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 Examples of strategic audience segmentation include:

• If your email pertains to faculty or staff in a particular school or college, send your email only to those faculty and staff, not to all faculty and staff.
• If your email pertains to all students in a particular major or class year, send your email only to those students, not to all students.
• If your email pertains to alumni who graduated in a specific year from a specific program, send your email only to those alumni, not to all alumni.

[infobox title="Creating Your Content"]Strive to create content that is meaningful and relevant for your readers. You can use functionality such as A/B testing and dynamic content to experiment with your messages to ensure they are truly engaging your audience. Contact your eComm Specialist for more information.

Some best practices for creating your content include the following:

• Keep your message short and to-the-point. Readers are more likely to engage with content at the beginning/top of your message, so limit the need to scroll when possible.
• Limit the number of links in your message to only the ones that are most relevant to your content. No more than 5-10 links per email will generally increase your click rate.
• Ensure the timeliness of your content. Relevant and recent information is more useful than outdated content. If the news happened before your previous e-communication, it's outdated.
• Make sure that your email compels recipients to take a specific action, such as donate to the university, enroll in a class, register for an event, engage on social media, etc.
• Design an email that is appealing to your audience, that looks professional, and that meets CU brand standards. For examples of well-designed emails visit LINK.

[infobox title="Scheduling Your Message"]Schedule your message based on email send reports that indicate when your audience is most likely to engage with the content. Work with your eComm Specialist to access your email send data and make decisions about future sends accordingly.

Examples of strategic email scheduling include:

• Consider the time that might work best for your audience. For example, faculty and staff are most likely to engage with your email during business hours.
• For smaller email sends (less than XX,XXX records), the best time to send a message is between 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. and from 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
• Determine how frequently you would like to have email campaigns. Don't send too many, but make sure you're sending them often enough. Sending too often may result in unsubscribes. Use your email send data to guide this decision. Your eComm Specialist can assist you in getting the information you need to guide your future efforts.

[infobox title="Contact the University Brand Identity Standards Board"]The University Brand Identity Standards Board comprises representatives with professional expertise in branding, marketing and communications from each campus, system administration and the CU Foundation. Not sure if your images adhere to branding standards? Contact your board member to find out.

Make sure your communication is in compliance with CU's brand standards by using the link associated with your campus/unit below:

• Advancement
• ​Anschutz
• Boulder
• Colorado Springs
• Denver
• System

[infobox title="Consider other Campus and/or CU Communications"]Before you send an email, consider if there are other avenues on your campus or within the system that you can use to disseminate your message. Doing so helps prevent email fatigue among our constituents. A list of campus and CU communications is provided below.