Requirements and Procedures
A mass communication is a message with primarily the same content or purpose that is sent to 100 or more recipients, or is a repetitive communication sent to a particular group. Mass messages sent to all faculty, staff, and/or students are reserved for specific senders, such as the chancellor, and otherwise require approval from UMass Amherst University Relations. Mass messages sent within a school, college, or unit must be approved by the top of the hierarchy (such as a dean for a specific school or college, or their proxy) and should be sent from an appropriate mass communications platform.
If your message meets these criteria, the University Relations team can send a message on your behalf. See the following checklist for steps, and email @email for assistance.
Checklist for submitting mass communication requests
1. Obtain approval to communicate with a constituent group.
Emails to large numbers in any faculty, staff, or student constituent group must be approved based on the organizational hierarchy. If the message is addressed to all faculty, staff, and students, approval is required from University Relations. Deans can approve a targeted message within their school’s constituents, and vice chancellors can send it to all constituents within their division.
- A list of communicators and their corresponding audiences may be accessed here.
- Emails to constituents that do not have a umass.edu email address must be managed carefully, as messages that are unsolicited or do not follow best practices may cause external mail services to block emails from UMass Amherst. Specific approval may be required.
- All efforts should be made to ensure that the message is only delivered to the relevant audience. For example, if a message pertains to staff who have a specific role or access to a particular software, then the message should not be sent to all staff.
- If your communication is targeted at alumni or donors, or if it has a direct appeal for fundraising, please contact the UMass Amherst Foundation.
2. Please take care to consider the needs of your constituent groups.
For example, do not limit your message to email if you are communicating with staff who do not actively monitor an email account. Be sure to make the message available in multiple languages if appropriate. Translation services may be provided by the Edwin C. Gentzler Translation Center.
3. All content elements must be reviewed and approved by University Relations and should include the following:
- A desired date and time to send the message. Please allow a minimum of three business days for your request to be processed, or longer depending on the sophistication of the message or size of the audience.
- Reply mail management information, including a valid, monitored inbox address to receive replies to your message.
- A subject line for the message.
- The full body of text, finalized and copyedited, as it is to appear in the email distribution.
- Audience criteria or supply a .csv file list including email, first name, and last name for each member.
4. Approve and release the final draft for distribution.
A proof copy will be sent to the requester before the email is distributed. The requester must approve this final copy for it to be distributed. The email could be delayed if the necessary approvals are not submitted within the scheduled time frame.