Email Planning

Planning Framework

• What do you want to achieve via this email or email campaign?
  • Can you articulate a quantitative goal?
    • Examples include funds raised, referrals collected, website traffic and event registration.
• Who is your audience? This includes any pertinent demographic information such a age and city.
  • Do you need to segment your data?
  • Do you need to request this data or clean up existing files?
    • Consider personalization variables to be included in the materials when pulling your data (e.g. first name, degree(s) earned)
• Is your audience active on social platforms such as Twitter or Instagram? Do you want to encourage them to follow you?

One Email or a Campaign?

• How many emails do you need to convey your message?
• Is this part of a larger promotional effort with direct mail or other ads?
• Think about social media as a way to reinforce the message.
  • Example: If planning save-the-date, registration, reminder, and thank you emails, could the save-the-date, and reminder be sent via social?
• Will there be new content for each mailing? We suggest there should be something new to keep the audience engaged with each mailing.

Content Guidelines

• In general, keep your content to 200 words/20 lines or less.
• Consider letting your web page do the heavy lifting with the details.
• Every email should have a clear call to action (CTA). Make sure this conversion/action point is easy to find and appealing,  like a button or similar graphic element.
• Avoid phrases like “click here” and buy/give now” as they are often flagged by spam filters.
• Consider presenting content in segments via headlines, subtitles and bullet points rather than paragraphs.
• If sharing an impact story or thank you message, can a few sentences or a video link tell the story with a link to a website?
• Strong subject lines and preview text are the first areas of engagement with your audience. On wearables it is the only information they see, to prompt them to open your email.

The recommended timeline from the day you request an email from Advancement to sending is at least seven weekdays. We recommend that project sponsors begin preparations at least two weeks in advance as the seven day timeline is contingent upon all materials — content, graphics, links — being finalized.  We also strongly encourage project sponsors to refer to the communications calendar in case the preferred send date has high email volume. Project Sponsors are responsible for providing their own graphics.

Email campaigns requiring assets from UF Advancement Creative Services, segmentation, A/B testing and multiple sends typically require 10 or more weekdays. Please contact Monica Vosilla if your request includes any special considerations.

❗ Effective with all emails sent after March 18, 2024, email data MUST come from the Ascend CRM. The Digital Engagement team will not be able to accept data from external sources.

This step is the responsibility of the project sponsor. The UFA digital communications team does not request data.

Data for all email sends are handled via cases in the Ascend CRM. Please refer to this wiki article (on UFA Hub) on how to request a case. The standard turnaround time is two weeks. Please note that only UF Advancement employees can request cases.

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