SFMC | Business Units

Business units allow colleges and units to organize and manage data, assets and access within Marketing Cloud. This page provides details about the Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) business unit structure at The Ohio State University. Details outlined include audiences and use cases that are approved for sending within each. As well as how lists are created, future state integrations, opt-out information and who to contact for more information.

A requirement of SFMC is to use the university’s campaign tagging guidelines for the naming convention of all emails. This is very important with the updates to privacy laws as email inbox applications protect their users.

Google Analytic’s UTM parameters are configured in each business unit. SFMC will automatically append the parameters to the end of sent email links. When the email is named properly, the UTM tags allow Google Analytics to track how tactics and assets work together within an overall campaign.

Quick reference for business units

Business Unit Name*	Business Unit Details
Alumni, Donors & Friends	Commercial emails to alumni, donors, friends, parents, students, faculty, staff. TAS database audience only. All emails are sent to constituents identified with a tas.id
Buckeye Business (Restricted)	This BU sends to Ohio State faculty/staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students connected to an osu.edu email address. This business unit is home to the Brosar and Registrars offices.
OTDI (Restricted)	Administrative actions and communications for Salesforce and other technical communications.
Recruitment	Recruiting emails for future students of Ohio State
SAE (Restricted)	Salesforce CRM business unit for recruitment journeys and data.
The Ohio State University (Restricted)	Parent business unit. Sending President and BOT communications and onCampus, house the shared templates and other content.
University Community	This BU sends to the University Community connected to a osu.edu email address. The three overall groups are faculty/staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students.
*All private business units are not listed here.

1 Alumni, Donors & Friends

This is the primary business unit for Advancement (solicitations, donor and alumni communications), email communications and is shared by multiple colleges, campuses and units. It is connected to data in The Advancement System (TAS), a TAS ID is used as the subscriber (primary) key for individual constituents. All recipients sent to from this business unit must have a TAS ID. If someone with whom you want to communicate with for Advancement-related topics does not already have a TAS ID, we recommend having a TAS record created for those individuals. This allows you to send to them through SFMC (by filtering on their TAS ID or other attribute you specify when having the constituent’s record created) and for the opt-out history for Advancement is maintained in TAS.

Send requests for new TAS records to bioupdate@osu.edu, and be sure to include first name, last name, email address and any other information you have about the constituent. Specify a college or unit this person has a relationship with to capture opt-out preferences accurately. Please note the SFMC will only email an individual's email address.

Approved audiences for advancement marketing use cases:

Alumni of The Ohio State University
Senders may contact the alumni of their respective areas
Donors to The Ohio State University within the last 5 years
Senders may contact donors to funds associated with their respective areas

Parents of current students at The Ohio State University
Senders may contact the parents of students within their respective areas
Attendees and volunteers of events at The Ohio State University
Senders may contact attendees and volunteers of events hosted by their respective areas
Faculty, staff and current students at The Ohio State University for advancement marketing purposes only

Senders may contact faculty, staff and current students within respective areas
Other constituents contacted by advancement offices for advancement marketing purposes, including peers, board members, community members and other friends
Senders may contact these constituents if there is a data point tying them to their respective areas. Does the university have a relationship with this person? If no then we should not send email to them.
Email addresses for companies and not individuals are not permitted in SFMC.
This BU does not include use cases for internal communications, meaning communications intended to reach faculty, staff and current students based on their employment/enrollment with the university. Internal communications are a separate use case and do not require an opt-out. See also: University Community for internal communications

The Advancement Business Intelligence and Data Science team creates lists (data extentions) for use within SFMC in the Alumni, Donors & Friends business unit (and lists for college business units sending to Advancement audiences). List requests can be made in this queue - Advancement Reporting - SFMC List Request.

All Alumni, Donors & Friends audiences can manage their preferences/opt-outs via the Manage Preferences link, found in the Advancement footer portion of the branded templates in SFMC. Reach out to the Office of Marketing and Communications’ Email Team for specifics on the advancement footer.

The SMS capability is enabled for the purpose of sending to those opted-in for general marketing or giving/volunteer messages. SMS functionality is enabled for Advancement only at this time.

2 Buckeye Business

This business unit is home to all communications pertaining to being a student, guardian or faculty at Ohio State. All communications can be categorized as all things pertaining to being a buckeye at Ohio State defined as messages to faculty, staff and/or current students. Emails sent from this business unit are considered transactional and are a condition of active employment or enrollment with the University. Recipients may not opt-out from this type of email message.

Current faculty of The Ohio State University
Current staff of The Ohio State University
Current students of The Ohio State University

The SMS capability is enabled for the purpose of sending Ohio State News Alerts to faculty, staff, current students and external audiences that choose to opt in.

3 Private business units

Colleges and units have the option to purchase their own business unit, if desired. The benefit is that data and assets are in a private space, providing an extra layer of risk protection and making it easier to navigate within the platform. There is a fee associated with setting up a separate business unit.

Private business units can be set up for the following use cases:

Alumni, Donors & Friends audiences specific to the college
Undergraduate recruitment audiences specific to the college
Graduate and professional audiences specific to the college (if first integrated with the Salesforce CRM)
Internal communications to faculty, staff and current students of the college (manual import)

4 Recruitment

Colleges share this space to manage their recruitment efforts for undergraduate and graduate/professional marketing and communications. If a college or unit has their own Business Unit within SFMC, recruitment data is made available. Recruitment data for onboarded colleges is shared with the Recruitment business unit. Data and assets are organized through a specific folder structure and naming convention. Opt-outs are managed through an SFMC Cloud Page that ties into the CRM (single opt-out for all recruitment emails).

5 University Community

This business unit is home to internal communications at Ohio State. Internal communications are defined as messages to faculty, staff and/or current students. Emails sent from this business unit are considered transactional and are a condition of active employment or enrollment with the University. Recipients may not opt-out of this type of email message.

Current faculty of The Ohio State University
Current staff of The Ohio State University
Current students of The Ohio State University

The SMS capability is enabled for the purpose of sending Ohio State News Alerts to faculty, staff, current students and external audiences that choose to opt-in.