An Overview of Emma
Emma is the official email platform used by San José State University to create, send and manage email communications with students, faculty, staff and the community.
Access to and use of the platform is specifically provisioned only to authorized individuals of SJSU’s colleges, divisions and auxiliary units with a valid and clearly-designated need to send email communications to any member of our Spartan community of faculty, staff, or current students. Information Technology (IT) will provision access to Emma for university communicators.
Audiences: To Whom Emails Through Emma Get Sent
Any and all official emails sent to our community of faculty, staff, and current students will now come from the Emma email platform. University updates, college newsletters, the weekly employee newsletter SpartanMessenger, communications to current students, news from our Library and Hammer Theatre Center, and more will all use Emma.
Sending emails through Emma to external audiences - the community, alumni, donors, governmental and non-governmental third-parties and persons - must be reviewed by UMC for approval. Do not use the Emma platform for personal use or for email communications to non-@sjsu.edu email addresses.
There are only two audience exceptions to this university-wide tool:
- Slate: communications to prospective students and applicants from Enrollment Management teams must go through the Slate customer relationship management (CRM) software product.
- GiveCampus: communications from the Division of University Advancement to alumni and donors must go through this email marketing and donations platform.
The use of any other third-party email platforms for any university entity's communications is not permitted.
Content: What Can or Should be Sent via Email vs. What Should Not
At the direction of university leadership, University Marketing and Communications will continue working with all colleges and divisions to reduce excess email clutter and volume by providing a more strategic approach to email communications. Review and consistently refer to the email send decision matrix when being asked to send an email on behalf of your college, division, department or unit/program/center. In many cases, there are ways to get your news to our community without spamming inboxes.
Email Delivery: Understanding From Where Emails Come and Where to Reply
Emails sent through Emma will always come "from" the universitycomm@sjsu.edu email address to ensure compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. SJSU's compliance with federal, state and CSU systemwide requirements and regulations. This is not a regularly-monitored email inbox and is not the way to get in touch with the university or its colleges, divisions or departments, especially not for urgent matters, such as students inquiring about admissions, tuition, financial aid, housing, or prospective employees following up on applications. Emails sent to this may be forwarded to the relevant college or division.
All Emma users must set a "reply-to" email address for emails sent by their respective college, division or department that is a regularly-monitored shared email inbox with an @sjsu.edu name.
If you receive an email from SJSU from universitycomm@sjsu.edu and need to get in touch with the sender and their reply-to address is not provided, please identify the college or division that sent the email and find their contact information on their website.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happened to Marketo?
As of March 1, 2026, SJSU ended its service contract with Adobe Marketo and transitioned to using Emma as the official, preferred university email communications platform. All employees and students sending emails for official business may only use Emma and no third-party email platforms are permitted. If you are using any third-party email platform for official university business, whether as an employee, auxiliary, or student assistant, you will be asked to stop immediately. If you are a student sending email communications to any part of the campus community, for academic purposes, your activity is subject to review and approval by the Institutional Review Board.
My department uses its own email marketing platform, can we continue?
Emma is the official university-wide email platform for all divisions, colleges, departments and units. Only University Advancement and specific units of Academic Affairs (Enrollment Management, etc.) are permitted use of specifically-licensed third-party platforms. If you are using any third-party email platform for official university business, whether as an employee, auxiliary, or student assistant, you will be asked to stop immediately. If you are a student sending email communications to any part of the campus community, for academic purposes, your activity is subject to review and approval by the Institutional Review Board.
Who is getting access to Emma?
Only designated employees will be provisioned access to the Emma email platform. This is typically authorized faculty, staff, student assistants (when required), or any employee with the authority to conduct communications for an SJSU college, division, department or unit. Information Technology (IT) will contact and provide access to these authorized users.
If I had access to Marketo, would I get access to Emma?
UMC will review all prior users of Marketo and make determinations on access to Emma based on established and legitimate need and authority for individuals to communicate via email for their assigned college or division. Not every prior user of Marketo will automatically get access to Emma. Examples of authorized individuals are marketing or communications specialists, department administrative staff, communicators.
What are the types of users who will get access to Emma?
Only provisioned and trained faculty and staff can send email campaigns through the Emma email platform to any audience segment of the SJSU community. Users in all roles must attend user training before accessing or sending any messages. Any and all email communications sent through Emma will be subject to review by University Marketing and Communications (UMC).
I had templates in Marketo I would like to use in Emma.
UMC will create brand-aligned and uniform templates based on a variety of official use cases for email campaigns. UMC will provide additional guidance on which assets may be moved to Emma for use by your specific department. Assets include images, photographs, graphics, headers. In many cases, UMC will design and provide brand-aligned headers for all divisions and colleges and photographs will be available through the official university photo library.
I had audience lists in Marketo that I do not have in Emma, what do I do?
IT and UMC provided migration guidance in the training section. Generally: use the smart lists features in Emma to build fresh segments, do not upload lists.
Audience segments and groups in Emma inherit recipient details from Adobe PeopleSoft (e.g., "current student", "current employee", etc.) that updates on a daily basis.
As a final resort, if the segment builder does not serve your specific needs, Emma users, with approval from IT and UMC, may import limited quanitites of lists of current students and employees as well as preferred emails for them and for external recipients of division or college email lists.
What is the cost of Emma?
There is no cost to colleges and departments who use Emma for official university-related communications.
SJSU maintains an institutional license with Emma and will provision access, through UMC and IT, to authorized users who have a legitimate need to maintain email communications with any part of our SJSU community and who receive training on compliance, brand standards, and familiarity with the platform’s features from UMC and IT.
What can users in Emma see?
Similar to Marketo, users in Emma assigned to a subaccount (e.g., "Student Affairs", "College of Humanities and the Arts") will only be able to see the emails in their assigned workspace. That will mean that all emails created in a subaccount will be viewable only by all other users assigned to that group. Users in another division or college will not be able to see your email campaigns or touch your assigned templates, except UMC and IT.
Do you have additional questions? First, review our SJSU Brand on Emma guide for how to craft email campaigns that support and align with the official SJSU Brand to see if your questions may be answered there.
For technical assistance, contact the IT help desk. For issues with web+UX, submit a request form with UMC.
