- Is your audience as relevant as possible? Did you apply the proper exclusions?
- The branded header and footer, unedited beyond adding unit specific information, are required for all emails. These modules are a strong part of our brand identity. This content allows the inbox providers and the email recipient to easily understand the email is from a trusted source, The Ohio State University.
- It is better to delay sending an email than to send to the wrong audience or to send an email with errors.
SFMC | Preflight Email Checklist
The checklist below is a tool for planning mass email communications. Follow the checklist before sending email from Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). Every email sent under The Ohio State University umbrella represents the brand.
It is the responsibility of colleges and units to adhere to brand standards, stay up to date on best practices and select the most relevant audience to receive your email.
Checklist
- Which Business Unit (University Community, Alumni, Donors & Friends (Advancement), Buckeye Business, SAE, Recruiting, etc.) are you sending from? Some users have access to only one Business Unit.
- Is a new sender profile required?
- Request a new sender profile be created via Workfront SFMC Sender Profile request.
- Allow 3-5 days for the new sender profile request to be completed.
- Visit our sender profile information page to learn more.
- When will you send your email?
- Review the TeamUp shared email calendar to check for audience overlap among other scheduled sends.
- Add your email to TeamUp
- Do you need to build a new template?
- The Ohio State branded template modules and components, along with starter templates, are available within the SFMC Content Builder shared folders.
- Be sure to start your email message from a template rather than duplicating an existing email message.
- If you have a template need outside of the existing template system, contact the Office of Marketing and Communications email team at emailmarketing@osu.edu
- Link to the Brand Site
- Advancement audience:
- Are you creating a solicitation?
- Does an Advancement (Solicitation) list request need to submitted?
- The list request process may take 10 days or more due to the volume of requests. Plan for this timing for your email sends.
- Advancement List requests in Workfront
- Student Recruiting audiences are managed by a few methods. Reach out to CRM Marketing for guidance.
- Subscription audiences are managed from the SF CRM. A fresh list .csv will need to be provided to Buckeye360's team for validation and contact creation.
- Audience Data (.CSV) Requirements: When transferring existing subscribers from another platform or updating a current data extension list via a SINGLE .CSV file, it is required that all fields have content. If first or last name data records are blank, you must add a default value (such as "constituent") to ensure the field is populated for every subscriber record before providing the list.
- To submit the single .csv file for upload to SFMC, send an email to buckeye360support@osu.edu and copy Rich Chappell.10. Please include the following information in the subject line of the request: SFMC Sub 1.0 or 2.0 update <subscription ID>
- University Community the list will need to be sourced from human resources or other internal data.
- The list will need to be created or located in the tool.
- This type of list will need to be ran through the contact matching tool. It matches to Salesforce IDs to allow for upload. The CRM match tool has been updated recently to allow for more match options.
- Be sure to remove faculty and staff that have left the university.
- It is best to have a targeted audience.
- Remove duplicate records.
- The audience could also be queried with data connected to SFMC from data similar to Workday. Contact the OMC email and automation team with your audience criteria and record count.
- This functionality is in a pilot exploratory process and is subject to change.
- This data does hold Wexner Medical Center, COTC and student email addresses. The caveat with this data is each email type would need to be a separate send. The university is working to streamline these audiences in the future.
- Is the list (DE) automated or static (often named using a suffix of a or s)?
- If this is a reminder, have you removed those who have already responded?
- Is your email message saved to the appropriate folder?
- Use the onboarding email assignment as a step by step guide to building emails until you are comfortable in the tool.
- Email campaign tagging for naming the email in SFMC
- Is your email message name following the required email tagging guidelines?
- Sample: unitcode_marketing-activity_fyXX_additional-qualifiers
- The naming convention aligns to metrics and link tracking, which appear in the Email Channel Dashboard.
- Is your email message name following the required email tagging guidelines?
- Subject line: Check for typos and remove any special characters (styled apostrophes/quote marks, em/en-dashes, etc.).
- Preheader: Have you updated it? Check for typos, personalization.
- Footer: Check your copyright date AMPscript (%%xtyear%%), social icon links
- Be sure to include a physical address.
- For all emails that are not transactional or classified as internal communications, be sure the "Manage Preferences/Unsubscribe" link is going to the appropriate SFMC specific opt-out process pages.
- Body copy: Check for typos, readability, length and important information. Is there enough color contrast between text and background and/or links and background color to meet accessibility requirements?
- Images: Have you checked for hyperlinks?
- Has appropriate accessible “alt” text been added?
- Are images sized correctly for the template? If the image looks skewed or squished the size needs to be adjusted.
- If using an animated gif, does the first frame contain all necessary information? (Some inbox applications do not play .gifs and only the first frame is visible.)
- Header text: Are headlines styled with header tags rather than paragraph tags?
- CTAs: Are buttons linked appropriately? Is the text action-oriented? Is the copy short in length (2-3 words)?
- Personalization: Are AMPscript fields added where personalization is wanted? Are the fields correct and match the attribute name within the data? You must test with an audience record to see personalization.
- Do not send an email without testing it using the final data extension.
- Inbox preview: Send yourself and/or your team a test email.
- View this video on how to produce a test email.
- Check both mobile and desktop versions for rendering and dark mode.
- OMC Email Team is happy to assist, add our distro to the email test:
- A/B testing: Are you A/B testing the email?
- If so, check to make sure the sample size is large enough to measure results.
- If it’s an inbox test like subject line, from name or preheader text, sample size should be based on list size.
- If it’s a test on email content like image, text or CTA, sample size should be based on estimated number of unique opens.
- Is the data extension automated? If a list is automatically refreshed during the test process, the winning email will not be sent. Contact the OMC email team if the data extension’ s automation needs paused.
- Dynamic content: If using dynamic content, did you test every version?
One time sends Ad Hoc Deployment and Single Journey Sends
Steps to take within Salesforce Marketing Cloud to execute a one-time email send:
- Advancement Sends
- Define properties: Check that the correct sender profile is selected.
- Select audience: Check that you have selected the correct targeted list(s).
- Recruitment audiences have no contact details built into the Data Extensions
- Advancement and Solicitation audiences, be sure to apply the required exclusions. These may include:
- Always apply the - No contact (univ_no-contact-email-standard_a)
- Unit specific exclusion(s)
- UNIV – 12month-non-openers_f
- Any additional applicable exclusions (solicitations, events, etc.)
- Configure delivery: Choose to schedule the send. We do not recommend sending immediately.
- If scheduling, choose the date and time for your send and make sure it does not conflict with any big sends that may overlap with your audience.
- If a team needs to be available to answer calls or another contact needs to be available for registration/questions, choose a time that the contact(s) will be available.
- If you want to schedule the final message ahead of time, make sure it is tested and approved, then set the scheduled date and time. Check to make sure a.m./p.m. is set correctly.
- Change your tracking destination folder to your appropriate unit folder.
- If scheduling, choose the date and time for your send and make sure it does not conflict with any big sends that may overlap with your audience.
- Review and send: Check over all details and your email rendering one last time before checking the review box and clicking send!
Subscription, University Community and Recruiting audiences:
A similar method to an ad hoc send with more control over the audience is the Single Journey send. This style of send deployment from the Journey Builder tool and allows senders to select the specific email column from the upload or automated list/data extension. For the step-by-step process visit Journey Sends - Single Journey sends.
Journeys or Automated email deployments
The Office of Marketing and Communications email and automation team or Strategic Enrollment Marketing (SEM) team will assist in setting up journeys and the data extensions required.
Journey builds require at least one meeting with stakeholders to discuss:
- Strategy
- Data availability for data extension (DE, list)
- Dynamic content possibility
- Journeys can be set up based on a campaign strategy and/or audience behavior.
- Email content for all versions must be submitted at the time of the journey build initiation.
- Before the actual building of a journey begins, all email versions need to be in SFMC and ready to add to the journey build.
- If assistance is needed with this step reach out to OMC email team or SEM
Single Journey sends are deployed from the Journey Builder tool and allow senders to select the specific email column from the upload or automated list/data extension. For the step-by-step process visit Journey Sends - Single Journey sends.