These types of emails would include account setups, password resets, etc. Since we host our WordPress installation off-campus, somewhere in the tubes between there and our mail system here the mails were being eaten, quite possibly by a large, scary email-eating koala bear. In reality, it was probably an overzealous filter somewhere on our campus end that couldn’t guarantee that emails coming from our Rackspace box to campus really were legit and really were from a University account.

This made creating user accounts very labor intensive. Instead of just emailing login details, password reset requests and more directly to the user, we found ourselves creating an account for a person and immediately resetting their password, and then giving them the login details. Same went for password changes, they were never getting the transactional email to reset their passwords, so they were calling us. Not efficient.

Enter SendGrid. They are one of a few providers of email service, but unlike MailChimp or Constant Contact, they aren’t about the marketing and list management end of emails. They are about providing a delivery gateway to ensure that emails reach their intended destinations with a high degree of reliability.

After setting up an account at SendGrid (look for the free plan at the bottom of this page to try it out. You get 200 emails per day and we’ve never come close to reaching that), SendGrid’s documentation directed us to a page about integrating SendGrid with WordPress.

Using the WP Mail SMTP plugin, we are able to now avoid using the default wp_mail() and PHP mail commands from our server and instead we have our transactional email sent via SendGrid. To keep the admin panel from showing up and potentially confusing users, even admin users, the plugin allows you to put some details in your wp-config.php file. That code looks like this:

define('WPMS_ON', true);
define('WPMS_MAIL_FROM', 'webmaster@gallifrey.edu');
define('WPMS_MAIL_FROM_NAME', 'Gallifrey University CMS');
define('WPMS_MAILER', 'smtp');
define('WPMS_SET_RETURN_PATH', 'false');
define('WPMS_SMTP_HOST', 'smtp.sendgrid.net');
define('WPMS_SMTP_PORT', 587); //
define('WPMS_SSL', '');
define('WPMS_SMTP_AUTH', true);
define('WPMS_SMTP_USER', 'YOURACCOUNTNAME');
define('WPMS_SMTP_PASS', 'YourAccountPasword');

And what do you know, they’re getting through. Our support calls and requests have dropped, and we can focus more of our limited resources on developing great sites and content with our campus partners. Win-win for everyone.

SendGrid isn’t just for these types of emails – it does much more as you can see in this video:

As you dig more into their system, you’ll see they offer email handling, reports and all sorts of other analytics – they don’t just handle transactional email.

So, SendGrid is and will be a part of any web projects for us (and me outside of John Carroll) going forward. It’s just one more thing I won’t have to worry about.

And that, my friends, is a good thing.

Lately, I’ve noticed a few sites handle unsubs in a way that really irks me. Back in the day, I signed up for some email thing at Wendy’s. The reason why escapes me at the moment, but they only send me things occasionly. As part of my push to rid my inbox of unnecessary stuff (been reading Power of Less), I decided that I no longer wanted to get emails from Wendy’s. I enjoy your salads, but don’t want your emails. At the bottom of the email, was an unsubscribe link. Here ’tis:

I clicked on the link, and got taken to a web page. For most emails I receive, that one click is enough to get me off the list. Sometimes, my email address is shown and I can choose what types of communications I want to receive or which lists I want to be removed from. Wendy’s does none of that. They force me to manually enter my email address in twice. As always, click for a larger version.

On one hand, it’s probably a good marketing move. When I saw that, I didn’t want to take the time to complete the form and thus I would remain on their list. Then I was annoyed enough to take screenshots and write a blog post.

What can higher ed learn from this? Sometimes people, be they prospective students, current students or alumni, want to be taken off an email list. We need to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Sure, it stinks we can’t communicate with them any longer via email, but making the unsubscribe process simple and easy will hopefully allow them to leave with a positive feeling and, who knows, maybe come back and subscribe again.