Bulk Mail Guidelines

Click here for overview from Jasmine Karasoulas (2/15/06)

  • Guideline#1: Choose PRIORITY BULK under MESSAGE MENU under PRIORITY. Yes, there are known tradeoffs, but failure to mark as PRIORITY BULK can affect our entire First Class system. If we choose to make an exception, the e-mail will be sent at 10pm or on a weekend.
  • Guideline#2: Always use BCC, sending to a single address other than your own and putting the recipients in the BCC field. Do not leave the TO field blank.
  • Guideline#3: Use a current version of the First Class Client. Some older clients may have had the anomaly that when it hit a bad e-mail address, the remaining addresses were skipped. However, we have checked with a First Class consultant in Connecticut who has stated and tested that this is NO LONGER the case. Click here for the current version
  • Guideline#4: Avoid attachments. Whenever possible, take the text from Microsoft Word and copy/paste it into the body of the e-mail. If attachments are necessary, they can be posted on the Web and the e-mail can reference it. Any graphic or item that is not text will arrive at the other end as an attachment.
  • Guideline#5: Use your code in the last line of your address book item .... click here to see samples ... each one is of the format of bulkRC@chapin.edu or bulkJK@chapin.edu or bulkGC@chapin.edu changed on 10/6/06 so that each person has ONE code and a conference on her/his desktop
  • Guideline#6: Because of SPAM and BLOCKING issues which have drastically changed over the last 5 years, we should be posting every e-mail and e-blast on the corresponding parent or alumnae Web page.
  • Guideline#7: Try to limit each single BULK e-mail or e-blast to 2000 participants.
  • Guideline#8: Bulk e-mail and e-blasts are not 100% solutions for communication. At every tech conference and on listservs, tech coordinators discuss how they achieve 80% to 90% community saturation with these systems.
  • Guideline#9: Keep track of bouncebacks. We have begun a system with division assistants to verify and fix bouncebacks for each division. I have set up a conference called conf-bouncebacks so that we can maintain records.
  • Guideline#10: Please put the phrase "*** This is an automated message. Please do not hit reply. ***" at the top of the message and again on the bottom

 

Last updated 09.12.07

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