Email Marketing For Educational Institutions: Emails that Make First Impressions
Colleges and universities face a pressing challenge: a constantly decreasing pool of new enrollees. To stay competitive, they need to stand out and attract the perfect students for their programs. Today, the digital landscape dominates communication, making it difficult to create genuine connections with prospective students and their parents.
This is where a good email marketing strategy becomes crucial. While many marketing tactics come and go, email remains a constant source of success. It allows you to connect directly with potential students and build relationships that lead to enrollment.
If you want to craft email campaigns that resonate with students, this guide is just what you need. Read it to learn the best strategies in email marketing for educational institutions— discover what works, and use our practical advice to help you create high-impact content to get students excited.
Why Use Higher Education Email Marketing?
For many prospective students, the school’s first impression arrives via email. Crafting impactful messages is essential. Effective email campaigns establish a dialogue and proactively address common questions, nurturing leads from the start.
By crafting targeted, personalized, and relevant content delivered through email automation, email marketers tackle enrollment roadblocks, persuade students, and motivate them to choose your institution. This blend of technology and human touch is a powerful combination that builds lasting relationships with future students.
Even though younger generations prefer social media over traditional forms of communication, email is still seen as the most reliable medium for communication when it comes to education.
This method of communication serves multiple purposes:
- It delivers marketing messages to current and prospective students;
- It provides academic information and content;
- It’s used to send regular promotional newsletters;
- It shares updates about college obligations and campus life;
- It makes important announcements;
- It fosters a sense of community among students and alumni.
The Benefits of Using Email Marketing for Education
Students, their parents, and other stakeholders are technologically savvy more than ever before, and it’s hard to stand out and cultivate a strong and positive brand image. This is where email marketing can help and make a serious impact.
Here’s how email marketing benefits educational institutions:
- It’s an affordable channel of communication: Email marketing costs are far lower than those of any other traditional marketing method. Moreover, email marketing offers an excellent return on investment (ROI), which makes it a great channel to invest in.
- It helps increase engagement: According to studies, on average, educational email campaigns have open rates of around 37.35%. These results could be a lot better if you start using the right email service platform, such as Campaign Refinery. As a deliverability-focused ESP, we ensure your emails reach the right audience, maximizing your campaign impact.
- It increases student enrollment: Email marketing allows you to segment your audience based on interests, demographics, and application stage. This lets you send targeted messages to potential students, providing them with relevant information about programs, scholarships, and campus life. You can also answer their questions, address concerns, and showcase your institution’s unique benefits.
- It increases student retention: Email campaigns can be used to keep current students informed about important deadlines, class cancellations, job opportunities, academic resources, and events. Or to promote support services like tutoring, career counseling, and mental health resources. This helps students feel a sense of community and encourages active participation.
- It drives alumni donations: Many alumni love staying in touch with their alma mater through email marketing newsletters. Send targeted emails that tell stories about the school and how donations can make a difference. Highlight the impact alumni support can have, but don’t be pushy.
- It helps promote your institution: University email marketing will help promote the institution inside and outside of the community.
Email is one of the most effective ways to share education-related information. However, you should avoid being spammy by sending out frequent mass email campaigns, as this often leads to students ignoring school emails, even when they are of vital importance!
Start by Growing Your Higher Education Email List
Building a strong email list is essential for any successful higher education marketing strategy.
Here is how you’ll attract prospective students and capture their contact information:
1. Provide Downloadable Brochures
Prospective students crave detailed information about your institution. It can be daunting to see everything written on one webpage, from courses and campus life to financial aid opportunities. Messy web pages don’t convert.
Instead, offer downloadable brochures. In exchange for their email address, students receive a comprehensive guide tailored to their interests. This is a win-win situation. Set up alerts to notify relevant departments of each downloaded brochure.
This benefits both parties:
- You collect valuable email addresses for targeted marketing campaigns.
- Students get access to all relevant information conveniently delivered to their inboxes.
2. Targeted Calls to Action
Popups, strategically timed opt-in forms, can convert website visitors into potential students.
Utilize on-site retargeting to display these forms based on visitor behavior:
- Page scroll,
- Time spent on specific pages,
- Visited pages and the total number of visits,
- Exit intent (potential to leave the website).
For instance, implement a popup for a visitor who visited a specific course page that offers a free consultation call with an advisor. This way, you are addressing his specific questions and nurturing their interest.
3. Opt-in Forms and Free Consultations
Prospective students often have unanswered questions and concerns when choosing a study program. By interacting with these students and responding to their inquiries, you can grow your school’s email list.
Forming genuine connections that start with a simple ‘yes’ from your potential student is called opt-in email marketing. This is how you get permission from people before you send them marketing emails, and only those who are genuinely interested will receive your emails. After you get them hooked, you can offer them free consultations that will resolve all their doubts.
This service-oriented approach allows you to:
- Build a larger pool of potential students for your programs.
- Provide valuable information and build trust, nurturing the student’s journey toward enrollment.
Create an Effective Email Marketing Campaign in Higher Education
The competition in higher education marketing is fierce. To attract students and showcase your unique offers, you need to craft unique, creative, and strategic email marketing campaigns. How do you do that?
Imagine what you could do with a little more information about your potential student, such as their age, previous level of education, interests, and past interactions with your institution. You could send them a customized message that will definitely catch their attention, right? This is where email personalization can come in handy.
But there is a lot more that you need to take into consideration. Here is where you should start:
| Tactic | How to conduct it |
|---|---|
| Segmentation combined with Automation | Target specific audiences with relevant content based on the collected data. |
| Mobile-First Design | Ensure emails display well on all devices (phones, tablets) |
| Catchy Subject Lines and Visual Content | This is how you increase email open rates with engaging first impressions |
| A/B Testing | Continuously optimize email performance by testing different elements |
| Social Media Integration | Drive traffic and engagement across all platforms |
By following these tips, you’ll be able to create effective email marketing campaigns that connect with your target audience and help your institution stay ahead of the curve.
Steps to Launch a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
Email marketing is one of those powerful tools that will connect you with your audience and ultimately drive more students to your school.
Crafting successful email campaigns requires a strategic approach. From understanding your audience and building a targeted list to crafting compelling content and optimizing for results. Improve your school’s marketing efforts to resonate, drive engagement, and ultimately achieve success with these indispensable steps.
Here’s how you’ll leverage an email marketing campaign for your university.
- Pick an Email Marketing Software: The email marketing software you choose should meet your organization’s requirements. To find the one that fits best, check features like deliverability, analytics, automation, and segmentation.
- Create Sign-Up Forms: Create a compelling sign-up form for your school’s website. Explain the advantages of subscribing clearly and provide incentives (access to exclusive content, event updates, etc.) to motivate people to sign up.
- Build Your Email List: Develop plans for organically expanding your email list. To draw subscribers, consider providing downloadable materials, holding webinars, or promoting your school on social media.
- Keep the Email List Clean: To guarantee maximum deliverability, clean your email list on a regular basis. Remove inactive subscribers or bounced emails to keep your list clean.
- Email Segmentation Strategy: Break up your email list into specific groups according to their behavior, demographics, interests, or program choices. This enables you to target audiences with highly relevant emails and personalized content.
Tricks For Getting Your Email Campaign Noticed
Standing out in a crowded inbox requires strategic planning. Students get a lot of emails on a daily basis, and unfortunately, many of them stay unopened.
Here are 5 key email marketing tips to ensure your emails get opened:
- Quality over Quantity: Don’t bombard inboxes; avoid being a spam email sender. Send strategic emails with a clear purpose. Remember, happy subscribers stay subscribed.
- Images that Speak Volumes: Use impactful visuals, but keep it light. Include alt text for those with image blocking enabled.
- Avoid spam: You should craft an email that appears to have come from a real person, sent from a reliable platform in order to avoid spam filters. Modern spam filters analyze more than just the sender’s name. They look at factors like authentication protocols, sender reputation, content relevance, and overall campaign practices. A single sender name alone won’t guarantee avoiding spam if other elements raise red flags.
- Double the Opt-In: Double opt-in email verification confirms genuine interest and boosts engagement.
- Partner for Success: Consider teaming up with an experienced education marketing agency to maximize your email marketing impact.
Types of Email Campaigns for Educational Institutions
Educational institutions should leverage email marketing to nurture relationships with various audiences. Knowing what type of email to send to a particular recipient is essential. After all, you would not spam an alumnus with a pointless “Welcome, new students” email.
For every particular group of people you interact with, there is a specific type of email campaign:
- Welcome Email Campaign: Greet them with automated emails, smoothing their transition with introductions, orientation details, and resource guides.
- Promotional Email Campaign: Promote campus events, webinars, and workshops with targeted invitations and reminders to maximize participation. Inform students about exciting new programs, courses, and certifications to keep them engaged and considering future opportunities.
- Re-Engagement Email Campaign: Maintain strong alumni relationships through engaging campaigns featuring alumni achievements, career opportunities, and networking events.
- Newsletter Campaign: Create regular newsletters with valuable content, such as articles, interviews, and campus news, to keep everyone informed and connected.
The Higher Education Email Marketing Examples That Drive Results
Email marketing for higher education has an enormous potential to help your school increase reputation, enrollment, retention, and audience engagement.
While innovation is important, there’s immense value in learning from those who’ve already achieved remarkable results. Success stories aren’t just bragging rights. In fact, they’re valuable blueprints full of insights and strategies you can adapt and leverage in your own endeavors.
Use the power of learning from successful examples to your own advantage by exploring how to identify key takeaways, translate them into actionable steps, and ultimately propel yourself toward achieving your own goals.
Get inspired for your next project by exploring these five successful examples:
1. Application for Student Loan Debt Relief
All emails related to college applications should be handled carefully since they include private information. A student may overlook a crucial deadline or piece of information if, for example, the college application for loan debt relief ends up in their spam folder.
This email from Federal Student Aid is a great example. It effectively informs recipients about their submission while also providing clear next steps for a smooth and efficient process.
2. Promote Exclusive Offers and One-time Deals
This is a great example of how you can use email marketing to offer students one-time deals and exclusive promotions to get amazing perks and save some money at the same time.
This example showcases Apple’s targeted student marketing strategy. They incentivize student purchases by offering gift cards with the purchase of specific products.
3. Raise Student Awareness
Higher education email marketing is a potent tool that can raise your students’ awareness of social issues, health issues, etc.
Loma Linda University used this catchy email to promote heart health and heart disease prevention.
4. Alumni Relations Email Campaigns
Every university needs an alumni relations department. Engage with alumni periodically by sending the most recent highlights and updates. Here is a great example of a responsive email campaign from the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
5. Invite Students to Events
Email marketing is the most effective way to reach a large audience and maximize the number of people who attend your event. Take inspiration from this Columbia University email inviting students to a 3-day event rich with in-depth discussions and opportunities to learn from experts.
It truly sticks out thanks to its unique copy, straightforward design, and obvious CTA.
Challenges of Email Marketing for Higher Education Institutions
Despite its potential for reaching a large audience and fostering relationships, email marketing for higher education institutions faces several challenges:
| Challenge | Description |
|---|---|
| Competition for Attention | Student inboxes are overloaded with university offers. Standing out among many requires strategic subject lines and engaging content. |
| Diverse Audience | Catering to a broad audience (prospective students, current students, parents, alumni, etc.) is challenging. Segmentation and targeted content are crucial. |
| Data Privacy Regulations | GDPR and CCPA limit data collection and use. Building a compliant email list with explicit consent is essential. |
| Engagement and Retention | Maintaining student interest requires valuable content, a consistent sending schedule, and avoiding irrelevant spam emails. |
| Limited Resources | Balancing automation and personalization with limited marketing budgets and personnel is difficult. |
Fuel Your Marketing Engine with Campaign Refinery
At Campaign Refinery, we value ethical and efficient email marketing. We know how important it is to establish trust with your audience, which is why we forbid spam and strongly advise against cold emailing or any shady emailing practice.
Our commitment to ethical email practices makes us the leader in the industry, and we have the best deliverability rates to prove that. With our help, your emails will reach your target audience’s inboxes, increasing the efficacy of your campaigns.
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