Career Services at UW-Madison

Handshake Mass Email & Communication Policy

Last updated 10/1/2018

INTRODUCTION

The Handshake Mass Email and Event Invitation functions give Career Services units powerful mass communication tools to reach students for broad and targeted campaigns. These tools provide value for promoting campus-wide event like career & internship fairs, and smaller workshops or events organized by individual Career Services units.

Handshake users with administrative permissions to use the Mass Email tool have ability to email all student contacts in Handshake, regardless of school or college. All Handshake users have the ability to send a mass event invitation email to all student contacts in Handshake, regardless of school or college. In order to ensure best practices and coordination across all Career Services units, this policy covers Mass Email and Event Invitation staff permissions and usage guidelines.

The Handshake Mass Email & Mass Communication Policy addresses two primary concerns:

  • Staff who are not trained on how to properly set up email distribution or event invitation lists in Handshake may inadvertently send communications to students outside their school or college, or to alumni and other audiences.
  • Staff running or promoting events in their Career Services units may use the Handshake Mass Email or Event Invitation functions without coordinating with other staff in their office. This could lead to duplication or over-communication, which hurts the specific career center’s promotional efforts. This also hurts the promotional efforts of campus-wide Mass Email campaigns or event outreach if students feel that they’re getting too many emails from Handshake.

POLICY

The following guidelines will be enforced by the Handshake Leadership Team with support from the Career Center Approval Team (CCAT):

  1. The Mass Email function will be limited to one primary user in each Career Services office, plus one backup. If a Career Services office has staff with communications responsibilities in their role, Mass Email permission may be granted to these individuals as well.
  2. Requests for Mass Email permission will be sent to, authorized and managed by the Handshake Systems Administrator, in consultation with CCAT, when necessary.
  3. All Mass Email users will adhere to Instructions on Setting up a Mass Email Campaign and Recipient List—see below.
  4. Individual Career Services units shall use Mass Email and the Event Invitation functions only for communication with students in their own school or college (school/college affiliation, major or certificate) when promoting programs, events or services connected to their respective offices.
  5. All communication sent from Handshake, including communication sent via the Mass Email or Event Invitation Function, is restricted to career-focused events and programming.
  6. Career Services units may wish to send a Mass Email or Event Invitation to students in different schools/colleges based on students’ interests, previous activity in Handshake or other data. In such cases the Career Services unit must secure approval from the designated Handshake Mass Email user in the other respective schools/colleges. The other Career Services units may wish to give permission to use Handshake to email or invite their students, or they may email their own students with shared information. They may also decline all options, based on management of their own communications/marketing plan.
  7. For collaborative and campus-wide events or initiatives, Mass Email and Mass Event Invitation communications may be sent in accordance with the communications/marketing plans for these programs. These plans should be created with input from all relevant Career Services units, with consultation from CCAT and the Handshake Communications Team. Relevant events/programs include but are not limited to:
    1. Campus-wide Career and Internship Fair (Fall and Spring)
    2. Public Service Fair (Fall and Spring)
    3. Multicultural Career and Internship Fair
  8. Use of Mass Email to students who have not yet declared a major will be coordinated by the Career Exploration Center, with input from SuccessWorks at the College of Letters & Science (due to the fact that these students are affiliated with L&S even before declaring a major).

COMPLIANCE

Failure by users to adhere to these policies will prompt a review of the user’s permission status by the Handshake Systems Administrator, in consultation with CCAT and the Handshake Leadership Team. The Handshake Systems Administrator reserves the right to temporarily disable Mass Email authorization or user accounts pending a resolution of the policy violation. Violation of this policy may result in the temporary or long-term removal of a user’s Mass Email authorization or access to event invitation functions in Handshake.

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INSTRUCTIONS – Setting up a Mass Email Campaign and Recipient List

Handshake provides a step-by-step guide with screenshots on how to set up a mass email:

Mass Email: How to Create and Send a Mass Email.

 

1. Select School Year 

If nothing is selected, the default setting will send to all student populations in this category – including Masters, Doctorate, and Alumni.

2. Select Your Primary College

3. IMPORTANT – Select the following “Not Labels”

  • all centers – staff test account
  • oua admin – invite error

4. Add any additional filters needed to narrow down your audience