result in an error similar to: "Before releasing this draft, Sender Identity and unsubscribe tokens will be required. Missing Tokens: ##Unsubscribe## or ##Unsubscribe_URL##".
If you have any questions about these requirements, please contact the Advancement Marketing's Digital User Experience team at advux@iu.edu.
Using artwork and photography
Selecting the right images to support your messages is very important. Often, you’ll be in a situation where there is not a photo to illustrate your event. Please use care when selecting images. Think about how they represent the institution.
Use the free online design editor Photopea to resize, crop, and adjust your images. Prefer step-by-step instructions? The Photopea information on image size will turn you into an image pro.
Official logos, like the Big Ten logo, may be used only with expressed permission. Logos other than the IUAA logo should never be larger than the IUAA’s mark unless the group shares equal ownership of an event.
Photos that you did not take are likely covered by intellectual property laws. Always request permission to use images of IU athletics, IU buildings, or other private venues/properties. Often, there will be no issue. Other instances might require you to include a photo credit or copyright message. IU Communications offers a photo library of images you can use. Also check the IUAA SmugMug account.
Policies
We're asking you to keep some important policies in mind when sending emails and promoting your group. Event promotion and other sensitive issues are governed by the following policies.
- Religious holidays
- Promoting third-party events and events that involve alcohol
- Political activity under the IU name
- Soliciting monetary support
- Promoting events with a Big Ten Affiliation
When in doubt, contact Advancement Marketing’s Digital User Experience team for assistance at advux@iu.edu.
Lists
Our subscribers are our most important asset. Now you have a role in protecting them. To be given access to alumni information, you follow the IU Volunteer Access to Data policy. In addition, you must adhere to the following best practices:
- Obtain an explicit "opt-in" from a reader before updating or changing contact information. Share that new email address with advdata@iu.edu immediately upon receiving it.
- Use only the lists provided to you within Encompass (iModules). Use only the most updated and recent list. This will allow us to honor unsubscribes in keeping with our legal obligation to do so.
Need additional help or looking to add recipients to Crimson? Email the Digital User Experience team at advux@iu.edu.
- These will be uploaded directly into your Encompass (iModules) account.
Have a special list request? Submit to advux@iu.edu. We'll honor these requests on a case-by-case basis.
- Do not ever share an email list via your personal email account. You are the sole owner and have a one-time-use license for any lists shared with you for IU business.
- Use a secure file sharing system such as IU’s Secure Share service if you must share data with another volunteer.
- Never download an email list and keep it on your personal computer.
- Each individual volunteer will have their own username and password. Both items will be provided to you by the Advancement Marketing's Digital User Experience team.
If you have questions once you receive your username or password, please contact advux@iu.edu.
Testing, testing …
No one is perfect, and no one wants to make mistakes publicly. Establish a system for sending and create an internal test list so that an extra set of eyes is looking at your email before it sends. Your IUAA liaison may be willing to help you with this.
Following this process can help you avoid mistakes:
- Draft
- Select a template
- Set up and design content, images, and hyperlinks
- Proofread and review
- Look for grammatical errors
- Double-check dates, times, and locations
- Verify all names
- Test
- Before final send, send the email to a test list.
- Send to yourself and establish one or two other "test" addresses
- Look at the email in your various test accounts inbox to be sure it’s coming through correctly.
- Final changes …
- if needed, and final review
- Send
- Review
- Look at statistics one week after send, to see engagement with the email.
- Look for opens, clicks, and unsubscribes.
- Apply what you learn to future emails.