Important changes regarding emails to external audiences

Sent: February 14, 2024 10:57 am

Dear colleagues,

Does your department or unit send out a newsletter or other regular communications to external email addresses using a marketing platform (e.g., iContact, Constant Contact, Qualtrics, Mailchimp, Salesforce)? If so, please read this message carefully!

To cut down on spam, Google now requires domains whose users send a lot of bulk emails (such as unc.edu does) to put protections in place known as DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance). For senders using these third-party services, this means you will no longer be able to send out an email from a marketing platform that uses a top-level domain address such as: [your name or your department name]@unc.edu. Instead, you will need to create a subdomain to use with your marketing platform. You will first need to set up a process called DKIM authentication, if you haven’t done so previously, and then ITS can help you set up the subdomain.

If you need help with these steps, please contact your unit’s OASIS technical support person, and they can assist you. If your unit does not have an OASIS rep or other technical support, please contact Andy Lang, the College’s Associate Dean of IT and Data Analytics, and he will assign someone from his team to assist you.

Please note that these steps are critically important. Under Google’s strict new requirements, if a sender has a spam complaint rate of 0.3% or higher, Google will block all messages from the domain or subdomain.

If your department or unit has a communications professional, they are likely aware of this change. However, most of our units do not have a communications person, and the task of publishing a newsletter or alumni communication may fall to a faculty, staff member or graduate student.

If you do not use an outside vendor to send emails externally but instead use a UNC listserv, please note that several changes have already been implemented to comply with the Google requirements. Access to some settings are now restricted to prevent list admins from making changes. Please contact ITS if you have questions about UNC listserv management.

These changes may seem daunting, but they are designed to make email better for everyone. If you have a personal Gmail account, these changes will cut down on junk and spam messages that you get. But when communicating with the outside world, we need to take steps to make sure we protect the university domain.

Best,

Geneva

Geneva Collins (she/her)

Director of Communications

College of Arts and Sciences

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Campus Box 3100, 205 South Building

Chapel Hill NC 27599-3100

Tel. 919-843-6339

Email: Geneva_Collins@unc.edu

Web: college.unc.edu

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