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Quick Links

• General Eloqua documentation » 🡥 (UW-Madison wide)
• How to Request access  
• How to Login _▼
• Using WSB Email Templates _▼
  • Parts of the email
• Common pitfalls/mistakes to watch out for
• Accessibility quick tips
• Uploading Contacts
• » 
• Presend Checklist for WSB (UW Presend Checklist 🡥)
• Sending your first email
• File Organization within Eloqua
• WSB Brand Guidelines for emails
• How to create a non-Eloqua sent email in Eloqua
• Creating engaging email content » 🡥  (UW-Madison IT)

Table of Contents _▼

UW-Madison vs School of Business Documentation

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Basic Eloqua training is done through the UW-Madison's Eloqua Canvas course (created by the Marketing Automation team). All new users will automatically gain access to the course. How to Request access to Eloqua.

If you are an existing user and would like access to the Canvas course training, please fill out the Redwood Canvas Access Form.

The canvas course was created for all UW-Madison users, and we do a few things a little differently at WSB. Please refer to the documentation below for WSB specific information.

A few WSB specific notes on the canvas course: 

• References to your “Department” and “Team” refers to all of WSB. We are the biggest Eloqua user group in UW-Madison! Everything WSB users create is visible to all other WSB users.
  • Please review our guidelines for file organization.
• We have custom WSB templates for you to use. Outside of the canvas course, you will not be making your own email Templates, nor will you need to use the built-in Eloqua templates.
  • If you need a new custom template created, please contact the WSB web team!
  • You can skim over the sections on Templates and Advanced Styling, as these are managed by the Web Team.
• When uploading contacts, your “Contact Label” should always be “WSB”

• Your “email group” is usually just your department within WSB.

• Review our documentation for WSB specific rules and guidelines on email settings.

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Editing Your Email

WSB email templates are designed to include everything you need- and a lot of what you don't. You will probably be deleting most sections of your email, keeping only the parts you need for that particular email send.

After you've opened the email editor, you can start making edits. If you have a simple email design in mind, the options in the base template are probably sufficient. But if you have a lot of content, such as for a newsletter, you may need some more components.

You can go to the Blocks tab in the left sidebar, type in "WSB" and click and drag blocks into your email. View the 5 minute video below for a demo and overview of our custom blocks:

Do not delete or edit the headers and footers of your email! These are all branded elements.

Review the Email Template Breakdown to learn about each part of the WSB custom template.

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pitfalls pitfalls

Common

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Email Editing Pitfalls

• When sending a test email, do not use the default "Email Checker" option. It checks emails by clicking on all the links, which includes the unsubscribe button. Always select "HTML email" instead.
• The Fill out your sender properties according to the guidelines. The sender email must always end in "@explore.wisc.edu". Any others will cause the email to bounce from all wisc.edu email addresses, and your email all those addresses will be marked as invalid. Fill out your sender properties according to the guidelines.(If you accidentally do this, please follow these instructions)
  • Even if it's just a test email send, this will still affect anyone you sent the test email to. 
• Make sure to select a folder whenever you upload/create anything (photos, emails, etc). If you add something to the root folder, please move it to the appropriate department folder afterwards.
• When creating an email, choose one of the templates for your specific department.
• When uploading contacts, be careful when entering info, since it will override the contact's info for all other groups (across UW-Madison)
• Prior to activating an email, go over the Presend Checklist
• Don't forget to fill out preview text! It's optional, but if you don't fill it out, the first thing a user will see under the subject line will be "Trouble viewing this email?"
• When uploading a photo from within an email, make sure to select a folder for it to go into. Otherwise, it will end up in the root folder "all"!
  • Rather than uploading from your email, it's better to upload your photos from within the image library itself (you can open another tab in Eloqua if you want to keep your email open) by going to Assets>Components>Images and navigating to the folder you want to upload to, then click "Upload" in the top right corner. From there, you can upload multiple images at a time.
• Eloqua will prevent you from sending the same email to the same person twice, even if you completely change the email. Make sure you're creating a new email, not just editing an old one.
When adding an email address, you need to make it a link. To add an email address link, highlight the text, click on the hyperlink icon, and on the left sidebar add "mailto:emailaddress@wisc.edu".
• Don't just edit an old email. Eloqua will prevent you from sending the same email to the same person twice, even if you completely change the contents of the email.
  • You can go to an old email and click File > Save As to make a copy, but keep in mind that it's better to create a new email from a template instead, to get the most up to date version of the template. If you're current templates aren't good enough, request a custom one from the web team.
• Prior to activating an email, go over the Presend Checklist
  • Preview text is "optional", but it's important!

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accessibility accessibility

Accessibility Quick Tips

Your emails are required to be accessible. 

Not just for legal/compliance reasons, but because accessible emails benefit everyone by making emails easier to read and interact with. The more accessible your email is, the more likely your audience will actually read it! 

Ensuring accessible emails is important both for improving usability and being inclusive of all email users. The following tips are just the basics, and it's recommended you take your own time to research accessibility strategies. Review campus's email accessibility guide for details beyond these tips. 

• Write it short and to the point. The longer the text in your email is, the less likely anyone is to read it, and the harder it is to understand. Write using Plain Language practices whenever possible.
• Add alternate text to all images. Alt text is a requirement when you use images in your email.
  • Read our tips for writing alt text »
• Keep your images between 300-1200px wide. Excessively large images
• Add alternate text to all photos, especially photos with text.
  • After you've inserted a photo into the email, select it, and type into the alt text field in the left sidebar. 
  • Alt text should include any text that's within the photo, or a basic description of what's in the photo. If it's a headshot of a person, simple type in their name.
• Don't use images that are larger than necessary. Images can slow down your email and consume a lot of data, which is especially problematic for people with limited internet access. It also increases the odds of your email being blocked by a spam filter.. 
  • View our full image sizing guide »
  • Full-width images should be 600 pixels wide. (If image quality is a priority, 1200px is okay)
  • Half-width (and smaller) images should be 300 pixels wide. 
  • For bonus points, run your image through tinypng.com before uploading it to further shrink the file size.  
  • Photo editing quick guide
• Only use all caps for acronyms. Screen readers read anything in all caps letter by letter, not as a word. If you wish to emphasize text, use bold. (don't use underlines, those should be reserved for links only). 
• Do not use underlines unless it's for a link! Users expect underlines to be links, and it will be confusing if they are not.
• Do Use descriptive link text, and do not use phrases like "click here", "use this link" for links/buttons. Link text should make it clear where the user is going, with as much context as possible. "Sign up for our newsletter" "Read more about ____" "Apply now" are all decent examples of button/call to action text. When an action doesn't make sense, link text like "student resources", "list of business organizations", "our career team" might be appropriate. (This is done because screen reader users sometimes navigate by link to "skim" content. If the text linked doesn't provide enough context, a user will have to spend time figuring it out.)Likewise, don't . Do not include the entire URL.
  • View our link and button guide »
  as text in your email. Don't use: "https://www.reallylongurl.com/morewordscontinously" (this is because screen readers will spell out every letter in the link. You can imagine how tedious that is.)
• Pay attention to header hierarchy. In the case of our email templates, the H1 Header 1 is used exclusively for the department name, and after that the main headers of the email are H2sHeader 2s. H3s Header 3s should be used as subheaders of H2sHeader 2s.
  • Design note: Please don't bold headers. They are already styled to be large.
• Use sentence case for links, buttons, and headings

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Contact Uploads

When uploading contacts, your “Contact Label” should always be “WSB”. Please review the contact upload documentation for step by step instructions.

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