General guidelines
Can I send an email to alumni from another broadcast marketing tool?
No. Please read the CAN—SPAM Act tab above for more information.
Can I personalize information in an email?
Absolutely! We highly encourage you to personalize your email. Instead of “Dear alumni” you can personalize it to say “Dear Tim.” We are happy to provide you with a full list of personalized tokens which can be used.
What are the guidelines to sending an HTML email
You must include the following tokens in your email footer. Note that they will automatically populate with the correct information, so please do not include a copy of the sender’s address (it will show up twice).
Required footer tokens
##Sender_Org##
##Sender_Address##
##Sender_City##
##Sender_State##
##Unsubscribe##
Optional recommended footer tokens
##Sender_Postal##
##Sender_Country##
##Webview##
Image guidelines
I don’t have a picture in mind, can you help?
Absolutely! We are more than happy to select a photo for you. If you have something in mind, but don’t have the means of finding it or downloading it on your own, just send us the example and we will do our best to find a similar photo.
Where can I download photos to use?
Make sure you have the rights to use the image you plan on distributing via an email, webpage, social, or print. Unless otherwise noted, Pexels and Pixabay grant you a royalty-free license to download, modify, distribute, and otherwise use the content without attributing the content owner.
Why should I avoid text on my image?
Your email should not rely on the image. Instead, you should use an image to add decoration and emotion. Our email templates are designed to fit a small image for this reason. Additionally, if you want to include a logo, we can do that separately within the email.
Why can’t my email just be one large image?
There are several reasons why you’d want to avoid this:
- If your subscriber has images turned off, they won’t see your email
- It won’t be accessible
- The size of the email can cause it to load slowly—or not at all
- Images may not scale well down to mobile screen sizes
- Your emails can land in the spam folder
- Your emails won’t be searchable
Reports & analytics
Do you provide any email reporting?
The point person will get automatically added to our weekly email report list. This report is distributed by webreq@bu.edu every Tuesday. For reporting metrics definitions and reporting FAQs, please click here.
How do I measure the performance of an email?
Apple’s new Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) is having a significant impact on email marketing. Apple now pre-loads email data regardless of whether a user actually opened an email, meaning that open rates are becoming increasingly unreliable. For this reason, we highly recommend you focus on initial and total clicks, unsubscribes, and spam reports.
Audience
Can I email alumni outside of my school/unit if I think content is relevant to them?
More is not always better, but if your event/opportunity is something that could have broad appeal, we can work with you.
Can I email students, faculty and/or staff via your services?
Yes, you can. Although it’s not always recommended. Your email should be specific to your target audience. Lumping in different types of constituents might dilute your message. However, if you would like to proceed with including any of these groups (i.e. students, faculty, and staff) please ensure that you are seeking the required approvals.
My audience was significantly reduced when it was loaded into Encompass. Why?
Make sure that when you are creating a broadcast email list, you are using the filters inside of BBEC that filter out those who have unsubscribed, marked BU as spam, or have bad or no email addresses for us to email. Click to see screenshot.
What should be included in my audience file to send a broadcast email?
Just constituent record ID’s (aka GUIDs). You can find it in the constituent section of BBEC query called “Constituent Record”. Click to view screenshot.
What do I do if my alum/prospect is unsubscribed but wants to receive emails again?
Reach out to the Alumni Help Desk at alumni@bu.edu and we can work with you to update their record. If they marked BU as spam, we require written express consent from the individual to remove the spam flag.
What is segmentation?
Market segmentation is the process of dividing a broad list of alumni into sub-groups of alumni based on some type of shared characteristics. Segmentation can be an excellent option for A/B testing.
Miscellaneous
I just learned about an urgent event or news that I need to share, but it’s not within your 10-day advanced notice window. What do I do?
Reach out to us at webreq@bu.edu and we’ll see what we can do to support you.
What is the Alumni Digest?
The Alumni Digest is a biweekly newsletter that keeps alumni informed about upcoming events, on-demand videos, editorial pieces, giving opportunities, and more. Sent every other Monday, it features a variety of content to keep alumni engaged. To have your event considered for inclusion, simply add it to the Alumni Events Calendar (submit an event request if you need assistance). While we strive to highlight a range of events, submission does not guarantee inclusion. The EngComm team fully manages this newsletter.
Can I forward an email?
We don’t recommend it. Email is very personalized to the consumer and can often break when it’s being forwarded (images won’t load, text will shift location, etc). However, if you really need to, we can send you a blank version.
What is a ‘Customer Success’ email
As the point person, you will receive an email from customersupport@imodules.com stating that your email has deployed. This email is not the actual email that deployed to your recipients—it is merely a notification email. Often, the links in the Customer Success email will be broken, so do not be alarmed. If you would like to receive the same email as your audience, please include your GUID in the seed list.
