Welcome to the Emma approved user page. Everything you need to get started, or go deeper, is listed below. Access Emma using your Radford University single sign-on (SSO) credentials.
If you have not yet requested an Emma account and received approval, please submit a request through ITOneStop.
Emma distribution lists at Radford University are owned and managed by specific offices. To protect audience relationships and prevent over-communication, users may only send to the audiences assigned to their account. Sending to another unit's audience requires approval from the distribution list owner.
Central operational offices (ITS, HR, Parking, etc.) have been granted permission by Marcom to send emails to all-employee, all-student or relevant audience segments for messages within their operational scope. College-specific communications should be directed to college-level audiences, not broader university-wide segments.
The following offices are the designated owners of university-wide audience segments in Emma. If you have questions about other broad audiences, please contact Marcom to discuss at marcom@radford.edu.
Marcom will maintain an up-to-date list of audience owners and will make updates on this page when ownership changes occur.
If your unit needs to send a message to an audience you do not own:
Repeated requests to bypass the governance structure, or sending to audiences without permission, may result in loss of Emma access.
Effective email communication starts before you open Emma. This guide covers what to think about before you send your email, how to write for your audience, and how to stay compliant with university and federal guidelines.
Be consistent. Regular emails such as newsletters should go out on a predictable day and time so your audience knows when to expect them.
All university communications must meet Radford's digital accessibility standards. Key requirements for email:
If you plan to use Emma to create an e-newsletter for your college, division or administrative office, Marketing and Communication (Marcom) will assist you with planning, audience strategy, and development of your newsletter template after your Emma account has been secured.
Before creating a new newsletter, departments should consult with marcom@radford.edu to determine audience need, communication goals, and whether an existing university communication channel may already serve that purpose.
All university e-newsletters distributed through Emma should follow university branding, accessibility, and editorial standards. Marcom may review newsletter templates and provide guidance related to layout, content strategy, image usage, frequency, and email best practices to help improve consistency and engagement across university communications.
Generally, colleges and units are responsible for drafting and proofreading content, and ensuring communications comply with university policies and applicable email communication requirements.
Whether you're new to Emma or looking to sharpen your skills, Marcom offers training resources to help you communicate effectively and confidently. Contact us at marcom@radford.edu.
An Emma training session is recorded and available on demand. The recording covers:
Emma is available to Radford University colleges, divisions and major administrative offices. Eligibility is based on the frequency of distribution, size of recipient lists and the proportion of external contacts. Contact Marcom to discuss whether Emma is the right fit for your communication needs.
Submit a request through ITOneStop. New users will be set up with a subaccount and assigned a user role appropriate to their responsibilities.
Approved Emma users log in using Radford University single sign-on (SSO). Visit the Emma login page and select 'Sign in with SSO.'
Emma supports several role levels within a subaccount:
Colleges and divisions cannot send to all-university audiences directly. These lists are owned by central offices (Marcom/HR for employees, Student Affairs for students). You may request one-time permission from the list owner for an approved specific use. Marcom can also assist with routing your message through the appropriate channel, such as Radford University CONNECTED for employee-wide messages.
Contact the owner of that audience and submit a request describing your message and purpose. If approved, you will receive one-time access for that specific campaign. Repeated cross-unit sends require a standing agreement facilitated by Marcom.
For external audience segments (which could include faculty, staff and students), language is included within the email template from Emma that allows the recipient to opt out of receiving further emails. Internal email audience segments will not be able to opt-out of receiving emails as these are tied to an auto-populated list from Banner.
At the bottom of the email, there will be a link for Managing preferences or opting out.
Emma is a direct email platform for sending branded campaigns to specific audiences. Radford University CONNECTED is the weekly all-employee newsletter, managed by Marcom, used to share campus news and updates with the entire employee community. Emma is better suited for targeted, frequent, or visually designed communications; Radford University CONNECTED is the right channel for broad, non-urgent employee updates.
If your sub-account has external email addresses as the audience, we assign this type of sub-domain, and it MUST remain the same – please do not change. It is an official Radford University email address, and this makes it so that we can separate out the external emails.
Some of the internal sub-accounts that were created early on, also have this sub-domain but will be changed to radford.edu as time permits, but please do not change it yourself.
If you change the sender address, the deliverability indicators will break, and your email will be flagged as not an official Radford University email, and the yellow warnings will show along with a very long and unrecognizable sender email address.
You may only have one or the other, or you may have one of each.
One other significant difference is that the internal audiences are updated every night with data from our Banner ERP database. So, when students or staff come to Radford or leave or change departments – the data is updated. External sub-accounts DO NOT have data updated from Banner. Groups including community or commercial partners must be updated by the sub-account owners/users.
In the future, alumni and donors may be updated from the Raiser’s Edge/NXT database. This will be communicated when it is available.
If you wish to send a college or department newsletter and you want to send to the college staff and students and to your college alumni and community partners – you will need to send it twice. Once to your students and staff in your internal sub-account and once to your alumni and community partners in your external sub-account.
For more information on these or to request access, enter a Get Help ticket on ITOneStop.
Depending on your audience, these other channels in EMMA may be appropriate for your content:
If you would like to discuss Emma and these other channels in light of your communication goals, contact the Office of Marketing and Communication at marcom@radford.edu.
Using external email tools (such as Constant Contact or Mailchimp) for university communications creates challenges: contact lists may not stay current, branding can become inconsistent, and the university loses visibility into communication activity. Marcom strongly encourages all university communicators to use Emma so that messages remain branded, audiences stay up to date, and communication is coordinated across campus.
Contact your Communications Partner or email Marcom at marcom@radford.edu. You can also submit a request through ITOneStop.