NYU Email Direct is a service that allows authorized NYU members to send targeted email using predefined queries that provide up-to-date lists of currently enrolled students, faculty, and staff who are associated with a specific school or department. The underlying data used to create these queries is culled from systems of record at NYU (e.g., Registrar/SIS Enrollment Data, Housing Data, HR Data) which NYU IT is able to aggregate.
Email Direct is not a service used to connect with Alumni, nor a service used to market an initiative or program to a community who are not yet associated with your specific department.
Please note that when a group wishes to target a message to a group outside their community using Email Direct, it is a considered a "cross-university communication" and must be vetted by the Office of the Provost before it may be sent. There are also restrictions on how many cross-university messages a group may send out per semester. Schools and school-based groups 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).
When you collect emails for the purpose of communicating information, and essentially "force" subscribe those emails to a list, you must provide a way for those you have subscribed to opt-out. This is the core of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Some general guidelines with respect to the CAN-SPAM Act are:
An important distinction of the Email Direct service is that it does not allow an individual to unsubscribe from a list as messages are considered official university communications. Another bulk mailing option that we provide is our NYU Lists service, which does offer an unsubscribe option. It uses a product called Lyris, and it is the appropriate tool for curating Alumni mailing lists, or creating a marketing-oriented email. For your reference, here is a comparison of the features of these two services:
* Note: For two-way discussion groups, NYU IT now recommends using NYU Groups, an NYU Google App.
Important: Email Direct will soon be powered by Emma, a robust email marketing platform.
The Digital Communications group provides multiple bulk email services for sending email blasts or subscription-based messaging to the University community. Both of these platforms, Email Direct and NYU Lists (Lyris) are being retired and transitioned to a new, unified platform.
Migration will be done on a rolling basis; more details will be emailed directly to affected users and available online in early 2020.
The Digital Communications group and Email Direct service team will provide more specific information to IT Service Desk agents as it becomes available. If existing Email Direct or NYU Lists users call asking for more information, please direct them to the emails they receive from our team and the DigiComm bulk email services webpage.
Migration will be done on a rolling basis; this means some groups will continue to use the original Email Direct while others will be using the Emma-powered version.
At this time we will be prioritizing existing Email Direct and NYU Lists users to the new Emma-powered Email Direct platform.