Navigating Communication and Collaboration: A Guide to University of Washington Email Services and Beyond

The University of Washington (UW) offers a comprehensive suite of email services and related tools designed to facilitate communication, collaboration, and community engagement among students, faculty, and staff. This article explores the various aspects of UW's email services, including recent changes, best practices for effective communication, and complementary platforms that enhance the overall UW experience.

UW Email Services: An Overview

UW provides several email options, including UW Exchange Online and UW Google. UW Exchange Online is part of UW Office 365. It's crucial to understand the nuances of each service to ensure optimal utilization. Many Exchange features do not work unless the desktop version of Outlook is installed and configured. For those opting for UW Exchange Online with Outlook, local IT support is strongly recommended.

Major Changes to UW Google

UW Google is undergoing several major changes. Stay informed about these updates to adapt your workflow accordingly.

Effective Communication Strategies

Beyond the technical aspects of email, mastering effective communication strategies is essential for successful engagement within the UW community.

Crafting Compelling Messages

Consider A/B testing names vs. offices, like “Dean Jane Doe” vs. Keep it under 80 characters, including spaces. Content should link to a webpage or, if absolutely necessary, an accessible PDF. Avoid using images with excessive text as they can hinder accessibility for screen readers. Always preview and test messages in desktop and mobile configurations.

The Power of Preheaders

Think of it as a subheadline to the “headline” that is your subject line. Preheaders provide additional context and incentive for recipients to open your message.

Personalization at Scale

This dynamic content allows for personalization at scale, ensuring each recipient receives content relevant to their interests. Instead, you can strategically decide how to personalize content for your recipients on a large scale. This personalization helps to deepen the individual’s connection to your service or expertise, fostering stronger relationships and loyalty.

Accessibility Matters

“Accessible” means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally and independently as a person without a disability. Avoid using images with excessive text since that cannot be read by screen readers.

Hyperlinking Best Practices

There are several things to consider in creating accessible link text. Link from text that accurately describes where the link will take them, even if the linked text were read out of context. Don’t link to the same URL from very different strings of text. If linking from an image, enter the URL destination as opposed to a description of the image in the alt text. Descriptive link text. Links should never be spelled out; they should be hyperlinked instead. When adding hyperlinks, ensure that the link text is descriptive and provides context about where the link leads. Poor user of hyperlinked text.

Image Guidelines

Images. Please send these images as image files in a Drive folder and save these image sizes in pixels. Images must be saved to the following pixel, at 72 dpi. Here is our Marketo Template Preview Gallery that shows the image sizes across different modules and templates. Pay close attention to the required size for whatever image module you use.

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Dates and Times

Use AP Style for formatting dates and times. For example, “Jan. When a month is used with a specific date, abbreviate only Jan., Feb., Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov. and Dec. When a phrase lists only a month and a year, do not separate the year with commas. Jan. Feb. She testified that it was Friday, Dec.

Active Voice

Use active voice whenever possible. Identify the personality and tone to use. Is this going to come from your unit head? Or from your unit? Are you sharing a student’s story?

Proofing

Serial comma. Campus references.

Monitoring Message Performance

A week post-sending, the UMAC DMAS will forward the performance reports for your message. Analyzing this data helps gauge message success. Performance metrics can provide you these insights.

Key Performance Indicators

Unsubscribes: The number of people who opted to remove themselves from your subscriber list.
Bounce-backs: The number of message sends that were not successfully delivered to your audience.
Click-to-open rate (CTOR): The percentage of people who opened your message who also clicked a link.

UW Groups: Facilitating Collaboration

UW Groups serve as collective identifiers for individuals, computers, and applications, promoting collaboration and communication across various tools and applications by facilitating group reuse.

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Message Approval for Mass Communication

Messages sent to all UW faculty and/or staff and/or students must be approved by the UMAC Assistant Vice President for Communications or their designee. Since these messages go out to very large audiences, they must be approved by UMAC’s Assistant Vice President for Digital Strategy or their designee.

The UW Event Calendar

The UW Event Calendar is a service providing a calendar for all UW campus public events. In addition, it can be used to set up departmental calendars, including academic, schools, colleges, and other groups. Also, an event created in one calendar can appear in multiple calendars. Anyone with a UW NetID can request a calendar, which can then be used to share events with the campus calendar.

Types of Communications

Newsletter: An informative compilation message used to share or promote news, events and/or updates with your community. Before asking that question, it’s crucial to assess whether your unit truly needs one. Newsletters can be valuable communication tools, but they also require time, effort and resources to produce and maintain effectively. Clarify the specific objectives you aim to achieve through the newsletter. Ensure that this content is not already covered by an existing newsletter. Do you have an existing list of people interested in receiving updates or insights from your unit? Consider the available time and people power to create and maintain a newsletter. It is NOT going to solve all your problems overnight. Instead, it provides you with more information about your audience.
Event Communications: A direct invitation to attend an event hosted or sponsored by a UW unit. Copy should include event title, date and time, location, tickets/cost of attendance, description, contact information, registration link and accessibility information.
Giving Appeal: A direct request to support a unit through time, talent or treasure. Recipients must always have the ability to unsubscribe from solicitations.
Operation-related: An informative message from unit leadership that contains information necessary for audience to interact with the UW.

Beyond Email: Enhancing the UW Experience

UW offers a variety of platforms and communities that complement email communication and foster a vibrant campus environment.

Slack for Engineering Students

We hope you will enjoy using the Slack as a social outlet to study together, meet people, and discuss all things UW engineering from the comfort and convenience of anywhere with an internet connection. What is Slack? Slack is an online chat platform with channel, video/voice chat, and direct message capabilities. The Slack Community is only intended for students in the SWE community.

Highlighting Women in Engineering

Women In Engineering: Highlight of the MonthNominate someone you know!Celebrate the incredible women in engineering at UW! The Society of Women Engineers at UW is excited to launch our new initiative, highlighting outstanding female engineering students who are making a difference in their fields. We invite you to nominate a remarkable student excelling in areas such as research, leadership, or community service. Whether they’re leading a groundbreaking project in a lab, inspiring others through mentorship, or actively engaging with the community, we want to shine a spotlight on their achievements! I have loved being a member and officer of SWE! UW SWE helped me find a sense of belonging as a woman in STEM. SWE has not just been a society; it's been my compass in navigating the boundless realms of engineering, guiding me with stellar mentorship, empowerment, and a community that fuels my journey.

Jeto: A Companion Tool to Marketo

Want to learn more? Jeto is a companion tool to Marketo. Want to know more about Jeto?

The UW Brand Portal

The UW Brand portal provides additional guidelines.

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