The Mass Mailing tool is an effective way of distributing your survey link when you have access to the individual email addresses for each survey recipient. Mass mailings are created right within the Project Dashboard for a given survey. We have outlined the benefits of using the tool versus other administration options for your reference. You can also watch a short video on how to set up your Mass Mailing here.
Once your project has been built, you can create set up your Mass Mailings. We recommend scheduling Mass Mailings to be sent out after you have received the Preview Notification email from your Baseline Support Specialist.
If you choose to send the mailing through Campus Labs, this is the information that you will need to fill in:
1. E-mail text
2. E-mail subject line
3. E-mail "from" name (who you want it to appear to be from; can be a person, office, committee, etc.)
4. E-mail "reply-to" address (e-mail address that respondents will reply to)
5. E-mail addresses (you can copy and paste them in)
Steps for creating a mailing in the Mass Mailing module:
Navigate to the Project Dashboard by clicking on the title of your project in the project listing.
Click on Manage to be taken to the Mass Mailing Manager.
Click on 'Create New Mailing' button; instructions are provided on the next page in the middle of the screen. Please provide:
- Email "from" name (who you want it to appear to be from; can be a person, office, committee, etc.)
- Email "reply-to" address (e-mail address that respondents will reply to)
- Email subject line
- Email text*
* We do not recommend pasting in images to the body of the email, as this can cause the mailing to fail.
Once all of the information has been entered, click Create under the email text box.
Please note that in order to insert the survey link, you will need to place your cursor where you would like the link to go and then hit the Insert INSTRUCTIONS button directly above the e-mail body. This will insert a placeholder for both the link and text instructions for taking the survey. See the image above for an example.
Once the page refreshes you can enter the e-mail addresses into the “To” field located in the “Details” box. You can include a maximum of 10,000 email addresses per Mass Mailing.
Insert the approximate date and time (Eastern) that you would like the mailing to be sent (please note that this must be at least 10 minutes into the future) and click Save in the upper left hand corner.
Once you have entered all the info listed above, click on the Finish button.
You will get a pop up message showing what your mailing will look like to those who receive the email, and it will also ask you to confirm that you are ready to send your mailing out at the scheduled time. You also have the option to send out the mailing right away if you choose. The blue alert simply reminds you that mailings can only be taken once by each person you are sending it to, and to not send the mailing to a listserv (that is, each email must be listed individually and not in aggregate).
Steps for creating a reminder mailing in the Mass Mailing module:
- Inside the Mass Mailing manager, check the box next to the first mass mailing that was sent and then click the Create Reminder Mailing button.
- You will be prompted to a page that has all the information filled out for the reminder. Simply click Create. Your subject line, from name, and reply to address will be copied over.
- You will now be taken to a screen with all the editing tools needed to update this reminder. Feel free to change the content a bit, so that respondents know it is a reminder. Note that although all email addresses from the original mailing are copied over, you will not need to change any of the addresses as this will only be sent to those who have not yet entered data into the survey.
- Your reminder will appear to be sending to "0" people. This is because it sends to non-respondent at the time it is sent. Therefore, it is unable to determine the number of people it will go to until the time the mailing is sent. The reminder will only go to recipients who have not answered any questions in the survey.
If you would like to edit your mailing after it is finalized but before it goes out, instructions can be found here.
**NOTE: Using the generic link without any validation screen is considered anonymous, meaning that neither Anthology staff nor the campus can track the identity of the respondent in any way with this survey link. Using a validation screen, or using the mass mailing feature, means that the respondent's identifier (either email or ID, depending on your settings) is collected by Anthology. While Anthology does have the ability to hide the respondent's identifier from the Baseline user who is collecting this data, it still technically exists and can be un-hidden upon request. Therefore, if you choose to use the mass mailing tool or validation screen as your data collection method, be advised that you should not advertise your survey as anonymous; we recommend using language to say that your survey is "confidential," since access to respondent IDs is controlled by permissions to Baseline and not inherently available to the general public.