NYU E-mail Direct

• Authorization & Approval
• Restrictions
• How to Send an E-mail Direct Message
• Benefits of E-mail Direct
• Drawbacks of Bulk E-mail
• Tips & Reminders
• Help & Additional Information

NYU E-mail Direct is a bulk email service through which preauthorized NYU faculty, staff, and administrators can request to send an email message to a well-defined segment or segments of the University community or to the entire University community. When properly used, mass email is a powerful tool for conducting business swiftly, without generating large amounts of paper.

Before using E-mail Direct, please read the Policies and Guidelines for Sending Bulk E-mail at NYU.

Authorization & Approval

E-mail Direct typically requires authorization by a dean. If you are an NYU administrator or faculty or staff member, you can request access by contacting your school's dean. If you're not sure whether you meet eligibility requirements, send a message with your name, title, and reason for desiring access to email.direct@nyu.edu.

For approval of specific messages, ITS suggests that for mailings to students in a school, a Dean can designate a person to approve mailings; for mailings to more than one school, see the Restrictions section, below.

Restrictions

• During the final two weeks of the Fall and Spring semesters, only emergency University-wide mailings are permitted to students.
• Reminder mailings about previously sent messages are not permitted.
• You should not send notification of lectures or events to the entire University unless they are truly University-wide events. Events may be posted on the NYU Calendar, or targeted to specific groups.
• After approval, cross-University mailings may be sent, but there is a limit per sending group. Schools are allowed two per semester plus one in the summer (five total for the year). Administrative units are allowed two per semester (four total for the year). Should your school or division need to send out additional cross-University messages above and beyond these limits, we will consider your request on a case-by-case basis. Please put a request in email and send it to email.direct@nyu.edu and these requests will be reviewed by the Office of the Provost.

How to Send an E-mail Direct Message

Before sending an E-mail Direct (or a large email on your own), please review the important Tips & Reminders below.

If you are an authorized user, you can send a E-mail Direct message by accessing the E-mail Direct Submission page (NYU NetID login required). There, you will need to complete some or all of the 8 E-mail Direct form questions (not all are required):

1. The name of the organization or person sending the message:
   Type in the human-readable name of the organization or person this message is from.
   Examples
   Dean of the College of Arts and Science
   Office of Student Life
   University Registrar
2. The email address that will appear in the From line of the message:
   Type in the correctly formatted email address of the group or person this message is from. Replies to your message will be sent to the address you enter here.
   Examples
   cyberdean@nyu.edu
   osa@nyu.edu
   registrar@nyu.edu
3. The subject of the message:
   Type in the text you want displayed in the Subject field of your E-Mail Direct message. Make sure the subject accurately and precisely describes the topic of your message.
   Examples
   Recent CAS Scholarship Opportunities
   Film Internships for Tisch Students
4. The body of the message:
   Please follow these guidelines:
   Restrict the width of the text to no greater than 65 characters. This will ensure readability for a wide array of email programs, prevent unwanted wrapping of text and eccentric line lengths, and allow space for marks added in a response. Make sure the message accurately reflects your subject. Be brief and to the point. Avoid the use of special formatting. Regularly formatted paragraphs work best. Avoid the use of HTML or other styled formatting. E-mail Direct uses plain text only. Therefore, do not cut and paste your text from a Word document (or other Microsoft product) as you will add hidden formatting characters to your message. End your message with a signature or proper closure.
5. The groups to target with the message:
   Place a checkmark next to the group(s) of people you want to send this message to. Each group is associated with a list of email addresses. Your message will be sent to the merged list associated with each checked group. To request the creation of a new group, send email to email.direct@nyu.edu.
6. Additional email addresses to target with the message:
   This is an optional field. Type or copy in the email addresses that are not part of your listed groups here. Each address must be on its own line. If pasting a list from another program, it is best to use a simple text editing program, since programs such as Microsoft Word can sometime include invisible special characters that might generate an error in E-mail Direct.
   Examples
   Non-NYU addresses
   foobar@hotmail.com
   someone@yahoo.com
   Other NYU addresses
7. A file listing additional email addresses to target with the message:
   This is an optional field. Click the Browse... button to select a PLAIN TEXT file of email addresses from your local system. (NO OTHER file types are supported. Microsoft Word documents, for example, will NOT work.) The selected file should contain email addresses that would not be part of your predefined groups. Each address must be on its own line. Your browser will upload the file to our server when you submit the form.
   Examples:
   Non-NYU addresses
   foobar@hotmail.com
   someone@yahoo.com
   Other NYU addresses
8. Notes for the E-mail Direct Team:
   This is an optional field.

Once you submit your message, you will receive a draft version of the message to review for typos, formatting problems, and other errors. The proof contains a link directing the approver to a web page to either approve or to cancel the message. If the proof is approved, an email alert notification is automatically sent to the ITS/eServices E-mail Direct administrators. By default, all group submitters and approvers are included in the E-mail Direct recipient list. Keep in mind that your message will not be sent until the designated approver(s) have approved this draft. You may or may not be included as an approver, depending on your department's preferences.

E-mail Direct jobs are usually released within 24 hours of approval (not submission). If your message is time-sensitive, be sure to allow for this release time. When the E-mail Direct has completed sending to all recipients, a status message (subject "Status of E-mail Direct") is sent to all the group's members.

Benefits of E-mail Direct

Using E-mail Direct ensures that email lists are kept confidential (a requirement at NYU), that systems are properly scheduled for orderly delivery, that bounced email and other anomalies are handled in a structured environment, and that mailings are coordinated across the University. Because addresses are pulled from an up-to-date database rather than being retrieved from the user, the recipient list remains both accurate and typo-free.

Drawbacks of Bulk E-mail

At times, we all object to uninvited communications such as paper bulk mailings, and phone calls selling services. Unsolicited email is frequently sent by commercial entities and may represent "spam" to recipients. Because the Internet grew out of a research and academic tradition where commercial transactions did not exist, some people using email are highly sensitive about keeping the channel uncluttered and effective for desired communications. As a general rule, send messages that are of specific interest only to your targeted group. Don't send "general announcements" as they are likely to create a negative response. Limit the size and number of your mailings.

Tips & Reminders

When sending messages through NYU E-mail Direct or on your own, keep the following points in mind:

• It is not possible to send an attachment using E-mail Direct. Doing so increases network and disk usage unnecessarily. The preferred method for distributing files is to place it on your website and provide a link to it in the E-mail Direct text message itself.
• Limit the size and number of mailings. Infrequent use of email to distribute information is generally acceptable. However, people generally do not like to receive unsolicited email, even though that email may be official University business. By saturating your audience with direct mailings, you may create a negative response to your activity or announcement.
• Plan in advance to deal with responses to your email and, if you send it yourself, to receive rejected (bounced) messages for erroneous or obsolete addresses. For a large list, this can be a significant burden. If you are mailing to an audience whose addresses have been extracted for you from an NYU database, you should report rejected mail to bouncemaster@nyu.edu so that the incorrect addresses can be corrected in the University's email directory. If E-mail Direct sends your email, we will receive and correct bounces and other anomalies.
• Have ITS create an email alias (e.g., cas.dean@nyu.edu) to be used for the "From" address on your email. This will allow recipients of your mail to send a reply to an organizational address rather than to the individual who sent out the mail.
• The body of the email should be text and punctuation only, and the width of the text no greater than 65 characters. This will ensure readability for a wide array of email programs, prevent unwanted wrapping of text and eccentric line lengths, and allow space for marks added in a response.
• When your information can be made public, instead of sending a long message, make a web page and send its URL. This limits the size of the email, allows you to format the information more to your liking, and gives the recipient a feeling of greater control.
• Remember that not all members of the University community have email. Also, not everyone who does have email reads it regularly. Sometimes, people get accounts and never use them!
• Keep in mind that in the aggregate, email is not a free service. Schools pay the costs of maintaining NYU-NET and computer systems and support, all of which are necessary for smooth functioning of email and related services.

Help & Additional Information

If you still have a question after reading this page and the NYU E-mail Direct Policies and Guidelines page, submit it via email to email.direct@nyu.edu.

Page last reviewed: September 15, 2009