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Most people recognize the University of Central Florida as Orlando’s hometown school, where research, innovative thinking, and a touch of college athletics are at the core of the university’s brand.

At Emma, we wanted to dig a little deeper into the consistency behind the UCF branding—and how departments, like the Annual Giving team and UCF Advancement, are using email to bring all the pieces together.

We sat down with Stephanie Odierno, Senior Associate Director for the Annual Giving Team and Kelsey Moscater, Assistant Director of Communications Strategy at UCF Advancement, and uncovered the details on how two departments within the university are using Emma to reach their goals—like advancing the university through fundraising and alumni engagement. From the Approvals Dashboard feature and the Evertrue integration to A/B testing and personalization, Odierno and Moscater walk us through all the ways a nationally recognized university is finding success with the Emma platform.

Most people recognize the University of Central Florida as Orlando’s hometown school, where research, innovative thinking, and a touch of college athletics are at the core of the university’s brand.

At Emma, we wanted to dig a little deeper into the consistency behind the UCF branding—and how departments, like the Annual Giving team and UCF Advancement, are using email to bring all the pieces together.

We sat down with Stephanie Odierno, Senior Associate Director for the Annual Giving Team and Kelsey Moscater, Assistant Director of Communications Strategy at UCF Advancement, and uncovered the details on how two departments within the university are using Emma to reach their goals—like advancing the university through fundraising and alumni engagement. From the Approvals Dashboard feature and the Evertrue integration to A/B testing and personalization, Odierno and Moscater walk us through all the ways a nationally recognized university is finding success with the Emma platform.

A one-step process makes approvals a breeze

Before making the switch to Emma, the approvals process in the UCF Advancement department was cumbersome and time-consuming, oftentimes leaving team members frustrated. It went something like this: After an email was created, that same team member would then fill out a PDF checklist to send to their supervisor, along with a test of the email itself. The process took hours and was often held up by small technological inconsistencies and back-and-forth communications for review and approval.

The Emma HQ Approvals Dashboard serves as a one-stop-shop, helping the team transform a stressful experience into a one-step process, freeing up hours of time and a lot of unnecessary headaches.

“The Emma Approvals Dashboard has been life-changing for everybody because once their email has been tested and is ready to go, all they have to do is send it to me for review. I get an email notification when it’s time for me to review and I can either check off that it’s ready to go or go into the email and make any edits myself,” Moscater said.

The Evertrue integration yields double the results

Each year, the UCF Advancement department runs a campaign to recruit volunteers for regional alumni groups. Recognizing that their largest groups typically reside in Florida, the team did a little digging to learn how they could create more targeted messages catered to these Floridians.

The team found that the Southeast and Palm Beach regions had many overlapping counties. And while they didn’t want those overlapping counties to receive two of the same email communications, they weren’t entirely sure which subscribers to eliminate.

To solve their dilemma, the team turned to Emma’s Everture integration, where they were able to pull specific lists of people within these two regions. And not only that, but Evertrue also narrowed those lists down to subscribers who were actively engaging with UCF site pages.

With their updated Evertrue list as their guiding light, the UCF Advancement team ran a campaign that received double the amount of volunteer sign-ups and a 20% increase in open rates.

With testing comes insights—and increased engagement

As marketers in any industry know, it’s crucial to understand your audience before moving forward with a strategy. And for the UCF Advancement department, maintaining a close relationship with their alumni audience can be a challenging task, especially when the average age of alumni drops with every passing year.

As their audience changes, the needs and expectations of that audience evolve as well—and the UCF Advancement department is continuously reintroducing themselves to ensure that their communications always hit home with the group they’re speaking with

With the Emma A/B testing tool, the department can easily try out different messaging approaches and gain insight into what works best for their current audience. When asked if she would recommend A/B testing to other universities, Moscater said, “Absolutely. When you have a couple of different options and can see the trend of what’s performing better, that helps you get to know your audience better and make more educated decisions.”

Easy segmentation makes for an untouchable (66%) open rate

Personalized and segmented campaigns are the cornerstone of the Annual Giving team, especially in recent months when the hardships of COVID-19 made it difficult to run their typical fundraising campaigns.

Asking for money during the height of the pandemic may have been out of the question, but the team was also wary of going totally silent in such trying times. So, instead, the team proposed a stewardship campaign to provide comfort to their audience by letting them know that UCF was on their side.

These series of tailored messages were segmented based on levels of donorship. And while there were no fundraising efforts made during the campaign, the messages did provide information on how the university was allocating previous donations to create masks and face shields.

To say that this segmented campaign was a success would be an understatement. When the stats came in, the results revealed their lowest open rate of 37% and a high open rate of 66%.

“The segmented campaign showed us why targeting is so important because the open rates were much higher than ever before. It also showed that our investment in Emma really pays off,” Odierno said “Creating segmented campaigns before Emma was much more difficult and time-consuming. But with this project, we thought of it, and then a week later, it was completely done and sent out. It was quick, efficient, and it meant a lot to this group of subscribers.”