Along with web sites and direct mail, email is a mainstay of successful college recruitment communications. While software has made it easier to send email, volume alone is not enough.
How do we know?
We see it through our internal secret shopping research and client work.
Email is treated as a panic button, with endless pleas to visit or apply - rather than information that builds an enrollment case in your favor.
Case in point - in one of our previous studies of recruitment email we shopped over 80 colleges and universities. We reviewed some 1,100 emails received over a six-month period.
Three hundred thirty two (30%) emails were invitations to apply, while 25% of the emails were invitations to visit.
What about the campus environment? 11%.
Information about our stated major? Eight percent.
Student activities? A mere 14 messages out of the 1,100 addressed activities.
Branding and market research to find your "unique brand message" often fails to make its way to your one-to-one digital recruitment emails. Why? A lack of internal expertise to actually use branding architecture.
And while enrollment managers routinely outsource their print communications, they "insource" enrollment marketing email creation and execution, overestimating their internal expertise to do so, while not fully understanding the CRM or marketing automation platforms they invested in.
With mobile devices, you have the opportunity to reach an always addressable prospective student with email and text messages. Don't lose that privilege with poorly conceived and executed campaigns