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Printer-friendly pageShould I Use Massmail . . . or Something Else?
This page contains information about how to choose which tool to use for sending email to large numbers of people on campus.
There are many well-established channels for communicating routine information to broad audiences on campus. Before requesting a Massmail message, carefully consider whether your message can be delivered using one of these other methods. This chart can help you decide whether Massmail is the right option for your message; see below for further explanation.
| MassMail | Targeted MassMail | DDDH | Eweek | Portal | Campus Calendar | Other? | |
| Class offerings | one-time, noncredit offerings | Daily Illini, college or dept lists | |||||
| College/Unit Newsletters | Voluntary email lists or unit-maintained email lists with opt-out | ||||||
| Job openings | DART, St Finaid job board, voluntary email lists | ||||||
| Invitations to department-sponsored seminars of general interest | X | Department lists | |||||
| Krannert Center, Museum, artistic events, DIA athletic events: series or memberships | X | X | X | Daily Illini, Inside Illinois, Voluntary lists, flyers | |||
| Krannert Center, Museum, artistic events, DIA athletic events: one-time events | X | X | Daily Illini, Inside Illinois, Voluntary lists, flyers | ||||
| New appointments or retirements (dean & up), invitations to receptions | X | X ? | Inside Illinois | ||||
| New appointments or retirements, below dean, including investitures | Inside Illinois, Voluntary lists, paper, unit-maintained lists |
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| Requests for proposals | Within college only | if general interest | |||||
| Scholarship information | X | X | |||||
| Surveys | X | ||||||
| Invitations to participate in research projects | X | X | Department lists such as Psych 100 | ||||
| New or changed services or reorganization of campus service/administrative units | if general interest | X | X | Voluntary email lists | |||
| New or revised policies (requirement to post first-year midterm grades, etc.) |
maybe | X | X | X | X | Voluntary email lists | |
| Safety and health announcements (flu shots, campus crime alerts, "Unofficial") |
X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| Compliance requests | X | X | X | X | Personally addressed email is better | ||
| Special campus-wide forums | maybe | Department lists | |||||
| Availability of grade reports, monthly E-Bills, tax forms | maybe | Department lists | |||||
| Campus- or University-wide missives from exec admin ("state of the campus", Global Campus) | maybe |
For general announcements and publicity purposes, consider the following options:
- Campus Calendar: The Campus Calendar can be used to publicize a lecture or talk that is open to the campus. Some of these events are published on the campus home page. There are instructions at the Campus Calendar web site for adding an event to the calendar.
- The Daily Illini:The daily student newspaper, The Daily Illini, is often used to publicize events, conferences and symposia, new courses, and similar items.
- Inside Illinois: Inside Illinois, the faculty-staff semi-monthly newspaper, publicizes events of all kinds of interest to faculty and staff members.
- Eweek: Eweek is a weekly announcement email newsletter sent out to all faculty and staff of the Urbana-Champaign campus. It is ideal for short announcements that only needs to go to faculty and staff.
- Campus Flyers: Flyers announcing upcoming lectures and other events are routinely sent to the relevant department offices for posting on bulletin boards.
For more focused distribution of messages to narrower audiences, consider the following options for delivering bulk email messages:
- Targeted Massmail: CITES offers another bulk emailing service for sending email messages to more narrowly defined, but still large, audiences. See the Targeted Massmail homepage for more information.
- Individual Mailings: Individual email deliveries can be made to the particular faculty, staff, or students who will be interested in a particular event or announcement.
- Dean, Directors, and Department Heads Listserv (DDDH): The Dean, Directors and Department Heads (DDDH) Listserv can be used for "official University business"; information should apply to a broad range of campus units and should be relevant for a selective, executive-level audience. Typical examples are changes in administrative responsibilities, services or policies, and information about procedures that are critical to the University. Judgment about the appropriate use of the list is the sole responsibility of the moderator.
- Advisor-L Listserv: The Advisor-L Listerv is commonly used to disseminate information about course offerings to all undergraduate advisors.
- Other Listservs: Many groups on campus communicate through their own independent listservs, which might be effective in reaching a specific audience.