How does uConnect send automated email alerts?
uConnect sends personalized email alerts to your users on a daily/weekly/monthly basis as long as content is posted to your site that matches their interests. These email alerts are uniquely created for each recipient based on their preferences. Below, we’ve explained the factors that go into creating these uniquely curated emails:
Important: Your subscribers must be subscribed to at least 1 community so that the automated alert functionality knows what topics of content to send the subscriber in the forms of blogs, events, jobs, etc. If your subscribers are not subscribed to any communities, they will NOT receive any automated alerts!
How do time and email frequency affect the email content?
Depending on the email frequency (daily/weekly/monthly) an email will contain the following:
Up to 10 blog posts that were published in the last 24 hours/7 days/30 days
Up to 10 active job posts
Up to 10 upcoming events within 30 days of the present date
Up to 10 companies with profile pages created/updated in the last 24 hours/7 days/30 days
Up to 10 resources
Note: You can give priority to a specific post and skip the above criteria by featuring it in your automated emails. [Read more on Featured Posts] You can also customize number of items for each content type and email frequency in your automated email content settings. [Read more on Content Settings]
How does tagging impact emails?
In addition to acting as filters on pages and for Career Communities, both communities and content tags allow subscribers to determine which types of blog posts, events and jobs they receive in their automated alerts.
For a post to be included in a subscriber’s email it needs to match multiple layers of tags and the subscriber's interests:
Audience (the type of subscriber for which a post is targeted, e.g. Student, Alumni, …): For a subscriber to receive a particular post (blog, event or job) the first requirement is to have the audience community match. If a post does not have an audience tag selected, it will not be received by anyone.
Class Year (freshman, sophomore, ...): If you have class year communities, and you have one or more class year tags selected for a post, that also needs to match the student’s graduation year. If you don’t have a class year tag selected, everyone will receive that post regardless of their graduation year, if it matches their interests. Note: Class year tags only apply to undergraduate students.
Content Tags (specific types of jobs, events, blogs e.g. Internships, Workshops): In addition to matching the user type, at least one content tag needs to be a match. If no content tag matches the subscriber’s interests, they will not receive the post.
Communities (career communities, industries, academic categories, ...): A post also needs to have at least one community matching the user’s interests. If you don’t select a community, no one will receive that post in their alerts.
Given the above rules, if you want a particular post to reach subscribers through automated emails, make sure your tags include a broad range of user types, communities and content tags. But also keep in mind that you don’t want to spam users with irrelevant posts, so be specific and only select tags that are appropriate for that piece of content.
If a post matches ALL of the criteria above, then it will go through a ranking mechanism to be selected in the user’s email. Read the next section on how the matched items are selected for the email.
Note: A Featured Post only needs to match the Audience tag.
How are posts prioritized and picked to be included in the email?
Matching the tags, or being posted an hour before the email going out does not guarantee a post to be included in the email. Given that the number of items included in an email are limited, and that there could be many current items matching a subscriber’s preferences and interests, uConnect uses an intelligent ranking algorithm to send the most relevant items to a subscriber based on their interests and preferences.
There are two factors impacting the ranking of posts:
1. Time and freshness
Events happening closest to the current date will have a higher priority. For example in a weekly email, events happening in the next 7 days will have a higher priority and if there are not enough events in the upcoming week matching a user’s preferences, then events from the next week will be included, then the next.
Jobs posted most recently will have a higher priority. For example in a weekly email, jobs posted in the past 7 days will have a higher priority than jobs posted more than 7 days ago. If there are not enough jobs matching a subscriber’s preference from the past 7 days, then jobs posted 8-14 days ago will be included.
2. Number of matching tags and categories:
The more Community and Content Category tags in a post matching a subscriber’s interests, the more likely it will be included in the subscriber’s email. So if you expect to see a post and it isn't included in an email, other posts with a higher number of tags matching the subscriber's preferences have taken precedence. The influence of Community items is double the influence of content Category items.
Please note that since users do not have the option to choose specific resource categories under their alert preferences, they will automatically be subscribed to all resource categories.