In addition to following the guidelines outlined by the US CAN-SPAM Act, there are other things you should do to make your UD email campaign more verifiable.
- Notify recipients ahead of time about significant campaigns. This step is particularly important if your email campaign is going to come from a third party (e.g., Qualtrics, a different survey management organization, SANS Institute, EDUCAUSE, an email list management company).
For example, if your department is sending out a Qualtrics survey, send the recipients email from a udel.edu address three to seven days before the survey goes out. In that email, tell the recipients to expect the survey and what UD website to visit for verification about the survey's authenticity.
- Publish information about the campaign at a verifiable source.
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Publish a UDaily article about the email campaign.
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Publish information about the campaign at your department's website.
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If you use a third party vendor to process your email campaigns, publish a web page entitled Our communication partners. That page could contain information like the following:
The UD unit name has partnered with Vendor to process information that we send to constituent group name. To help us make our messages more useful to you, Vendor uses a proprietary link shortener. Email sent by Vendor on our behalf is expected to use links that begin http://emclick.imodules.com/trkr/.
If you have questions about the validity of email that appears to come from the UD unit name, contact us: ud-aaaaaaa@udel.edu or (302) 831-xxxx.
"Constituent group name" could be something like ticket-holders, alumni, prospective students, etc.
Make sure that email sent out on your department's behalf includes information that will allow the recipients to verify the validity of the message. You could choose to include a statement like the ones listed below. Note: To be effective, a statement adapted from one of these examples should include verifiable udel.edu links or contact information.
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To verify the contents of this email, contact Department Name: emailaddress@udel.edu or 302-831-xxxx.
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You can verify that this message is legitmate by visiting http://xxx.udel.edu/webpage_address or by contacting departmental_email_address@udel.edu.
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You can verify that this email is legitmate by reading this UDaily article or by contacting Department_Name at (302) 831-xxxx or departmental_email_address@udel.edu.
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You are receiving this email because you are University of Delaware faculty or staff or because you opted in on our website. For more information, contact Department_Name at (302) 831-xxxx or departmental_email_address@udel.edu.
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View a good example of verification text from a recent College of Engineering newsletter.
View a good example of verification text from a recent College of Arts & Sciences newsletter. (Note: the A&S text links to this statement about their communication partners.)
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If you use a commercial link shortener in an email or social media campaign, make sure that your department's website includes that information. Doing so will help recipients verify the authenticity of the message and link. However, using a commercial link shortener like bit.ly or ow.ly is less verifiable than using the UD microlink service (https://www.udel.edu/uLink-request/).
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Provide an explicit indication if external links in a University email campaign go to non-udel.edu URLs.
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In addition, you should review your lists periodically and purge invalid or non-existent email addresses.