Email Communications with Marketo

The College of the Environment provides ongoing support and consulting to College units for emails sent through Marketo, an email newsletter tool supported and provided by UW Marketing and Communications and UW Advancement. The College Marketing and Communications team will review and approve all messages sent through Marketo by College units and maintain a set of standards for brand consistency, accessibility and other best practices.

The Marketo team in central UW Marketing and Communications sets overall standards for email marketing, provides templates, and offers support and training to all Marketo users for the tool itself.

Goals

  • Support units in creating and sending Marketo email messages, including help with message approval and delivery.
  • Support UW brand consistency and accessibility standards by connecting units with central Marketo support, tools and training.
  • Improve user experience for email messages by consulting with College units on email marketing and audience best practices.

Useful links

Roles

Core Marketer

Staff person(s) in College schools/departments/units responsible for producing Marketo email messages, assembling audience lists and updating audiences in Marketo using central Marketo’s audience request forms.

Responsibilities

  • Core Marketers produce marketing email messages using Marketo and template components provided by the central Marketo team.
  • They assemble and update their audience of key stakeholders (such as faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors) and submit any list or subscription preference updates needed to Marketo using central Marketo’s audience request forms.
  • They submit final messages, with up-to-date audiences attached by central Marketo, for review by the College at least 3 business days before their requested send date and time.

UW Environment Marketing and Communications

Responsibilities

  • We review unit email messages for Marketo configuration, grammar, spelling, accessibility, brand and other issues. We provide feedback and troubleshooting to Core Marketers.
  • We approve messages for delivery.
  • We provide feedback on best practices for email campaigns.
  • We connect Core Marketers with central Marketo staff for additional assistance.

Workflow

Initial request for email marketing support

If your unit would like to send email newsletters using Marketo, contact the College Marketing and Communications team (coenvcom@uw.edu) to talk about options. It’s helpful to think about who will put together your newsletter, how often you plan to send it and who your target audience is.

Unit Marketo set-up

If we determine that Marketo is the best program for your needs, we will help you identify who will be your Core Marketer and complete Marketo trainings. Core Marketers will:

  • Complete Marketo training with central Marketo team.
  • Meet with the College for training on templates, audience setup and email newsletter best practices.

Email message and audience prep

  • When you know your email send date, please add your unit name and email name (brief) to this College Google calendar for planning purposes. If there’s an all-College email on the calendar, please avoid sending your email that same day.
  • If you have updates to your audience (to a list or a subscription preference), these requests now will go directly to central Marketo, instead of coming through the College. You working directly with central to maintain your audiences will hopefully expedite this process.
  • You can make audience update requests on the UA Supportal, where you will see a variety of form options, depending on your situation. When in doubt, you can always email mktohelp@uw.edu and that will open a ticket with your request.
  • The central Marketo team requires at least ONE full business day for turnaround time, in most cases, so please build that time into your production schedule. Please try to gather your various lists and submit them under one ticket at the same time to our central partners.

Email message approval and submission

  • When you are done building your email, make sure you have checked spelling, grammar, all links and accessibility (i.e. add alt-text to all images). Send a test email to yourself and to any other stakeholders who will need to sign off on your content. When all of that is complete:
    • Under Email Settings, make sure the Include View as Web Page and Preheader boxes are checked. Fill in a short preheader phrase (i.e. a teaser that complements your subject line)
    • Under Email Actions > approve and close
    • In the email program’s Control Panel, make sure your Audience numbers look accurate. Under Email, attach the correct email asset
    • Under Schedule, set the date and time you wish to send your email
  • When you have completed these steps, notify the College by filling out this form with details about your email program. Filling out this form will ensure that your email program gets a final proof and approval to send. Please submit your form at least THREE business days before you wish to send your email.
  • You will get an email reply from the College letting you know your email has been proofed and approved to send.

Follow up

  • The College provides recommendations to Core Marketer, as needed.

Email requirements

Delivery

All email sent to UW alumni, donors, or members of the general public on behalf of the College of the Environment or its units must be sent via Marketo and include a subscription preference in the message audience. This ensures that subscribers have a clear means of managing their email subscriptions and encourages best practices surrounding privacy and subscription management.

Configuration

As you configure email programs and messages, please follow all processes and checklists provided by the central Marketo team at your training.

Also, please be sure that you are creating each new Marketo email program by cloning a program shell that has not previously been used to send an email. Programs cloned from active email campaigns may copy data from the original campaign and corrupt your program analytics.

Message templates and content

All emails sent by the College, its units and departments must follow basic University of Washington brand guidelines, be free of spelling and grammatical errors, and include a set of required components.

Required components for College unit Marketo messages

Header

  • Link: “To view this email as a web page, click here”
  • Purple UW Header (not a unit or College header)
  • Header image provided by the College with unit name (please contact us to change)

Content area

  • Disability accommodation message (events only).
    If the message is an event invite, it must include the following disability accommodation notice at the bottom of the message:
    “To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at 206-543-6450 (voice), 206-543-6452 (TTY), 206-685-7264 (fax) or dso@uw.edu. The University of Washington makes every effort to honor disability accommodation requests. Requests can be responded to most effectively if received as far in advance of the event as possible, preferably at least 10 days.”
  • No custom html or off-brand typography

Footer

  • Gray link bar
    • UW Home (not editable)
    • [Unit Name] Home
    • College Home (linked to https://environment.uw.edu)
  •  Links:
    • Contact
    • UW Privacy policy
    • UW Terms of use
  • Copyright statement and address
    • Example:  © 2024 UW College of the Environment, 1492 NE Boat St. Suite#200, Seattle, WA 98105
    • Example:  © 2024 UW School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, Anderson Hall, Box 352100 Seattle, WA 98195
  • Delivery statement
    • “This email was sent to [email address]”
  • Link: “Unsubscribe or change your email preferences”
  • Link: “Forward this email to a friend”

Questions?

If you have questions about College of the Environment Marketo processes or your email message request, please contact us at coenvcom@uw.edu.

Dean's Office Contact: