What Is It?
Mass email (aka email blast) is the process of sending email in mass to a large group of contacts at once. This is often sending a single message to many contacts in an audience, like all current students or alumni.
Who Is Eligible to Use This Service?
Employees who submit their request to College Advancement and receive approval can use this service.
Where Can I Get It?
When an email blast is needed, the request should initially go to college.advancement@gccaz.edu. College Advancement will make sure the request is grammatically correct, goes to an appropriate audience, and has all proper disclaimers. They will need the following information from the requestor:
- The audience to receive the email (the parameters)
- The actual requested message to be sent
Often Institutional Effectiveness (IE) helps to obtain the spreadsheet of email recipients. IE has access to the SIS database and additional historical information that is sometimes used to formulate recipient lists. Please submit data requests for IE via its website: https://employees.gccaz.edu/depts/ie/ using the Submit a Data Request button.
When you're ready for the request to be processed (after any needed adjustments per College Advancement), please send the request to dl-gc-massemail (massemail@gccaz.edu) and copy college.advancement@gccaz.edu. By sending the request to the mass email address, your request will be processed in a timely manner by members of the OIT Operations team.
In order to send out the mass e-mails, the Operations team will need the following from the Requestor:
Attachment #1 - An MS Word document saved as Plain Text (*.txt extension) which will be used to convey the message. Optionally, the recipient's name and other merged fields can also appear within this document; in such cases, clearly identify which fields will be merged from data in the spreadsheet - elaborated upon in the attachment #2 narrative below.
Attachment #2 - An Excel spreadsheet containing a minimum of one column - the email addresses of the recipients. Optionally, additional columns containing the name to be used on each message (first name only, or complete name, etc), and any additional mail merged fields will be needed as applicable. Even if the email will not be personalized with a name, it will be handy to have the name in case the email can't be delivered - it can subsequently be removed or corrected more easily in the appropriate address sources.
If the e-mail is to be personalized, please indicate whether the first name only or entire name is to be used. If additional fields are to be merged into the message, an additional spreadsheet column is needed for each of those fields. However, if the spreadsheet contains extra columns not needed for the mailing, please remove them prior to sending the spreadsheet to Operations.
Optional Attachment #3 – An Archived Web Page formatted document (*.mht extension) - This is the preferred method to convey event information for which graphics or special fonts are needed. Even if this method is used, a plain text message (attachment #1) is still required to accommodate situations in which involved mail settings do not allow HTML formatted messages. Operations can also generate HTML formatted messages if provided with RTF documents (*.rtf extension).
Optional Alternative Attachment – Another alternative is for the text message to contain a brief overview of the event, with a URL to a web page containing more information and graphics.
The reply address for the e-mail (If you have a departmental e-mail address or a pooled email address, this would be a better place to receive replies.....rather than risking lots of mail replies going to an individual's inbox). The address needs to be a valid GCC e-mail address. If the reply address is an individual's mailbox, that person should be aware that it is possible to saturate their mailbox - depending on the nature of the message, bounced e-mails, etc. E-mail filtering could help in such cases.
The subject line of the e-mail message. While Operations can come up with a subject based on the content, we'd prefer the request includes the Requestor's desired subject line.
The desired date by which the e-mails should be sent. If a date is not provided, Operations will default to providing this service as soon as possible - typically within 48 business hours.