Office of Marketing and Communications

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Migration

The below information is to assist Ohio State internal partners in moving from Mailchimp, Constant Contact, MyEmma, Outlook (for specific use cases), or other email service providers (ESPs) that do not align with the university's standard terms and conditions, as determined by the legal department. The information shared is to start a conversation and give time to determine the best path for each college/unit. The Office of Marketing and Communications' Email and Automation team will assist with the plan for each area.

The Office of Marketing and Communications’ (OMC) Email and Automation Team

We are here to support and understand email use case(s) across the university and guide the onboarding for Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC). Our role includes governing email best practices, consulting on strategy and template alignment, troubleshooting issues, and introducing new tools and capabilities to the marketing community at Ohio State. Our team will onboard and provide training via BuckeyeLearn to all users of SFMC under the university instance. The training for the Salesforce Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) partners with Strategic Enrollment Marketing (SEM) for recruiting and admission support. There are other instances of Salesforce within Ohio State — it is important to understand if your college/unit has its own instance. We do want to clarify that our team does not support Microsoft Outlook or other third-party bulk email platforms. We can support email best practices for these tools. Our team runs the Email Community of Practice meeting, please visit the webpage and request to join the community to stay informed.

Before we talk about access, there should be a discussion with leadership and other areas of the college/unit. We suggest a streamlined approach to email planning and execution. This discussion should cover who currently has access to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) and other email tools. It is best practice to have a central email execution SFMC super user for each college or unit. We also advise all SFMC users in the same college or unit to support each other as much as possible. Each area has specific criteria for their use case for sending email with SFMC, it is important to share knowledge within each college or unit.

How many SFMC users does your area need? Not all individuals executing email should have a license for Salesforce. Approved users are based on use case review. SFMC is more complex than Mailchimp or Constant Contact, etc. Users that send emails sporadically (less than once per month) may need to rely on other licensed users for the email-sending action. See below for the reasoning for a central email super user for support of infrequent sends.

Below are the guidelines for the centralized email support model

If a unit has a dedicated person to build and send emails, they should be the first resource for all emails being sent from the college/unit.

This is important to align to best practices in a few areas:

  • Emails are built correctly for optimal deliverability (footers, preference links, etc.)
  • Proper college/unit exclusions are applied
  • Emails are stored in the correct folder(s) within SFMC
  • Proper unit reviews and approvals are completed
  • The content creation and strategy for email can come from many sources. It is suggested that a workflow be established for efficient email building and deployment.
  • Not sure who your unit’s email contact is? Reach out to the OMC Email Marketing team at emailmarketing@osu.edu to understand your unit’s contacts.

Central Advancement is currently working in this model to coordinate sends and strategy support. Please note Advancement IT has a ticketed process in place to complete list requests for alumni, donors and friends (ADF) audiences.

  • Central Advancement is available to advise on the audience, email best practices, review and share feedback on content, etc., as it relates to alumni, donor and friends emails.
  • If a unit does not have a dedicated advancement email person, a request can be submitted via Advancement Marketing and Communications (studebaker.79) for support if resources are available.

What information is needed for access to SFMC?

Use case(s) questions for you and your leadership to determine, we ask these of all users/each user: 

  • College/Unit name?
  • How many licensed users does this detail apply to? (lastname.#)
    • Does the user have experience in SFMC or SF CRM?
  • What audience(s) will you be sending to (University Community, Advancement, Recruiting students, External to the university)? 
  • Frequency of email sends? 
  • Size of audience? 
  • What email tools is your college/unit currently utilizing? 
  • What is the requested timing for access to SFMC? 

Below are the four areas of Salesforce Marketing Cloud and the audiences. Use cases should align to one or more of these areas.

Advancement audiences (Alumni, Donor, Friends) 

  • Alumni communications 
  • Donor solicitations 
  • Friends, specific groups of people that have a relationship with Ohio State 
  • Invitations to events 

All emails have an opt-out/preference center link in the footer. The TAS database holds advancement audience records, there is a process to request a list for this area of SFMC 

University Community audience - University Internal communications only (osu.edu, buckeyemail.edu and mail.cotc.edu addresses) 

  • Communicating with students and/or faculty/staff 
  • Data is connected to internal systems and updates multiple times a day 
  • Audience details from other university sources can be matched to details within SFMC and then uploaded as a list (data extension)

Recruiting (CRM and Journey training are necessary) 

  • Strategic outreach to prospective students
  • Automations (journeys) are a key part of the recruiting email strategy

Subscription (available in FY2025) – (web form utilized to gather audience – may need developer assistance)  

  • Constant Contact and Mailchimp, etc., users with emails that go to contacts with a relationship from outside of Ohio State (not students, faculty/staff) 
    • Note to larger colleges and units, if you are using a subscription form for email audiences with these other tools it will take time to schedule development to bring this audience into SFMC.
  • The Marketing Technology and OTDI teams will assist with requirements for building a web form for each email/audience 
  • The web form will validate each email address in real-time 
  • Note, it may take time to get the new web form built, have the team trained in SFMC and send the first email. This timing is dependent on many factors. This could mean needing to extend contracts with the other email tools. 

 

More information about audiences can be found here. 

 

Getting access to SFMC

Beginning FY25 (7/1/2024) the cost per license is supported by central university partners. There is no cost for individual licenses for most colleges and units. 

  • Many of our partners utilize shared spaces due to audience overlap (Advancement, University Community, Recruiting, Subscription) 
  • There are separate working areas in SFMC available, called business units. There is a separate fee to standup and maintain a separate working space for a college or unit. The need for this type of work area is determined by use case. 

When partners are ready to move forward, simply notify OMC Email Marketing with a list of who will need access, and for what purpose(s) (see use case questions above and include those details).

The email and automation team will help you:

  • Get moving with training – we provide BuckeyeLearn training, web resources, and SFMC office hours to make sure you have the support you need, see the training section below for more detail

SFMC capabilities

  • Anything done in Mailchimp/Constant Contact can also be done in SFMC (plus more) 
    • Subscription use cases will be ready in SFMC spring 2024 
  • University-approved brand templates are available for all to use in SFMC, with easy drag-and-drop functionality 
  • SFMC is ready to send to internal Ohio State audiences 
    • Connected data is set up to allow for filtering 
    • There are specific requirements needed to align each college/unit to the proper set of data for their areas 
  • SFMC is already set to allow Advancement users to send communications to anyone in The Advancement System (TAS), consists of alumni, donors, and friends details
    • TAS data training is assigned and must be completed before access is granted to the TAS database 
    • TAS data is synchronized daily to SFMC 
    • List requests for all Advancement sends 
    • Lists can be segmented based on any data available in TAS (e.g., all donors to college and unit funds in the last 5 years). There are solicit codes created for each area for commercial message emails 
    • All emails to recipients associated with a TAS ID (for Advancement outreach) must be sent via SFMC 
  • Admissions and Recruitment are in the Salesforce CRM. The Strategic Enrollment Marketing (SEM) team leads this area of Salesforce 
  • Buckeye Business is a separate area of Salesforce Marketing Cloud 
    • Data is connected to the CRM
    • File uploads with email addresses and other data fields are allowed
  • OTDI has a separate area of Salesforce Marketing Cloud 
    • Data is connected to the CRM 
      • Internal data is also connected and able to be filtered 
  • College of Arts and Sciences is a separate area of SFMC 
    • Advancement 
    • CRM - Recruiting 
  • College of Medicine is a separate area of SFMC with audiences for the following:
    • Advancement 
    • CRM – Recruiting 
    • Separate IP address to allow sending from @t.osumc.edu (t. indicates a Salesforce domain for email)
    • University Community
  • Fisher College of Business is a separate area of SFMC with audiences for the following:
    • Advancement 
    • CRM – Recruiting 
    • University Community
  • Ohio State Online will be available mid FY2025. This separate area of the university's instance of SFMC supports online curriculums. Future state will support continuing education offerings in this business unit.
  • Subscription is a separate working area in SFMC. The audiences for subscription-based emails are captured in forms on your area's websites

Training for Salesforce Marketing Cloud

There is SFMC specific training to support the onboarding to the tool and to emphasize Ohio State branded email templates. Most training is assigned by OMC Email and Automation team within BuckeyeLearn. Training is video-based with the addition of quizzes and an assignment. At the end of the process a Docusign SFMC user agreement must be signed.