The Digital Marketing team handles our brand email marketing and adheres to the following guidelines:
- Only sending to individuals that have expressly provided their contact information for the purpose of receiving marketing messages (generally through website forms) or that have signed the Joint Notice of Privacy Practices agreeing that “If you give us your email address, we may email you information about our products and services, tips about healthy living or when we open a new location.”
- Including an opt-out in all emails and compliance with any requests to be unsubscribed.
- No more than one all patient message each month with content focused on informing patients about our array of services and helping them navigate their health care.
- Key messages are kept between 50 and 125 words and focus on supporting the call to action (CTA).
- Links to external pages and call to action buttons do the elaborating. Text is used to provide highlights, not in-depth information.
- Regular testing and utilization of data insights to send on days and times that generate the most engagement.
- Adherence to list cleansing and suppression best practices.
HealthBeat HUB Topics are the preferred channel for emails to groups of employees.
HUB Topics enable faculty and staff to engage in the content (comment, like, share, ask questions) and post messages themselves as well. Many teams use Topics to send personalized, often automated, newsletters on a regular cadence with their department/service/unit messages. Requests for new Topics can be submitted at go.osu.edu/hubrequest.
Outlook is appropriate for some emails to external email addresses, but it is not designed or appropriate for mass email marketing.
Outlook can be used for small lists (distribution limit is 500), and might be relevant for service-line specific Grand Rounds, Symposiums, Events, Save-The-Dates, etc. It has some design and formatting limitations and no formal analytics. You can, however, track your links to understand whether anyone clicks on your URLs (request at go.osu.edu/analyticsrequest). If you do use Outlook, use the bcc line for all recipients and note that you should send only to email addresses of those that have a relationship with you (e.g., past residents and fellows within your department, community members that signed up for your event, etc.).
MyChart can only be used for clinical messages pertaining to a patient’s medical care according to our Terms and Conditions.
If your message applies to a specific patient segment, providers and clinical staff members can follow the bulk messaging in IHIS instructions to select and send to that population. If you have a message that applies broadly to all patients, let us know and we will consider including it within one of our monthly Patient & Family newsletters.