I gave a presentation on the Photo Library and UMContent Digital Asset Management (DAM) at the UMContent Site Developers meeting this afternoon. The presentation was about how we are able to use the UMContent Digital Asset Management (DAM) module to build the new Photo Library (www.umn.edu/brand/photo-library). A copy of the presentation is available for download.
October 2010 Archives
If you haven't already heard from one or two University listservs, University Relations launched the new Our Brand--How to Convey It website today.
This new site is designed to be a "one stop" location for guidelines, recommendations, requirements, logos, templates, and images related to University marketing and branding.
Our Brand--How to Convey It combines and replaces several sites that you may already be aware of; the Graphic Standards site, the eCommunication Standards (webdepot) site, the Style Manual, and the Images Library. (These old sites will remain online until Monday.)
Please take some time in the next few weeks to visit the new site and make comments via the questionnaire posted on the home page of the site (in the upper right corner) at www.umn.edu/brand. We value your input!
Thank you,
University Relations Marketing and Electronic Communications staff
Many thanks to the most wonderful Tim Roman and Blaine Cross for their presentation on October 26. Tim and Blaine were the featured speakers for the third Examining Ecommunications webinar.
A recording of the presentation is available at: https://umconnect.umn.edu/p83424454/
For those of you who attended, my apologies for running right up to the time limit. Both Tim and Blaine had such great information, I hated to put a stop to the discussion. Tim and Blaine have graciously offered to answer your questions offline. So, if you did have any further questions, please feel free to send an email to them.
Tim: roman029@umn.edu
Blaine: bcross@umn.edu
Mark your calendars for the next webinar on November 30 featuring Liz Giorgi, University Relations, talking about video.
The Mass Email User Group meeting scheduled for 3-4 p.m. on Wednesday, October 27 has been pushed up by 15 minutes. The meeting is now 2:45-3:45 p.m.
UMContent & CCE by Blaine Cross and Tim Roman, College of Continuing Education
October 26, 2010; 10 a.m.
Attend via UMConnect
Join your colleagues from the College of Continuing Education (CCE) to hear how they have tapped into the power of UMContent. What are their strategies? What UMContent tips and tricks do they recommend? Which features and abilities are they using? Blaine Cross and Tim Roman will present on October 26.
Register today! A confirmation email with the link to UMConnect will be sent to you prior to the webinar.
The next Mass Email User Group meeting is Wednesday, October 27 from 2:45-3:45 p.m. 3-4 p.m. in Morrill 238A.
Our main topic will be internal audience segmentation. Matt Sumera, Associate Director for Internal Communications, will present on Internal Communications' work in selecting and refining audiences on the Twin Cities campus and system wide. We'll also look at the data available to see how your college or unit can select leverage these ideas to select from your own students, staff, or faculty.
Want to attend remotely? A screen share and conference call will be available. Note: audio is available only through the conference call. If you would like to attend remotely, please RSVP to ecomm@umn.edu no later than 1 p.m. on Monday, October 25. There is no need to RSVP if you will be attending in person.
The University maintains a license that allows us up to 2,000,000 million members in Lyris ListManager. Growth has continued and the system is at 97% capacity.
To date, it has not been necessary to establish any standards or limits on list sizes, or upgrade our license limit.
In the next two days, please do the following to all your lists, excluding lists that end in "-gel" or "-gil."
Method #1: Delete Old Lists
If you have old lists that are no longer needed, request that they be deleted. Make sure to save any member, content, mailing or tracking history you require outside of Lyris before making your request. Key contacts may send requests to ecomm@umn.edu, making sure to include the full list name.
Method #2: Clean Out Unnecessary Member Records
If you have lists that contains members who are unsubscribed, unconfirmed, held or in any other non-normal state, you may be able to delete those members. Some tips:
- Settings exist to automatically purge these members after a certain number of days.
- If your list is an opt-in list (members explicitly requested to subscribe), there is no need to hold on to unsubscribed member records. If your list is an opt-out list, you must retain and honor records of opt-outs, in Lyris or through another method.
- Held and unconfirmed members will not receive mailings. Held members should be investigated and then fixed while unconfirmed members should be purged after a reasonable amount of time (e.g. 30 days). Note: autoreplies may result in members being held. Steps can be taken to eliminate most holds due to autoreplies by setting the "Precedence: bulk" header for mailings. See the blog post on reducing delivery failures in Lyris for more information on these settings.
One of the major issues noted by users of Lyris ListManager during a demonstration last month was Lyris' inability to distinguish between autoreplies and delivery failures. This forces senders to sift through many delivery "failures" to check for blocks and identify bad addresses. A "failure" may also result in a member being held, precluding them from receiving future messages without manual intervention.
Two things you can do to make your life as a sender easier:
- Include the "Precedence: bulk" header in your mailings.
- Set your list to not hold members.
Before you read on, if you are not already checking for delivery failures, you need to be, unless you're using University of Minnesota Foundation data in a GEL list or up-to-date, internal-only address lists (all @umn.edu addresses).
Including the "Precedence: bulk" header
This header tells mail systems that a particular message is a mass email, not simply a message from person A to person B. For internal-only mailings, you should always set this header, as it helps prioritize the delivery of mail.
For external mailings, there isn't much anecdotal evidence available yet. For external mailings, it may have positive or negative impacts on deliverability (your mileage may vary), but Google notes the need to set this header.
To add the header for future mailings from a single list:
- Go to Utilities‑>List Settings‑>Email Submitted Content.
- Switch to the "Email Header" tab.
- Enter "Precedence: bulk" (without quotes) in the "Append to SMTP header" field. Enter this bit on a new line if the field is not empty.
- Click "Save."
Repeat the steps for each list you wish to set the header on.
Set a list to not hold members
You will need to adjust this setting for each list.
- Go to Utilities‑>List Settings‑>Automatic Maintenance.
- Set "Hold users" to "no."
- Click "Save."
Change members from "held" to "normal"
For less than 50 held members, follow these steps:
- Go to Members‑>View Members.
- In the selection dropdown, choose "Show: held (bad email addresses)."
- Click the email address for one of the held members to open their record.Hint: use your web browser shortcut to open this in a new tab that doesn't have focus, so you can open them all quickly rather that repeating steps one and two for each member.
- Switch to the "Settings" tab.
- Change "Membership status" to "normal member."
- Click "Save."
Repeat steps 4-6 for other members.
Have more than 50 held members? Send an email to ecomm@umn.edu and ask that that held members on your list(s) be converted to normal members. Be sure to include all list names fully written out. Note: Typically, you should first set your list to _not_ automatically hold members, unless this is a one time cleanup and held members will be checked after each mailing.
A compilation of University websites, listservs, and wikis with a few outsiders thrown in for good measure. Add more resources by commenting on this entry.
U of M web-related listservs
CODE-PEOPLE: For application developers at the U.
WEB_TEMPLATES: Discuss U of M templates and standards.
WEB-PEOPLE: Web developer and designer discussion list.
WEBSTANDARDS: General discussion about web communications at the U.
WEBSTATS: Discussion of University-wide stats.
WEBDEV: News and information about Web design and development from UMD's Laura Carlson.
UMContent listservs
UMCONTENT-USERS: Support list for UMContent content management system users.
UMCONTENT-SITEBUILDERS
Discuss site building guidelines and best practices for CSS layouts and fragments
in UMContent.
General web resources
A list apart--A blog "for people who make websites."
The Smashing network--A list of resource sites including Webdesigner Depot, Six Revisions, CSS Tricks, Smashing Magazine, and lots, lots more.
Web Standards Group--The Web Standards Group is a place where the web developers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus come together to network, learn from each other, and put into place the best methods to put together web sites and communicate with our varied audiences.
CSS resources
CSS_DEV Wiki--A wiki organized by the U's CSS Development and Education Workgroup.
The CSS Tutorial--Learn all about CSS at CSSTutorial.net.
CSS Tutorial--Another tutorial from w3schools.com.
CSS Zen Garden—The power of CSS to change a page without changing the HTML.
The W3C on CSS—What's new with CSS, W3C core styles, authoring tools and more.
XHTML resources
If you use Dreamweaver 4 or above, this extension can automate your conversion from HTML to XHTML.
XHTML Tutorial—The 'how' and 'why' of using XHTML.
XHTML Reference—A best practice guide with descriptions and examples.
Tools
Firebug--Provides tools for inspection, analysis, and debugging of HTML, CSS, and Javascript using Firefox.
Firefox Web Developer--Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
Web Standards Advisor--Combines coding checks with best practices and standards in a user-friendly report.
Grid System Generator--Build a custom grid using the 960.gs (the same grid system that the U templates use). Tutorials for using the grid system are also available.
Mass email resources
Email Standards Project--Great information for what is and isn't supported in various email clients.
Campaign Monitor Articles & Tips
Constant Contact Learning Center
MailChimp.com--Email marketing resources
ExactTarget.com--Email marketing strategy and education resources.
Lyris HQ Email Marketing and More--Articles, FAQs, and more on email marketing, integrated marketing, web analytics, and search engine optimization.
Mailer Mailer—Email Marketing Metrics Report includes some interesting data such as click rates based on the length of your subject line and level of personalization.
UMContent resources
UMContent support--The University's support site for UMContent includes recent announcements, FAQs, new site and account request forms.
UMContent Wiki--Review UMContent notes and download vendor and U documents.
On Tuesday, October 12 the Office of Information Technology will swap a network cable on the Lyris production machine. This may result in downtime of up to 15 minutes. This is scheduled to occur at approximately 6 a.m. To allow for some variance, expect Lyris to be unavailable from 5:45 a.m. to 6:30 a.m.
If you have questions or concerns write to ecomm@umn.edu.
