DIVISION OF ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE

Office of Community Engagement

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE Compiling OCE Newsletter

I. Purpose
a. This procedure will detail the steps to create the Office of
Community Engagements bi-annual e-newsletter using the email
marketing service provider, Mailchimp.
II. Responsibility
a. This procedure applies to all interns responsible for maintaining
the Office of Community Engagements tri-annual e-newsletter.
The intern is responsible for enforcing this procedure; therefore, he
or she must update all information accordingly.
III. Pre-Procedure
a. Ask campus departments and community partners about
upcoming events to include in the e-news current events calendar;
and research the Universitys calendar, which you can find at
http://www.cvs.umd.edu/visitors/events.html.
i. Do this by 3 weeks prior to sending the e-newsletter.
b. Choose sporting events to include in the sporting events calendar
in the e-newsletter, which you can find at
http://www.umterps.com/.
c. Query the staff for different volunteer announcements to add to the
e-newsletter.
d. Consult with director for content of Letter from Director text for
main page of e-newsletter, then write the piece and have it saved.
i. Add the letter when editing e-newsletter content.
1. Make sure letter is 180-200 words in length.
e. To view the OCE e-newsletter production schedule, go to the OCE
Intern shared drive and lick on the file, OCE E-news Production
Schedule.

IV. Procedure
a. Logging on to Mailchimp
i. Go to website www.mailchimp.com and enter username and
password.
1. Username: umdoce
2. Password: umd0ce
b. Replicate previous Campaign
i. Go campaigns page and click on the drop down menu for the
previous (most recent) campaign.
1. However, make sure it is not the PDF version of the
campaign.
ii. Then, choose the replicate option on the drop down menu
and it will open to the Recipients page of the campaign
builder on Mailchimp.
iii. From this page, you are able to go back, edit e-newsletter
content, and make changes to the campaign before you send
it out to subscribers.
iv. To rename the new e-newsletter, go to Setup page of the
campaign builder and change to (Current Semester and
year) e-newsletter.
v. Make sure to have the correct number of subscribers (about
700).
c. Update the banner
i. Before you start editing, go to the OCE Interns shared file
drive on OCE desktop, find banner.psd Photoshop file in E-
news images folder, and then open the banner in Photoshop.
ii. Modify the Photoshop file to reflect the correct semester and
year.
iii. Make sure the newsletters banner resolution is at 72 dpi, so
that it is the right resolution for online publication).
iv. After saving it as a jpeg file, replace the modified banner in
the Mailchimp template by adding it from your gallery.
1. Go to Design step on the campaign builder and edit
the content block you want the image to bring up the
content editor.
2. Click on the File Manager icon in the toolbar.
3. Select the Images link at the top of the File Manager to
browse the images in your gallery.
4. Then, click the select button for the image you want to
place in the campaign.
d. Adding/Formatting content
i. The most efficient way to add content to your campaign is to
type it directly into the content editor on Mailchimp.
Alternatively, you can copy and paste the text from
applications like Notepad, Microsoft Word, etc.
ii. If you are copying and pasting content from Microsoft Word,
use the Paste from Word option on the content editor toolbar.
iii. Since it is a copy of the previous campaign, the formatting
the font, colors, and spacing is already set for the new
campaign. However, you need to make sure the spacing is
correct between paragraphs.
1. Make sure to save your edits before exiting the content
editor on Mailchimp or else you will lose your edits.
iv. For correct spacing, use HTML code and type in <br/> after
each paragraph to create an extra gap.
1. To paste your own HTML code on the campaign
builder, go to the templates step.
2. Under the code your own section, click the paste in
code option.
3. Then, add your code to the paste in code box.
e. How to use anchors
i. To replace anchor links for story taglines and in the athletics
section, add anchor directly before the text you want it to
link to and create a name for it.
ii. Then, go to insert/link option and choose anchor link this
option allows you to choose which anchor to link the text to
in the e-newsletter.
iii. If you want to create a link to any website use the same
insert/link option on Mailchimp, but choose web address
instead and fill in the URL that contains http://.
iv. Note double check to make sure every link in the e-
newsletter is active.
f. Editing photos
i. In order to edit photos before you upload them to your
campaign on Mailchimp, you can use PicMonkey Photo
Editor.
ii. To edit an image on PicMonkey, you first set the image to be
square-shaped, crop it, and then resize it to 160w pixels x
160h pixels in order for the image to fit.
iii. Make sure to then save the image on the designated OCE
Intern shared drive to have it on file.
iv. For reference on how to replace or add images to a template
using Mailchimp go to http://kb.mailchimp.com/video-
index/.
g. Send e-newsletter for review
i. After you finish editing the e-newsletter, send the final
version of the text with the white background version of
Letter from Director and the white background of Glorias
signature to the University Department of Business Services
(vpafweb.mercury@umd.edu).
1. Send them the photos in e-newsletter as well.
ii. Make sure to receive confirmation of layout from them before
sending out e-newsletter to OCE subscribers on Mailchimp.

V. Post Procedure
a. Double check to make sure every link in the e-newsletter is active
before sending it out.