Types of Communication from Wake Forest
In this Issue: today we talk about the main types of communications that come from WFU, and how to troubleshoot
I have gotten several questions from incoming families about this, so today I thought it might be helpful to tell you a bit about what our WFU Family Communications function communicates with families, and what you might expect.
There are three main types of emails we send families
1) official emails to all families (or a large subset), which are sent from a Wake Forest server
These are emails such as the Wake Parents & Families monthly e-newsletter (which goes out mid-month each month), the Weekly Updates for New Families (which go out normally every Tuesday through the summer), information about Family Weekend, and/or any big news we need all families to hear.
You do not have to sign up to get these emails; they automatically go to all parents for whom we have a valid email (this is why we ask you to Verify Your Family Record in Wake Network!)
These emails are sent from a WFU server and typically have a reply-to address of parents@wfu.edu, returns@wfu.edu, alumni@wfu.edu (occasionally we send on behalf of another office, like Family Weekend, and the reply address will be to that specific office).
2) emails to segmented groups of families, also sent from a Wake Forest server
These are typically used for smaller, targeted audiences. Some examples are: emails to families with a new student in the Atlanta area to invite to a New Student Reception, or families of arts majors in New York for an event there. In other words, these are typically to invite to a regional event or to share news with a specific group.
As with #1, you do not have to sign up to get these emails, and the messages are also sent from a WFU server.
3) the Daily Deac, our opt-in parent and family blog that goes out each weekday around 5 p.m. from a non-WF server
The Daily Deac is a publication you must opt in to. You can subscribe here (and if you don’t like it, you can unsubscribe using the link in the footer of any Daily Deac email).
We send the Daily Deac through a blog push service outside of our Wake Forest system. I believe Mailchimp is our push service.
Troubleshooting
I’m not getting Wake emails
Sometimes families tell me their spouse/partner is getting emails, but they are not. In these cases, the issue is often that the emails we are sending out are being filtered out by your Internet Service Provider as potential spam, or are automatically routing to your junk/spam/quarantine folder. (Unfortunately, once we hit ‘send’ on an email, we can’t control how your ISP interprets it.)
If you have not searched your spam folder for wfu.edu emails, you might want to check there first, and then either mark the email as from a ‘safe sender’ or hit “move to inbox” to try and avoid future emails going to spam.
If we are not in spam/junk/quarantine, try these fixes:
1) add parents@wfu.edu, alumni@wfu.edu, and returns@wfu.edu as contacts in your email system. We use various email addresses, and having us as a contact might help.
2) talk to your Internet Service Provider to see if they can tweak your settings to allow email from WFU to reach you (vs getting caught in a spam filter).
3) if you had given us a work email in Wake Network, but you have a home email on a different ISP (or vice versa), you can switch to the other email in Wake Network and see if that solves the issue.
Other parents I know got an email but I didn’t
Sometimes we send emails to segmented groups of families as described in #2 at the top of this email. It may be that there is an event that is restricted to a specific geographic area, or a specific major or class year, etc. In those cases, it is often for an event where there is a maximum capacity and so the guest list is tailored.
Or it may be that the other folks you know have subscribed to the Daily Deac and you have not, which is why they are receiving things you are not.
I get the Daily Deac, but not other emails from Wake
Because the Daily Deac is sent out from blog-push service, and not our normal Wake server, sometimes families’ ISPs will accept the Daily Deac but reject the regular WFU emails. All you can do is talk to your ISP (or your IT department if you are using a work email) and see if they can tweak your settings to allow our emails to come through
You can also add parents@wfu.edu, alumni@wfu.edu, and returns@wfu.edu as contacts in your email system, as having us as a contact might help.
I used to get the Daily Deac, but it stopped coming
In this case, what most likely has happened is the Daily Deac is getting routed to spam or junk, so check there first.
If it is not there, it is likely that you may have accidentally clicked on the Unsubscribe button, which got you off the list. In that case, you need to email us at parents@wfu.edu* so we can have the blog push service send an invitation to you to resubscribe.
*Note on email addresses in the Daily Deac
For reasons passing understanding, when you receive the Daily Deac in your inbox, if there is an email address embedded in the blog and you click on it, it will often give you a null character in the middle.
For example, parents@wfu.edu might show as parentsnull@wfu.edu or parents@nullwfu.edu. You’ll have to remove the null in the email address or else it will not send properly. That is a known bug for which there has been no fix available.
If I hit ‘reply’ to a Daily Deac, where does that email go?
Straight to my inbox, so I can answer you 🙂
Hope that helps explain some of our communications, and how to troubleshoot them if needed.