- Campuses :
- Twin Cities
- Crookston
- Duluth
- Morris
- Rochester
- Other Locations
Recipient lists for mass e-mail should be carefully managed for the life of the list. This management includes the handling of recipients who opt in (subscribe) or opt out (unsubscribe), as well as ‘bounce’ mail (mail that is returned as undeliverable). Beyond the life of any list, records of all opt-outs must be retained for a minimum of five years to be in compliance with the FTC's CAN-SPAM Act.
Lyris ListManager, the University's mass e-mail system, can use information from the Data Warehouse (logon required) to build a list of recipients for a message, such as all students in a college or all P&A employees in a department. To send messages to recipients within your college or unit, an initial query to Data Warehouse is made. That query is then used by Lyris to create a mailing list segment that can be updated and reused for future mailings using Lyris.
Any internal message that is intended for recipients outside of your college or unit must use the VIP e-mail system.
Contact the eCommunications group in University Relations at
ecomm@umn.edu for additional information on using Data Warehouse queries in Lyris.
The University of Minnesota Foundation (UMF) maintains alumni, donor, and friend information in the Donor Management System (DMS). The recipient list for any mass e-mail directed to an audience that can be partially or fully generated using data in DMS (e.g., alumni from a certain college and year, donors to a specific fund) should be provided by UMF.
If you do not have access to DMS to submit a query request, contact your unit's alumni or development office.
The best method to build e-mail recipient lists is to have people opt in to a list. This helps to ensure that the user is aware that they will receive e-mail communications from you. Opt-ins may be set up via e-mail, Web form, or paper. An explicit statement of what the recipient should expect is a best practice.
In some cases, an existing e-mail recipeint list may be used to make a list for another purpose, but only if it can be done in a way that does not violate the opt-in agreement you've already established with your recipents. For example, if a unit adds a new publication, announcing the availability of that new publication by using an existing e-mail recipient list and asking recipients to opt in to the new publication is acceptable.
Depending on the audience and the purpose of a communication, it may be legally required to provide recipients with a method to opt out, in accordance with CAN-SPAM legislation and other applicable laws.
Identify the University in the opt-out. When offering recipients of a message the ability to unsubscribe, the University must be clearly identified in the opt-out text.
If a unit's official name includes "University of Minnesota," the unit's official name must be used. If the unit's official name does not include "University of Minnesota," the unit must be identified as the "<unit name> at the University of Minnesota."
The footer text in the e-mail templates includes this sample opt-out text:
This e-mail was sent by University Relations at the University of Minnesota, 3 Morrill Hall, 100 Church Street S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455. To stop receiving this e-mail communciation, click here to opt out.
Opt-out for internal University e-mail. Official communications to internal audiences only, when sent to those recipients' official University e-mail addresses, do not require a method to opt out. Internal audiences are considered to be current students, faculty, and staff, as well as students who are registered for a future term.
If the communication is such that it may not apply to all recipients or is optional or will include a series of communications, a method to opt out should be included.
Opt-out for external e-mail. Communications to any external audience, except in a specific situation, require a method for recipients to opt out. For any communications to recipients from the DMS, a Foundation opt-out URL must be used. For other external audiences, the opt-out method may be provided using Lyris ListManager—the University's mass e-mail distribution system—or by directing recipients to opt out via another Web site or sending an e-mail to the maintainer of the recipient list. Recipients may also send a physical mailing to the sender to request that they be removed, and these requests must be honored.
When considering both the University's legal obligations and best practices, an opt-out method is permissible only for transactional messages (e.g., an e-mail confirming the purchase of tickets through AudienceView or a non credit course through CCE).
Opt-out for mixed internal/external recipients. For ease in managing recipent addresses, a good practice for messages sent to a combined internal and external audience is to merge the two groups and send one message. These communications would need to include an opt-out method.
To keep e-mail from the University from being blocked or otherwise impaired by other e-mail systems, e-mail logs must be checked to determine what addresses are no longer receiving mail. Those addresses must be removed from recipient lists.
Attempts to send to multiple invalid e-mail addresses hosted by the same group (e.g., Hotmail, Gmail) may result in preventing the sending address, the sending mail server, or University e-mail as a whole from reaching its destination in a timely manner, if at all.
Mass e-mail cannot be defined simply by number of recipeints. Other factors, such as where your list originates and whether your audience is predominantely internal or external, factor in.
If you're unsure about whether your e-mail constitutes a mass e-mail, contact University Relations Electronic Communications group at ecomm@umn.edu.
Never scrape the Internet for e-mail addresses, or use lists provided to you, without full knowledge of where the addresses came from. Always use a Data Warehouse query/Lyris segment for internal audiences. Always use a DMS segment if the audience can be identified using data from DMS.