Overview
Flagship 360 Salesforce Marketing Cloud is UMass Amherst’s primary digital communications platform. Communicators use Marketing Cloud (MC) to create and send mass emails, alerts, newsletters, and more.
At UMass Amherst, email broadcasts are managed through University Relations (UR) Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The UMass Amherst Foundation (UMAF) uses a separate Marketing Cloud platform to manage alumni communications. Both units provide strategic planning and coordination to achieve an optimal constituent experience and university objectives, while maintaining the most current email addresses and opt-out preferences. Outside email broadcast systems do not honor these constituent opt-out preferences and should not be used. The only exceptions allowed are campus ticketing systems with an approved business need.
For more information on when to use the UMAF or the UR Marketing Cloud platform, please visit the UMass Amherst Mass Email Guidelines page.
The UR MC platform is supported by a joint effort of the UR CRM Team and UMass IT. The CRM Team administers licenses and provides training on the platform by request. Licensing in MC is intended for dedicated communicators who can meet best practices and adhere to all regulations and university policies concerning digital mass communications, and for whom communications are a primary responsibility of their employment, position, or relationship with UMass Amherst. The CRM team has the capacity to fulfill mass email requests from groups across campus who are not yet using the platform.
Please direct inquiries about the UR MC platform to @email.
Why Marketing Cloud?
Unifying campus communications under one digital communications platform, Marketing Cloud, means that the constituents we serve receive timely and relevant information. Utilizing Marketing Cloud benefits how we engage with our constituents by:
- ensuring that messages reach the intended recipients;
- providing an efficient platform for list management that is integrated with university data;
- utilizing shared templates that meet brand guidelines, are ADA compliant, and render well across all major devices and platforms; and,
- delivering accessible data so communicators can constantly improve their communication strategy and avoid oversaturating specific audiences with emails.
Unifying communications under Marketing Cloud also benefits UMass Amherst communicators by:
- providing centralized support from a dedicated joint team of IT and UR specialists to make sure your communications are successful; and,
- connecting a vibrant, collaborative community of communicators that coordinate efforts to benefit each other and the various constituencies.
Additional reasons for the University to utilize Marketing Cloud include:
- Shared costs: Using one communications platform results in less redundancy and associated costs.
- Shared data: Sharing data will help us engage with constituents with consistency and assist us in targeting our messaging more effectively.
- Shared messaging: Shared messaging and a consistent look and feel help to promote the University as a single entity and will be more effective in engaging with constituents.
Audience Management
Constituent data integration
UMass communicators send to a variety of constituencies, including students, their parents, faculty, staff, prospective students, and others, such as elected State House officials. The majority of constituent data (for students, their parents, faculty, and staff) originates in Spire and is refreshed in Salesforce (Sales Cloud) once every 24 hours. Prospective student and external affiliate data flows directly into Service Cloud through a variety of avenues. All of the constituent data, regardless of origin, is arranged in data extensions based on specific criteria.
Data extensions
Marketing Cloud uses data extensions to manage contacts. A data extension is a table that stores information about your contacts. Most often, data extensions will be used to send messages to subsets of subscribers, but they can also be used to run queries and filter data by specific information. They can be stand-alone or jointly with other data extensions. In Marketing Cloud, each contact is given a unique subscriber key, which is associated with all of the data on that contact's record in the Salesforce CRM. One person might have multiple email addresses, and the subscriber key ensures that they don't receive duplicate messages. Data extensions can also be used as exclusion lists, which reflect the people who have opted out of specific email channels.
Ad hoc lists
For non-UMass lists, or mixed lists, Marketing Cloud features the Upload Form, a custom tool for uploading ad-hoc lists. This tool is connected with the Salesforce CRM (Service Cloud), so that when contacts are uploaded, they are either matched to existing UMass contacts or a new record (called a "Lead") is created to record data on all sends to that person. Before loading a list of external contacts (those with non-UMass email addresses) into Marketing Cloud, the addresses should be validated; please submit a request to @email and attach your list.
Email Subscriptions & Preference Management
In step with the evolving landscape of digital communications and to adhere to CAN-SPAM requirements, Marketing Cloud differentiates between communications that are based on existing or transactional relationships and ones that are optional, recruitment-, or marketing-based. For the latter, UMass has built a custom preference center integrated with Marketing Cloud that is a one-stop venue for opting in or out of commercial emails. Importantly, the transactional versus commercial classification allows constituents to continue to receive messages critical to their relationship with the University (transactional) regardless of opting out of other kinds of communications.
Transactional vs. commercial emails
Transactional emails are essential for university business and have direct or immediate impacts.
- Recipients cannot opt out from these emails.
- Messages are based on the recipient's affiliation with the University and/or a specific department.
- Examples: messages from a dean or department head, emergency announcements, notifications of bills due
Commercial emails provide non-essential, but still relevant, information.
- Recipients can opt in or out of these emails.
- Messages are usually promotions or advertisements for events or products.
- Examples: newsletters, messages to prospective students, and promotions of athletic events.
The UMass Amherst Campus Subscription Center
Log in to the Campus Subscription Center to view the current options for managing communications from the UR Marketing Cloud platform.
Every commercial email sent from Marketing Cloud will have two links to the Subscription Center. The "manage preferences" link allows a person to view the channel associated with the email and either opt in or opt out of that channel and any other channels owned by a particular group. The "unsubscribe" link will automatically opt-out a person from a particular channel. That action is displayed on the landing page, where they can view and edit their preferences for all channels.
UR Marketing Cloud Enterprise Organization - Business Units
Marketing Cloud offers business units as an organizational method for separating content, subscriber information, analytics, and more from other groups. Business units have a cost and take time to configure. As of February 2023, 27 business units have been configured in the UR MC platform, including one for each school/college as well as departments that have a specific need for separating their information. See the Marketing Cloud help page, Business Units in Marketing Cloud, to learn more about the Salesforce definition of business units.
More on Marketing Cloud:
How do I log in to Marketing Cloud?
Find information on logging in to Marketing Cloud here.
How do I request a Marketing Cloud license or a user account?
To request a Marketing Cloud license or user account, please fill out the Marketing Cloud License & Training Request form.
When should I use Marketing Cloud versus Google Groups versus Outlook/Gmail?
Outlook and Gmail are email clients designed for you to easily access, send, and organize the emails you receive. In contrast, Marketing Cloud and Google Groups are email platforms used for mass communications and sending emails to smaller groups of subscribers, respectively. For more detailed information, please visit this UMass IT article. The article is a table that shows the differences between Marketing Cloud, Google Groups, and Microsoft Teams. The "Users" and "Use cases" rows contain UMass-specific information about the intended users of these platforms.
How is "mass communications" defined?
Mass communications are messages with the same content/purpose that are sent to 100 or more recipients. They should pertain to official university business. For more information, please see the UMass Amherst Mass Communications Policy.
What is "CRM"?
CRM stands for "constituent relationship management" and refers to the system that businesses and organizations use to handle information and monitor interactions with customers, stakeholders, and the community. To learn about the role of the CRM team at UMass Amherst, please visit this UMass CRM page.