About Fire Engine Red

The Fire Engine Red (FER) system sends formatted marketing emails to large groups of contacts.

FER offers these features: 

  • Email sending and testing
  • Custom templates
  • Contact list management
  • Email campaign tracking

Email marketing rates

If we send

Our office can send a single message on your unit's behalf for a minimum charge of $50. Extra charges may apply based on the length of the contact list used.

If you send

FER accounts are free, but messages blocks must be purchased to use the service. The smallest block of messages available for purchase is 50,000 emails for $750. The broadcast email section of the FER pricing table provides a more comprehensive breakdown of cost per email.

Setting up your Fire Engine Red account

Include these things: 

  • The name of the main contact for the account
  • A phone number where they can be reached
  • The name of the department to use the service

Training and support

By phone

Free training is available if you want to set up your own account for Fire Engine Red. Training takes 90 minutes and is done over the phone. To schedule training, email support team member Robert Fitzhugh at Robert@fire-engine-red.com.

By email

You can also request help and schedule training by emailing Support@fire-engine-red.com. The address is monitored every day from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. CST. If you have an issue needing immediate attention, prefix your email's title with "URGENT:" as it appears between quotations.

Creating your own materials for email marketing

University units that create their own FER account are responsible for contact lists and content. 

Want to use FER a single time through the office of web strategy and development? Your unit will need to create the materials ahead of time. 

Contact lists

Use Microsoft Excel to create contact lists. Save the contact lists as either Excel or CSV files.

FER will not accept xlsx files without them being converted or saved in compatibility mode.

Contact lists should be formatted clearly, with columns for all the available and pertinent information. This includes: first name, last name, full name, email address and so forth.

Message content

Content for messages should include both HTML and plain-text version of the emails to be sent.

Special notes to consider:

  • Hyperlinks in the HTML version should not take the form of the address in the content. For example, if a user wanted to include a link to the Missouri State website, it should be formatted "Visit the Missouri State website" rather than "Please visit https://www.missouristate.edu." This prevents your message from being marked as spam by some filters.
  • Linked text should reference the absolute path rather than simply www.yourwebsite.com. Be sure to include "https://".

Templates

Templates for emails can be created by users with HTML experience. Web strategy and development can also create custom templates for $300.