E-mail is an increasingly important media for direct contact with students, and is appreciated by most recipients. But people don't like to receive junk mail, even e-mail. And there are some potential technical problems inherent in sending very large mass mailings.

We encourage departments to use a WEB site to provide up-to-date information on programs and services. You might selectively target groups of students who may benefit from your programs, services, or activities, and send them an e-mail message that refers them to your homepage for up-to-date information.

Please follow these recommendations when using the student data warehouse e-mail addresses to do mass mailings to groups of students. The guidelines will help limit unwanted electronic mail and avoid possible system overload in handling extremely large mass mailings.

• Limit the size of lists to only those who truly need to receive your message.
• Include a header in each message which identifies the sender and the purpose of the message. Tell recipients how to notify you if they don't want to continue receiving your mailings. Then honor those requests!
• Strictly limit the frequency of use. Sending messages too frequently may give your messages a junk mail reputation.
• Offices should protect the identity of student recipients, especially those who have restricted release of directory information. The use of listserves or the blind copy feature on Eudora will protect the recipient list from becoming general knowledge to all recipients.

Note: In the event of a computer problem or other error causing multiple message delivery, contact Jim Bohle at University Computing (x6-1706; email jbohle@oregon.uoregon.edu) and send a message to the recipients of the messages explaining that there were technical problems and apologizing for the inconvenience.