Magellan Slate Suitcases: Game-Changer for Integrating Branded Merch

  • by Michael Wolaver, Founder/Captain of Magellan Promotions

College Recruitment Branded Merch Slate Integration

Over the past few years we have been growing our capabilities with integrating branded merch within Slate. One key focus area has been how to make it easy for colleges to create the custom queries. Since this may be new for colleges to create queries to send mailing lists to an SFTP, we wanted to provide guidance. Through a strategic collaboration with Magellan Promotions and RHB, a higher ed consultancy, we have made exciting progress!  

Magellan Promotions now has a Slate Integration Portal. This portal features Slate Suitcases for six common recruitment marketing touchpoints. The portal includes three key components:

  1. Installation Instructions – This page features the list of the six templates and their respective Suitcase IDs. It also details how to import the template queries with Suitcase, modifying the installed queries and adding the scheduled export settings. 
  2. Modifying the Queries – For each of the templates, there are modifications to be aware of. This page addresses these modifications for each query.  
  3. RHB – Information about RHB and their Slate services. 

A few notes on how these query templates work:

  • The queries were created to find the students that meet the criteria as of “today”. The list is scheduled to export at a pre-set time weekly. Each time the query runs and exports to the SFTP, the count clears and starts over from 0. Next week, there is a new count of exports. 
  • The query intuitively logs the weekly counts in Slate so colleges can see the volume going out weekly. 
  • The query brings in all of the contact and mailing address information using the default standards.
  • If the college wants to add additional filters, such as daily visitors from a certain state, a specific filter can be easily added. 
  • A college can simply copy the whole query and build one that looks for students in another targeted demographic.

 

College Recruitment Branded Merch Slate Integration

 

Chris Brundidge, Associate Director of Admissions at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, provided this reflection after reviewing the portal:

“To get an idea of how they worked, I imported and configured the weekly mail query in about 15 minutes. With the excellent documentation, I was able to import the query with the ID in under a minute. I then configured 1 to 2 things specific to my needs. I love how easy it is to copy this whole query to target different segments. For example, I can build one that is looking for WI students and another for IL students. And I can personalize the item/message accordingly. I think this is SO MUCH easier than starting from scratch. This is awesome!”

We truly hope that this will be a valued resource to colleges as they integrate branded merch within their Slate recruitment comm flows.

If you have questions, comments and other suggestions for templated queries, don’t hesitate to contact us!  

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Variable Data Best Practices

  • At the quoting stage of your project, please let us know how many fields of variable data your piece will have as this can affect pricing.
  • Data should be provided to us as an Excel spreadsheet with only the applicable data included.
  • Verbiage for variable data fields on artwork file should match up exactly with data fields on spreadsheet.
  • Spacing on artwork must allow for longest data entries. We recommend that your designer tests this in advance to confirm that the fields in the design can fit your longest pieces of data.

Postage Permits

We are happy to mail using a client’s USPS non-profit number. Here are a few best practices for this to go smoothly. Let our team know up front on the project so we can make sure to get the information we need right away. 

While our mail house does prefer to use their permit number for the mailing, we can use the client’s permit, If using their permit number, ensure there is enough postage to cover the mailing.

The information we need to in order to use a client’s nonprofit number includes the following:

  • CRID (customer registration ID)
  • Non-Profit Authorization Number (with USPS, not their nonprofit number for the university)
  • Non-profit indicia
  • Return address that is on file with USPS for the non-profit authorization number
  • Permit number

Formatting the Mailing List

Our account team will advise on specific requirements for your project’s mailing list.  We generally recommend these best practices to format the mailing list:
  • Send your data in a spreadsheet, saving it in the comma-separated values (CSV) format
  • International addresses must be separated from domestic addresses
  • Domestic addresses should at least contain data fields for “first name”, “last name”, “address 1”, “address 2”, “city”, “state” and “ZIP code”