Where We Are

With approval for continued “Phase 3” funding, Cornell’s implementation of Marketing Cloud (MC) is ready to move to the next level. This step reinforces the commitment made to rollout the enterprise-level mass communication and marketing platform to communications teams across campus.

Phase 3 

In 2024, Phase 3 will see the expansion of use beyond the work already accomplished for University Relations, Alumni Affairs and Development, Student and Campus Life, and Human Relations to colleges, units, and departments across campus. 

The continued rollout will leverage lessons learned from previous implementation phases and take advantage of the foundation established for MC setup and training.

Next Steps

On-boarding strategy: Currently, the project team is reviewing the comprehensive list of candidate Communication teams to determine the most effective strategy for on-boarding. Some units may require a relatively straightforward onboarding and training process, while others may require additional use case analysis to ensure their communication needs are properly addressed. Stay tuned for further information from the project team about when specific units should begin preparing for onboarding. In the meantime, a general timeline is provided below.

The project team understands that college and unit communications teams are planning for needs for the coming year, including decisions about whether to renew licensing for third-party mass communication vendors, and is diligently working to develop a plan to bring unit and college communication teams into MC in an effective and timely fashion. 

Enterprise Preference Center: In addition, before teams across campus can be onboarded to Marketing Cloud, an Enterprise preference center must be built. This serves as the first scope of work for Phase 3, to provide proper opt out/subscription management for communications. The team needs to prepare the system to handle these functions at scale. An Enterprise Preference Center will function as a single, centralized location for Cornell audiences to effectively manage subscriptions to various Cornell communications. This functionality is necessary to align with digital communication best practices and to meet legal requirements.

Email Marketing Tools: Along with the above, the project team is reviewing email marketing tools which will enhance MC with important added functionality. The first, Litmus, will provide advanced testing of messages across the full range of recipient email clients. In addition, to expand on MC’s standard reporting functionality, the team will be piloting one tool and is exploring another. More information will be available to share after information gathering sessions with these providers.

Project Timeline

Note: "FY" indicates University Fiscal Year (e.g., FY24 Q1 is July-September of 2023).

Where to Find Updates about the MC Project

While the team will continue to provide updates via email, updates will also be available through the IT@Cornell MC landing page (Cornell NetID login required).

If you have questions, please contact Melissa Shaffmaster (meb374) or Rachael Potter (rmp249).

Mass Communication and Marketing Project Team
Cornell University