Distributing your ezine
The ISTS E-Business Solutions team perform the task of distributing ezines to a list of recipients. If you require the services of the ISTS for distributing your ezine the information they require should be filled out in the Distribution Brief (Word doc).
Further information regarding information ISTS require for distribution of the ezine.
- A realistic distribution date - ISTS need about 5 working days for testing. Note there may be some tweaking to the HTML required which you or the external supplier will need to do, and this needs to be allowed for.
- Sending email address (eg alumni@unisa.edu.au) This must be a current and valid address capable of receiving emails from external sources
- Subject line (if personalisation is needed use {DisplayName} where the name from the recipient list is to be placed - note extra step involved regarding personalisation for the webpage version)
- URL to the ezine webpage (eg http://www.unisa.edu.au/tdu/ezine/07january/issue1.htm - this should be defined before any design work has begun) and should be working and tested that it looks okay before you request distribution via ISTS.
- If personalisation is required the second column in the Excel file should contain the name to be displayed and the heading column should be ‘DisplayName’. See a sample file (Excel file). If this list is not available to be placed in the service call for security reasons or size limitations, please supply contact details for obtaining the Excel file. If the Alumni and Development office are supplying an alumni or savvy email list they will send it directly to ISTS and you won't need to.
- A list of test email addresses for a testing/approval group.
E-Business Solutions team will send the ezine to these addresses for approval
before sending the live ezine.
Note: It is ideal to check ezines in web email clients like Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. If you do not have any of these email addresses for testing yourself E-Business can send them to email accounts setup for this purpose. Because MDU check these emails, it could add some time to your ezine distribution. Please also include at least your own email address in the distribution brief.
Recipient list
If you are not obtaining an email list from the Alumni and Development office you will need to supply a recipient list in the form of an Excel file with the first column containing the email addresses and column heading ‘Email’.
Ezine testing
Once ISTS receive notification they will send a sample of the ezine to the list of test email addresses supplied in the request as outlined in step 6 above. It is the responsibility of the requestor to check the accessibility and accuracy of the ezine in all the test email accounts. If problems are found you will need to refer them to the developer of the ezine for fixing. See email examples for why testing is so important
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Once ISTS receive the approval of the test emails they will proceed to load the final recipient list and any personalised names if this is in your ezine design
- ISTS will then send the email on your behalf and report completion of distribution.
Please note: this process takes time - allow at least 5 working days, and if requesting data a further 5 days.
Post distribution tasks
Once the ezine has been dispatched:
- ISTS will provide the ezine requestor and/or recipient list administrator with a list of email addresses that were found to be in an invalid format
- The ezine requestor is responsible for:
- ensuring resources are allocated to action any request to be withdrawn from future email communications. This appears to be a requirement under the Australian SPAM Act 2003 - unsubscribe emails must be actioned within 5 working days of receipt
- using LiveStats to analyse the effectiveness and commercial value of the ezine
- The recipient list administrator is responsible for:
- providing resources to check the ezine sending mailbox or public folder for all undeliverable messages
- updating the recorded list to avoid future unnecessary sends.