My email marketing career began during my time as a copywriter for an educational institution. I learned then that email marketing is just as important for higher education institutions as it is for any other business. It’s an efficient, cost-effective method to attract new students, retain current students, inform employees, and build a strong network of partners and donors.
As you can imagine, these audiences present their own challenges and different email marketing program needs. In this article, I will discuss:
- Why email marketing is important for higher education institutions
- Five strategies you can employ quickly to see results
- Email marketing trends to look out for
- Top tips for creating successful email marketing campaigns
While the focus will be on email marketing for higher education, I think you can extrapolate these ideas to other verticals as well. Let’s get started.
The Importance of Email Marketing for Higher Education
When looking to market your college or university, you’re typically looking at these main audiences:
- Prospective students (and their partners/guardians)
- Current students
- Employees
- Partners
- Donors (Alumni and otherwise)
- Other educational institutions
The audiences offer their own challenges, but the benefits of using email marketing are plentiful:
Promotion of your institution
File this under, “Of course!” Prospective students, partners, and donors have a vast array of choices when it comes to colleges and universities to attend or support. Your email marketing efforts are a great way to convince them to choose you.
Easy ways to incorporate those “reasons to believe” include:
- Standout merits of your institution
- A straightforward guide explaining the admissions process
- Sports and recreational activities and events
- Traditions
- Extracurricular activities
- Faculty and research features
- Dining and dorm living features
- Testimonials and success stories of what’s made possible with donations
Increased Student Retention
It’s not just attracting prospective students where email marketing can play a role. It’s in keeping students enrolled through graduation (and potentially into a second degree program).
Effective email campaigns make students feel more connected to the institution, campus environment, and peers. They can also help you establish the institution as a trustworthy, authoritative source of information. The greater the connection, the more likely students are to stay enrolled.
Event Promotion
All higher education institutions host events throughout the academic year. As I’m sure you know, it can often be difficult to get students to attend them. Well, email marketing is the perfect tool to promote these events to your target audience. This helps increase attendance and engage students with campus life.
5 Email Marketing Strategies for Higher Education You Can Deploy Quickly
Each of your audiences has a different “lifecycle” when it comes to a customer journey. Each of these journeys can be fairly complex, especially around the decision of where and when to attend college.
Here are five strategies you can fire up reasonably quickly to get the ball rolling on your email marketing program:
1. Send Welcome Emails
For this strategy, we’re going to assume you’re trying to convert prospective students (and their parents/guardians) into accepted, matriculated students. These emails would trigger upon a sign up for more information via email.
The number and content of emails in this automation could vary greatly depending on student type (from high school, busy adults), degree program choice, semester enrollment schedules (semesters, trimesters, monthly, etc.), and more.
The goal: Create a good impression, reduce student (and parent anxiety), and make them feel valued, excited, and a part of your “institution family.”
Generally, welcome emails can include:
- Personalized subject lines
- Links to vital resources
- Invitations to social media channels and groups
- Contact information for important departments (admissions, financial aid, etc.)
- Information about upcoming events
- Personal messages from the institution president and/or dean
- Those “reasons to believe” why students should choose you
(You’ll see me write “reasons to believe” a few more times before this article is finished.)
The University of Michigan’s welcome email includes a whole section from the director of the institution:
2. Send Event Invitation Emails
People won’t attend events they haven’t heard about. Event invitation emails are a great way to encourage current and/or prospective students, donors, alumni, etc., to attend upcoming events.
Don’t be shy about these emails. You can send multiple emails. Give plenty of advance notice where possible, follow up, and use urgency around signup deadlines or last-minute options. A good event will also include:
- The event name, location, date, and time.
- Brief outline of the event schedule.
- Information about the speakers, participants, etc.
- The benefits of attending the event.
- Any RSVP instructions and deadlines.
This example from Brown University covers these items well:
3. Use Success Stories To Entice Prospective Students
It seems strange to say this bluntly, but college/university programs are meant to bring a return on investment to its graduates. One surefire way to promote these successes is to create content that highlights said successes promoted through email marketing.
Great successes you can promote via email include:
- Annual graduation rates
- Post-graduate career placement rates and opportunities
- Professional and community partner opportunities
- Testimonials from current students and alumni
All of these will build credibility and trust among your target audience(s) by demonstrating the value your institution provides.
Brown University provides another great example with this promotion of its ARL Leadership and Career Development Program.
4. Send Out Surveys
It’s amazing how many businesses and organizations are afraid to ask questions of their customers. How else do you expect to understand your target audiences? What are their pain points? What are you doing right?
Yes, response rates can be low. But good responses are still easier to come by when you’re using email marketing to encourage that sharing of information.
Like the example below from the University of California, you can learn what kinds of information matter most to your audiences. With those learnings, you can answer those questions and provide that information in your automated and broadcast email marketing campaigns.
5. Send Donation Request Emails
Again, it can’t hurt to ask. (Okay, if you do it too often and in the wrong ways, it can, but you know what I mean.)
A big part of university marketing in general is encouraging alumni to donate to your institution. Donation request emails usually include:
- Information about the specific cause or project
- Your fundraising goals
- Explanations of how donations will be used and their impact (those “reasons to believe” again!)
- A clear call to action (CTA) asking recipients to donate
- Benefits or incentives donors will receive
Email can be highly effective at increasing the volume and frequency of donations to your institution. This example from Columbia University showcases the elements above quite nicely.
Trends in Higher Educational Email Marketing
As with other types of marketing, higher education email marketing is subject to different trends. To ensure your email campaigns are highly effective, you need to be aware of these trends and incorporate them into your own efforts.
Diversity and Inclusion Campaigns
Diversity and inclusion is, rightfully, more important than ever. It’s vital you use inclusive imagery and language in your emails. You should also highlight diverse student experiences and provide resources for underrepresented groups. This demonstrates your commitment to respect and equality for all students.
In-Person Insights
This involves incorporating insights gained from one-on-one sessions with admissions counselors. You can use the information students give you to create content for highly targeted and personalized campaigns.
Accessibility
Ensuring your emails are accessible promotes inclusivity and accommodates students with disabilities. (Not to mention it’s required by law.) There are many ways to do this in email, including using clear and concise language, including alt text for images, including text-only versions for screen readers and virtual assistants, and using correct contrast ratios for colors in your designs.
I know this sounds like a lot to keep up with. If you want some expert help to build these out, let InboxArmy do the work for you. Our email campaign management team can build you a bespoke email marketing strategy guaranteed to get results.
4 Tips For Higher Education Email Marketing
Now for the quick-and-dirty tips you can start implementing in your email marketing today:
1. Use Segmentation
Remember when I said that you’re looking at many audiences in your email marketing program? Segmentation involves dividing your audience into groups based on shared characteristics.
With these segments in place, you can create targeted campaigns that appeal to the specific interests, pain points, and behaviors of the people in those segments. A great example?
A welcome email series gets sent to prospective students while donation requests are sent to alumni. Seems like common sense, but this basic level of segmentation is vital for your campaigns to achieve the desired results.
2. Craft Engaging Content
Yes, this is easier said than done. But put yourself in the shoes of your recipients. The content of your emails should be highly relevant and valuable. So, you need to identify the topics they’re interested in and create content around them.
For instance, a prospective student might be interested in content highlighting the positive experiences of freshmen on campus. A current student might be more interested in placements for internships.
Those “reasons to believe” adjust over time.
3. Personalize Subject Lines.
It’s simple, really. If you collect a first name on a form (which, if you’re an higher education institution, please, for the love of God, collect first name and many more items of information), you can use it in your subject lines.
Address the email directly to the recipient in question. It works… in some cases nearly doubling the average open rate.
4. Analyze Your Performance
Grades are still very much a thing. You need to track how well your email campaigns are performing. The first step for each of these campaigns is to decide on what qualifies as a conversion. You may define a conversion in many ways, like:
- Appointment scheduling with an admissions counselor
- Completion of an online application
- A first-time donation
- A repeat donation
- A conversion from a one-time donation to a recurring donation (that’s the dream, right?)
From there, your performance metrics can include:
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Open rate
- Unsubscribe rate
- Bounce rate
- Spam complaint rate
For broadcast/one-off email campaigns, you can look at these individually. With any automated emails, you’re going to want to look at them over a series of time, maybe the previous month, quarter, or year, to get an idea of performance over time and trends.
Decide what’s performing and what’s not performing. Tweak and test. (Easier said than done, of course.)
Final Thoughts
Email is a vital part of any educational institution’s overall digital marketing strategy. It can help attract potential students, retain current ones, increase donations, and much more.
Some of the most effective strategies include campaigns like welcome emails, survey requests, and event promotions. For your strategies to be successful, remember to segment your audience, create engaging content, personalize your subject lines, and analyze your campaigns’ performance.
FAQs
How often should I send emails?
The email marketer’s answer? It depends.
The optimal frequency will vary depending on the size of your organization, the audience you’re targeting, and your overall campaign goals. That said, generally it’s best to email at least once or twice a week.
Test your frequency and cadence. Monitor metrics like conversions, clicks, and opens. Also monitor bounces, spam complaints, and unsubscribes. Those metrics will give you an idea of what’s best for your institution.
What are the best ways to grow an email list for a university?
Some of the best ways you can do that include:
- Offer exclusive resources and content to subscribers
- Adding sign-up forms to your website
- Promote sign-ups via your social media channels
- Promote sign-ups at new student orientations and campus events
- Encourage alumni and current students to share your emails
Just do not buy email lists. Please. Don’t.
How do you ensure university email marketing campaigns maintain compliance?
To maintain legal and regulatory compliance, you must:
- Include an unsubscribe link in every email (under CAN-SPAM)
- Obtain explicit consent from anyone added to your mailing list
- If you’re dealing with international (outside the US) students and in some states, you need to be aware of and follow regulations stipulated by CASL, CCPA, and GDPR.
- If you’re a US-based institution, you’ll also have to be aware of and comply with FERPA regulations.
I’m not a lawyer, and don’t pretend to be one on TikTok, so consult your own legal counsel.
