Email Marketing: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know

My career in marketing started when I worked in the hospital industry and we used Yellow Pages to advertise. One of our primary strategies included placement of display ads in the local Yellow Pages. Sound easy, right? But it wasn't.

The Yellow Pages were divided geographically and by alpha in large metros. The ads were sold in blocks by columns and placement inside the front or on the back cover were premium spots that my hospitals could not afford. If you weren't careful, you could spend a large portion of your ad budget on a relatively passive, but essential large book that everyone used.

When I had been in the industry about 7 years, someone asked me how I liked what I was doing, since my career ambition had been to work in editorial news. I said, "I know more about Yellow Pages than I ever wanted to know!" I started to feel the same way about Email Marketing when I led the Admissions and Marketing staffs at a small university. Is there anything new about this topic? Let's review some of the strategies I've seen work in higher education as well as some successful tactics used by retailers.

1. First, you need to have an Admissions CRM and staff members who understand segmentation, personalization, and marketing concepts along with the technical aspects of delivery. One of the best investments an Admissions Office can make is continuous process improvement (CPI), a concept I learned in my healthcare career. CPI is the practice of making ongoing incremental changes to business processes to improve performance and quality. If your institution does not have internal expertise, consider hiring an outside expert who can maximize the use of your CRM. As technology and GenZ behaviors change, so should universities and colleges.
2. Segmentation: Determine how you want to segment the undergraduate population instead of treating them all as Prospects or Inquiries. Geography is one of the most common segments. Depending upon the location of your school and the demographics of your student body, you could use regional, in-state but out of region, out-of-state, and international. These segments drive messaging and visuals. Consider the use of Personas in your marketing and recruitment efforts.
3. Personas: Personas are research based and represent the preferences of key segments of your student population. I worked at one university where we created MBA personas defined by the funnel. We learned a critical piece of information - while our prospects and applicants were overwhelmingly female, our enrolled students were mostly male. We then crafted marketing campaigns focused on women and became more effective with our funnel.
4. Personalization & Dynamic Content: This is so much more than sending an email with an individual's name on it. Admissions Offices can focus on student interests, including majors and co-curricular activities, which are found in the application. Taking this a step further, an Admissions Counselor can personalize their responses to students they meet at campus events, visits, or college fairs by following up with a message that shows you listened to their needs and desires. Along with their parents, they will engage more when they know you care and that makes your communications personal.
5. Subject Lines: The subject line of your email is the first impression a reader has of the topic and usefulness of the message. Make it count by using action words, a sense of urgency, alliteration, and brevity. Keep it short - PC inboxes show 60 characters while mobile devices show 25 - 30. Review your data continually to determine the messages that are resonating with your targeted groups. Use A/B testing to further refine messages that create action steps.
6. Text only content: While branding and images are important, they increase the likelihood of inbox delivery issues and can minimize student engagement when your emails all look alike. In the past two years I've had two experiences using text only in emails for specific topics and the open rate doubled. Text works well for FAFSA filing and completion, deadline of deposit approaching, event attendance reminders, and other critical or urgent messages. It can also work when the Admissions Counselor sends a personal message to an admitted student who perceives it as more personal and individualized.
7. Make an Offer: Retailers have much shorter sales cycles than universities and they use this urgency to craft their tactics. Admissions Offices work the funnel and it can be a very long sales cycle where keeping the student engaged becomes quite a challenge. Borrowing from the retailer strategy of making an offer, how can universities create interest and action? Offers most commonly used are in conjunction with an event or campus visit. They can include: waiving the application fee, being entered in a drawing for a $250+ certificate to the bookstore (if you enroll), waiving the deposit, free lunch, and a gift card to the campus Starbucks store.
8. KPI & Analytics: Determine the KPIs which are relevant to your strategies. Basic KPIs for email marketing include delivery rate, open rate, conversion rate, click-through rate, and opt-out rate. You will have to determine how many actions the user has to take for you to consider them engaged. Some experts use email clicks only while others use a combination of email and web visits.
9. Student Search: Most private universities and some publics utilize an outside partner to assist in effectively targeting and recruiting undergraduate first year students. Much of these efforts utilize email communications as a primary strategy. While the efforts of these partners are advanced and driven by predictive modeling and extensive data, I often see schools not implementing the same efforts for their inquiries which are not part of search. Students will talk to each other and compare notes, so your efforts should be consistent and integrated.