Note: OIT HubSpot Email is the replacement for the Rice Bulk Mail tool, which was discontinued on June 2, 2023. 

Contents

What is HubSpot vs. OIT HubSpot Email?

What can OIT HubSpot Email be used for?

When to use ALLDEPTS instead of OIT HubSpot Email

Who can use OIT HubSpot Email?

How to Take FERPA Training

More about OIT HubSpot Email Lists

How to Request an Account

Getting Started

Logging into OIT HubSpot Email

Online Help and Customer Support

Set up your Default Home Page

Overview of Sending a Message

Step 1: Select or Build a Mailing List

Using Rice Active Lists

Standard Rice Lists

Creating Your Own Static List

Starting a New Message

Part 1: Edit Message

Performance Tracking

What is HubSpot vs. OIT HubSpot Email?

HubSpot is a commercial product that is classified as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, which manages marketing, sales, services, and operations. Several campus groups have licensed their own installations of HubSpot, which are not supported by OIT.

OIT’s campus-shared installation of the HubSpot product is nicknamed OIT HubSpot Email to point out a major distinction– OIT HubSpot Email can only be used for sending email messages to predefined groups of individuals within the Rice community. None of the CRM capabilities are available.

Transactional message is the term that HubSpot uses to describe a relationship-based email (and is not part of a marketing campaign). Messages to members of the Rice community are based on their status at Rice. Using OIT HubSpot Email, you can only send transactional messages.

What can HubSpot be used for?

OIT HubSpot Email is intended to be used by approved staff members on behalf of their organization or leader to distribute official university communications to large targeted Rice groups (i.e. employees, faculty, undergraduates, etc.). Messages should be of specific interest to the targeted audience. For more general messages that are less imperative, please use the ALLDEPTS mailing list (see below)

OIT HubSpot Email Examples:

• important benefit notice from Human Resources to all employees

• invitation to faculty to take a Strategic Planning Survey by President’s Office

• warning about a major security issue to all students from Information Security Office

When to use ALLDEPTS instead of OIT HubSpot Email

OIT HubSpot Email is not a replacement for the ALLDEPTS mailing list (alldepts@rice.edu). Messages that are of broad interest to the university, such as event announcements or general requests, should be sent to ALLDEPTS. Learn more about the ALLDEPTS mailing list.

ALLDEPTS Examples:

• Campus and community event announcements, such as:

  • presentations

  • conferences

  • arts and entertainment performances

  • athletic events

• Campus updates and services

  • utility outages

  • field and street closures

  • prize award announcements or request for nominations

Who can use OIT HubSpot Email?

Only approved representatives of a department or group can use OIT HubSpot Email to distribute communications on behalf of their organization or leaders.

The President's Office is the approving authority for accounts.

Before requesting an account, individuals must have taken the Office of the Registrar's online, self-paced training on FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which governs how student information must be protected. See drop-down content box below for instructions on enrolling in the class.

How to Take FERPA Training (click the plus sign (+) to display the information or the minus sign (-) to close the information)

OIT HubSpot Email account holders must abide by the above usage standards.

How to Request an Account

To request an account, complete this online form, which will be routed to the President's Office for approval and then to the OIT Help Desk for the account creation. You will be notified when your account has been created.

More about OIT HubSpot Email Lists

You have the choice of using active lists of Rice members (such as all undergraduates or current instructors) or to create your own static list.

Campus Group Lists

OIT HubSpot Email group lists are based on enrollment and employment information. These lists are called active lists in HubSpot. Active lists are automatically updated on a daily basis. See Standard Rice Lists below for all of the available campus group lists.

Individuals can't opt out of a campus group list. Therefore it is critical that OIT HubSpot Email account holders only send messages that are crucial and pertinent to members of the lists.

Your Specific Lists

You can create your own list of individuals to use in OIT HubSpot Email. These lists are called static lists by HubSpot. You can import a Word or Excel file (in .csv or .xls, or .xlsx format) to create the static list. Please note: Due to limitations with our HubSpot licensing, non-NetID email addresses will be removed each morning as part of the daily update of Rice lists. So you may send to off-campus individuals or to Rice preferred email address, however, they will be erased daily before 5:00 am.

Getting Started

HubSpot is a robust tool and there will be many components that you will not use for sending email messages. One important distinction is that in OIT HubSpot Email we are not using the marketing components of HubSpot to send emails but rather sending transactional email messages. This document will help you focus only on the aspects of HubSpot that you need for sending email messages. 

Logging into OIT HubSpot Email

Once you are notified that your account is created, you will be able to login using your Rice NetID and password via Single Sign On (SSO). Go to: https://app.hubspot.com/login

In the login screen, enter your Rice email address only (not your password) and then skip down to click the button, Login with SSO.

SSO or Single Sign On will permit you to login using your Rice NetID and password. After you enter your Rice credentials, select the Login button. (Note: If you are already authenticated via SSO, you will be logged in automatically without having to enter your Rice NetID and password again.)

Enter the code sent from HubSpot and click on Log in.

Online Help and Customer Support

If you have questions about working with OIT HubSpot Email, check out their KnowledgeBase. Click on the Help icon (speech bubble labeled Help) in the lower right corner.

Set up your Default Home Page

We recommend that you set your preference for your initial screen to be the Email page. In the upper right of the command menu, click RiceU, which will drop down a menu. Then click Profile & Preferences. 

The Settings panel will display, if it is not already selected, click on General in the left panel.

At the bottom of the screen, select the pull-down menu for the Default Home Page and select Email. While you are in the General section, please update your First name and Last name fields. This makes it easier to identify the account holder.

To manually go to the Email page, click on Marketing on the upper blue command bar and select Email from the drop down menu.

Overview of Sending a Message

This two-step process requires you to:

1. identify your audience then decide if you are using an existing list or creating your own list (See section,  Step 1: Select or Build a Mailing List)
2. create the message in HubSpot and select sending settings (See section,  Step 2: Creating the Message and Settings)

In HubSpot, you don't select the mailing list until the third screen of options. However, this is a very important part of sending messages to campus so it is important to know before you start who is the message going to and what mailing list will you use or create.

Step 1: Select or Build a Mailing List

You have the choice of using an existing Rice community list (called active list) or creating your own list (called static list). To learn more, see the HubSpot KB for more info: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/lists/create-active-or-static-lists

Using Rice Active Lists

Active lists are maintained and updated on a routine basis by OIT and are based on a person’s Rice classification. Here's a few examples:

• Students - Undergraduate Juniors
• Instructors - Current Term
• Employees - Staff
• Everyone at Rice

When using OIT HubSpot Email, you will be presented with a drop-down list of mailing lists to choose from and the current number of individuals in that list will be listed as well. You are able to choose more than one list at a time. For example, you could email Undergraduate Juniors and Undergraduate Seniors at the same time.

Standard Rice Lists (click the plus sign (+) to display the list or the minus sign (-) to close the list)

Creating Your Own Static List

Static lists are generally one-time use lists. For example, sending messages to a specific group of individuals to share information.

You can import .csv, .xls, or .xlsx files to create these lists. Make sure that the first row is a header (for example Email) to make the importing process into HubSpot easier.

Please note: Due to limitations with our HubSpot licensing, non-NetID email addresses will be removed each morning as part of the daily update of Rice lists. So you may send to off-campus individuals or to Rice preferred email address, however, they will be erased daily before 5:00 am.

If you create a static list with only Rice NetID email addresses, this list will remain in place and can be reused. But if it has off campus addresses or preferred Rice email addresses  (for example: Albert.B.Carle@rice.edu instead of abc123@rice.edu), those addresses will be erased so upload the list right before you send the message. For example, if you had a list of 25 addresses and 20 of them were non-Rice, the next morning if you look at the list, you will only see 5 members. However, HubSpot does track the opening of these messages later, see the section on Performance Tracking.

Static Lists that are only comprised of Rice NetID email addresses can be edited, but it requires a bit of effort. If there are many updates to your list, it might be easier to create a new static list in HubSpot after manipulating the data in an external program (i.e. Excel). To learn more, see the HubSpot KB for more info: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/lists/create-active-or-static-lists

Step 2: Creating the Message and Settings

To start an email, go to the Marketing pull-down menu in the upper bar and then select Email. You will be presented with a screen labeled Marketing Email. You might see a list of previous messages that you or a member of your team created. However, if you and your team are just starting with HubSpot, you might not see past messages.

You can click the button, Create Email, to start a new message.

Another way to start a message is to clone a previous message. This is particularly helpful if you are sending a similar message from the past or if you practice with a test message then you can easily convert it to your final message. Both ways of starting a message are covered below. Unlike BulkMail, OIT HubSpot Email keeps a record of your messages so you can clone them to adapt for future messages and to view statistics about opening rates.

Starting a New Message

After clicking the Create Email button, you will be asked what type of message with the choices of Regular, Automated, and Blog/RSS. Select Regular.

• You will be presented with a choice of template options. You can customize templates for your office or group and once you have created them and they will show up here.
• Public Affairs has created three templates that adhere to Rice branding standards. We recommend that you start with one of these:

Rice-branded Email

Rice-branded Newsletter

Rice-branded Promotion Email

• Also, HubSpot has a variety of templates that you can start with. For the examples in this document, we are using the Welcome template in the Basic category. 

• Click on the template you would like to use and you will be presented with a screen that is in Edit mode, which is indicated in the bar above the message with the word Edit with a line below it.

1. Edit - formatting the message by including words and graphics
2. Settings - establish who the message is from, what email address replies should go to, and set the type of message as transactional.
3. Send or schedule - send a test message, select the list to mail the message to, schedule sending time.

• You switch between the other three modes, Settings, Send or schedule, and Automation (more marketing based) by clicking on the words in the second menu across the top of your screen. The main three parts that you need to send a message are circled in red in the graphic below: Edit, Settings, and Send or schedule. You can move between them at any time and your changes are automatically saved. With HubSpot, you can start a message and wait days before you send. You can clone a message and try new graphics and compare. HubSpot is a design tool to help you craft and send a message. If you have used other tools, like MailChimp, you will see similar advantages.

Part I: Edit Message

In your early usage of OIT HubSpot Email, you might wish to keep your messages simple and only have text with a logo at the top of the message.  In this example template (Welcome template in the Basic category), you can update the text and then swap the generic Company Logo and replace it with the general Rice logo* or your department's logo.  

*Rice Logos: If you need Rice logos, you can download them to your computer from the Public Affairs site: https://brand.rice.edu. 

Text Message

• Type or paste in words.
• Format the text using the edit commands in the format bar above the message. To make the formatting bar appear, you can double click on the text or click the Text button on the right.
• You can add graphics, buttons, social media links and other items. These options are presented to the left of the message.

• To add links or attachments, first select the text that is associated with the information and then click the link icon on the formatting bar.

• You have several choices of link types including: Email address, Email subscription link, File, Meeting, One of your pages, and URL. Use URL for the link to go to a web page. And if you wish to include an attachment, then link to a File and you will be asked to select the file. (Remember if you attach a file, be sure the file is digitally accessible. Please do not include a .jpg graphic without alt text or attach a .pdf that is not digitally accessibility. See the section on Digital Accessibility below.)

Logo

• The majority of your screen will be grayed out and you will see the Insert image box.
• You can use an image that you have previously uploaded by double clicking on it.
• You can add new images by clicking the Add image button.

• You can import an image from a web page or upload a file from your computer by following prompts.
• Once the image* has been uploaded, it is important to edit the alt text so that it describes the image in words, which are read aloud by screen reader software and are critical to Digital Accessibility.**
• Adjust the size of the image as needed. If you only alter one dimension, it will automatically adjust the other to keep the image in the current proportions.
• You can also a link to a URL when someone clicks on the image in the message.
• You can adjust the alignment and how much space you would like around the image.
• Once you are finished editing, click Done in the upper left corner of the Edit Image box.

• From Name: this is who the message is from. It does not have to be the person who is using HubSpot sending the message. For example: a staff member could send on behalf of a Vice President. The first time the From Name's email address is used, HubSpot will send an confirmation email to that address to verify this usage. This is a one-time only verification but you should let the person know in advance.
• From Address: The email address of the person the message is from. If you wish to have replies go to a different email, unclick the option, "Use this as my reply-to address." For example: if the message is about registering for a workshop, it might be best if the responses are sent directly to the staff member in charge of registration rather than the person sending the message. A confirmation email will be sent to this address to verify.
• Subject line: headline summary of message. 
• Preview text: a brief summary that appears in some mail readers mailbox. If text is not entered, the beginning of the message is used. This is a great place to put in a quick summary of the message.
• Internal email name: the name of the message, that only appears in your HubSpot account, to help you keep messages organized.
• Language: defaults to English
• Subscription Type: VERY IMPORTANT: You need to change the type to Transactional in the drop-down menu.
• Office Location: Name of department or group
• Campaign: optional, an internal way of organizing messages, not visible to email recipients. For example: if you are sending several messages a group for a specific purpose you might want to group them together in a Campaign.

Testing and Proofreading in Email

Sending Now or Later

Ready, Set, Send