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Pepperdine | Community

Policies, Brand Standards, and Best Practices

Overview

Any authorized user of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud must adhere to the established policies, brand standards, and best practices for developing and sending email marketing communications on behalf of Pepperdine University. In addition to the Statement of User Responsibility, that all new users must sign and agree to. Failure to do so will jeopardize the user's access to the system.

The Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) group, retains the right to review and reject any email marketing communications that breaks compliance with the established policies, brand standards, or best practices when the University domain (...@pepperdine.edu) is applied. Members of the Integrated Marketing Communications group will consult with any offenders to find an immediate solution.

Additionally, there are a few general rules of thumb, or Email Don'ts to avoid bad practice, as well as a basic glossary of Digital Marketing Communication terms available for your reference. For more information please contact Arwa Sutarwala.

General Policy

Marketing Cloud User Policy

Emails built-in Marketing Cloud should only be sent to their intended audiences through the Marketing Cloud platform. The University requires distribution through Marketing Cloud in order to centralize the recipients desired marketing communication preferences pursuant to CAN-SPAM laws and regulations. Creating an email in Marketing Cloud and forwarding it via Gmail or any other email service for mass distribution is not permitted.

In addition to maintaining compliance with CAN-SPAM laws and other regulations, emails delivered through Marketing Cloud are monitored using metrics made available directly in the platform. When emails are forwarded using a different email distribution service, the University has no centralized method for monitoring email usage or effectiveness. Furthermore, forwarded emails, typically distributed after a user sends himself or herself a test email, contains user preferences for the original recipient only. As a result, additional recipients of a forwarded email may unsubscribe only the original recipient from his or her publication lists within Marketing Cloud and may not have the ability to manage their own subscription preferences.

Users who do not adhere to this practice and forward mass emails to end recipients using a distribution service other than Marketing Cloud will be subject to the following:

First infraction: when the Marketing Cloud user's email address is unsubscribed from the Marketing Cloud preferences, IMC will grant the re-subscription after a 30-day suspension. A notice of the offense will be made to the user and his or her supervisor.

Second infraction: when the Marketing Cloud user's email address is unsubscribed from the Marketing Cloud preferences for a second time, a notice of the second offense will be made to the user and his or her supervisor, department head, and dean, and access to Marketing Cloud will be revoked to the individual for abuse of controlled information. Send rights may be revoked from the business unit indefinitely until further training is provided.

Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM)

The purpose of using YAMM is to streamline business-to-business operations-based email communications for large teams. These emails should be plain text and professional. Please make sure to not embed images into the content of the message.

YAMM can be used as a communication method for small groups that require one-to-one communications with internal staff. YAMM is not intended for newsletters, promoting webinars, solicitations/mass-stewardship, or other types of email marketing communications. Without a centralized preference center we cannot ensure privacy/spam policy compliance.

YAMM is a useful tool for providing operations-based information across teams and the organization. Examples include the following;

Example 1

Dear [Team, First Name, etc.],

For our meeting at 3 PM, you will find the agenda here. Please send me your comments or additional items to be covered by noon today.

Your participation in the team meeting is essential to our success. The meeting should be approximately 1 hour, please let me know in advance if you will need to join late or leave early.

Example 2

Dear [Team, First Name, etc.],

The University servers are up and running at normal operations.

Please contact me directly with questions or concerns.

Example 3

Dear [Team, First Name, etc.],

Congratulations on being admitted to [School Name] we are attaching a welcome packet.

Please contact me directly with questions or concerns.

Example 4

Dear [Team, First Name, etc.],

Congratulations on your scholarship to [School Name] we are attaching an information packet.

Please contact me directly with questions or concerns.

For more information on how to use YAMM you can reference the community site for Information Technology.

Brand Standards

All email marketing communication must follow the Pepperdine University branding policies listed in the official university style guide. With regards to the relationship of Pepperdine University brand standards and email marketing communications, users must adhere to the standard brand resources and guidelines;

  • There are master email templates available to all users. Users are not permitted to edit the design of these templates or create their own templates.
  • Standard content blocks are established to meet brand standards of the university, as well as to ensure web accessibility.
  • Users are not permitted to create their own customized HTML code for implementation of the standard templates. Violators will have their Salesforce Marketing Cloud access restricted or revoked upon the severity of the case.
  • Before using images in your emails that you've downloaded from external sources, be sure to review Copyrights for Photography & Video.

Best Practices

When developing your email marketing communications for the final execution for constituents of Pepperdine University, individuals will need to follow a standard application for email content development. This is to ensure the purpose of the message is being conveyed to the best of its ability, the content is relayed cohesively and correctly with regards to the audience, as well as to optimize the end-user experience as a member of the Pepperdine community.