5 Reasons to Switch to GAIL Marketing

Are you using an online marketing platform to send out your mass communications and event invitations to UGA alumni and donors? You’ve probably heard of or received an email from services like MailChimp or Constant Contact, you may even be utilizing one. But what if you could also harness the power of UGA’s donor and alumni database? Wouldn’t that be great?

Well this dream has been realized through GAIL! By switching to GAIL communications, you get tons of helpful tools, professional in-house support, and a database of over 1.1 million constituent records to help you reach out to exactly the right people. Don’t just settle for doing things the way you’ve always done them. Here’s all the ways GAIL works for your email campaign. *

1. UGA Email Editor

You don’t have to be an HTML or design pro to put together a captivating email! The UGA Email Editor makes the whole process simple and painless.

You can start from scratch, use a template, or copy over another design you’ve already done, and putting in new elements is just a drag and drop away. Incorporate UGA logos, photos, videos, donation and RSVP buttons, social media icons in one- or multi-column layouts and when you’re done, view your creation as it would appear on a phone or a computer. You can even send yourself a test email just to make sure everything is perfect.

Our email editor is always improving as well with new features GAIL users are asking for. Just this past year we added the ability to crop and enhance images directly in the editor and added the ability to personalize salutations for each person receiving your email, so you can say something like “Hello Jane” or “Hello Ms. Smith!”

2. The Latest Data

The data about constituents in GAIL is always the most up-to-date info we can get our hands on. That’s thanks in part to our records team and users like you all over campus inputting those fresh deets!

Why is up-to-date information important? GAIL knows who’s got a good email address and whose address bounced last time they were sent a message. GAIL’s got info on each person’s constituencies. Want to reach out to donors? GAIL can help you send to those people, even if they only donated for the first time last week!

Similarly, GAIL respects the wishes of our constituents, without any additional effort needed. It won’t send to people who have been marked as deceased and if a person unsubscribes from your department’s emails or university communications in general, their profile gets updated and they are taken off future email efforts.

3. Sweet Stats

Once you’ve sent out your email, you can run an email statistics report to get to-the-minute stats on the open percentage of your message — how many constituents opened it — and the most clicked on links.

You can also find out if your correspondence inspired any donations to UGA, who donated and how much, as well as total donations. In a similar vein, if you sent out an event invitation you can see who RSVP’d.

There is a whole bunch of useful insights at your fingertips to help you analyze which of your campaigns are really hitting home with constituents.

4. You’re Supported

If you run into issue or have questions, you don’t have to go it alone. There’s no need to endlessly scroll through search results or forum posts, ask a virtual assistant or throw a help email into the void and wait 6-8 business weeks for a response. We have a team ready to assist you!

Client Services encourages your questions no matter how complex or seemingly insignificant. We’ll answer with a phone call, email you screenshots, share your computer screen, come for a consultation with your team — whatever works best for you!

We have tons of resources to browse as well, if you’re more inclined to read a guide, a blog post, or watch a how-to video. Everything is conveniently located on the GAIL resources website page just a ‘search’ away! You can even sign up for a class or two to enhance your knowledge.

5. It’s free

Sending your email effort through GAIL is free. You don’t have to worry about staying below a certain sending limit before hitting a paywall and there’s no limit on the number of people you can send an email to.