By Jeremy Tiers, Senior Director of Admissions Services
2 minute read
Too wordy and too confusing continue to be popular answers when we ask students to describe the college related emails they’re receiving or they received during their search.
Never underestimate what you talk about in any message as well as how you say what you say. Remember, there’s a lot of nervousness and emotion on the other end as students take in your message and attempt to interpret it.
If you want to meet students where they are and deliver helpful, more impactful emails, here are three quick pieces of advice:
- It’s essential that you speak in a conversational, relaxed tone. The way your email sounds has never been more important. Please, please, please resist the urge to spend time trying to craft a ‘perfectly’ written, overly formal email with lots of big words. It’s not how this generation of students communicates with their friends or family, and it’s not how most of us communicate either. Write like you talk day in and day out, even if that means you have a run-on-sentence. It may be a hard habit to break, but this strategy leads to a faster connection, as well and increased engagement/action.
- One key idea or theme per email. When a prospective student is given a long email that jumps around to several different topics, they get confused. They often wonder, what’s the point of this message and what action am I supposed to take? In their eyes that format also feels more like a mass message. Shorter, more to-the-point emails that focus on one topic or theme consistently generate higher response rates and more information retention from the recipient.
- Spend less time on email templates. Over the past 15 months I’ve encouraged hundreds of admissions counselors and enrollment marketers to A:B test template vs. non-template emails to prospective students. More than 90% have told me the non-template emails get higher conversions. A less cluttered design with more whitespace (think Gmail) resonates more, namely because it’s easy on our eyes, plus it doesn’t feel overproduced like so many of the emails that students receive daily.
All three of the strategies I shared today are proven and easy to implement. I encourage you to look at your recent emails and see how they compare.
Got a question about your emails? I’m happy to connect and chat. Simply reply back, or email me here.
And if you found this article helpful, forward it to someone else on your campus who could also benefit from reading it.