According to the 2023 E-Expectations Trend Report by RNL, email is the preferred communication method for today’s students. 75% are willing to share email addresses—and more than half prefer an email response after requesting more information.
Email marketing offers a substantial return on investment (ROI) for higher education institutions. Recent data indicates that for every dollar spent on email marketing, the average return is $36, equating to a 3600% ROI.
Engaging today’s students, particularly Generation Z, presents unique challenges due to their pervasive use of technology. On average, Gen Z individuals spend over six hours daily on their smartphones. Capturing their attention is increasingly challenging, especially in an era where short, 30-second videos often dominate their focus.
Higher education institutions must adapt by understanding students’ preferences and tailoring their strategies accordingly. Simply sending an email and hoping for the best isn’t enough. Instead, institutions must leverage thoughtfully crafted and well-structured email marketing campaigns to deliver engaging, creative, and impactful content.
Let’s discuss how higher education institutions can approach email marketing to achieve a high ROI. We’ve compiled the following 11 tips and best practices to help.
Tip: At the end of the article, you’ll also find a link to 15 free higher education email templates to help boost enrollment!
11 Best Practices for Higher Education Email Marketing
1. Build a strong email list
Building a strong email list is essential during the enrollment process, but how do you ensure the quality of your list? One golden rule is to never buy or rent email lists. Doing so can result in low open rates, damage your brand’s reputation, and even lead to fines from privacy protection agencies.
Instead, focus on building an organic email list with high-quality leads. At LeadSquared, we achieve this by offering free demos, e-books, webinars and other downloadables. The key is to provide something valuable enough for users to share their personal email addresses willingly. Many websites also use attention-grabbing pop-ups to collect emails effectively.
For instance, when you visit the University of Michigan’s website, a pop-up appears after a few seconds, offering a 50% scholarship. This immediately captures the attention of prospective students, including myself—I’d be intrigued to provide my email just to explore the savings on tuition fees.
This is an intelligent way to attract leads genuinely interested in specific courses and specializations, making personalized follow-up communication effortless and highly effective.
A second form is triggered after the initial submission to prioritize high-quality leads, requesting additional details such as IELTS scores and college GPA. This way, the the admission officers would have a way to segregate the applications based on different criteria.
Another form is triggered that collects information about previous educational background, work experience, and semester that the prospect is planning to join.
2. Segment and personalize
A strong and reliable email list makes the segmentation process much easier (and automated). Using the University of Michigan as an example, they can send tailored course syllabi to students based on their chosen specialization.
For instance, if I select a Master’s in Arts specialization, I would receive emails specifically related to the Department of Arts. This personalized approach significantly increases the likelihood of me opening and engaging with the email content.
Here, the University of Michigan will email me details about their College of Literature, Science and Arts instead of sending details about all their courses. This email can also have a CTA button that takes the prospect directly to the relevant website.
This targeted approach allows for more customized and relevant content—a key tactic for boosting email engagement.
Consider segmenting email lists using available prospect data, like age or program of interest. Criteria might include:
- Major or school
- Extracurricular interests
- Demographics, such as age, gender, or employment status
After segmenting, the next step is personalizing the email. Personalized emails achieve significantly higher open rates, with an average of 30.26% compared to 19.57% for non-personalized emails.
In email marketing, a few personalization ideas include:
- Using prospects’ first names
- Providing resources on specific programs of interest
- Using images that reflect prospects’ demographic
Personalizing subject lines can significantly enhance engagement. CSU personalizes the email by using the prospect’s name and salutation in the subject line. CSU also includes photos of students of a similar demographic on campus and provides resources specific to Megan’s needs.
3. Automate
“When it comes to enrollment and admissions, there are two different parts. One is improving how admissions and enrollment work and are managed by universities and institutions. The other part is the technical innovations that make it faster, cheaper, and better.”
– Michael Klemm, Founder and Managing Director, Singapore Education Network.
This is where automation comes in handy. Email automation is using software tools to automatically send pre-scheduled or trigger-based emails to a specific audience.
Marketing automation is helpful for drip campaigns. A drip campaign is an automated series of pre-scheduled emails sent to a targeted audience over time based on specific actions, behaviors, or timelines.
For example:
Goal: Guide prospective students through the enrollment process and encourage them to apply.
1. Welcome email
Timing: Sent immediately after the prospective student signs up for more information.
Subject line: “Welcome to [University Name] – Your Journey Starts Here!
2. Program highlight email
Timing: 2-3 days after the welcome email.
Subject line: “Discover Programs That Fit Your Goals!”
3. Campus life email
Timing: 5-7 days after the program highlight email.
Subject line: “Experience Life at [University Name]!”
4. Financial aid and scholarships email
Timing: 10 days after the campus life email.
Subject line: “Making Your Education Affordable.”
5. Application deadline reminder
Timing: 2 weeks before the application deadline.
Subject line: “Don’t Miss Your Chance – Apply Today!”
6. Follow-up email
Timing: 1 week after the deadline.
Subject line: “We’re Excited to See You at [University Name]!
4. Prioritize video and compelling images
Incorporating relevant videos and compelling images is a key strategy in university email marketing to capture the attention of prospective students.
Including videos in email can increase click rates by up to 300%. As Gen Z’s favored content format, video marketing has influenced enrollment decisions by nearly 70%.
Depending on your institute’s email marketing goals, videos can include:
- Brand stories illustrating the school’s mission and values
- Campus tours
- Sample course content, like clips of lectures
- Application how-tos
- Student or alumni testimonials
Video storytelling helps distinguish a brand by sparking emotional connection and capturing ethos—an impact difficult to achieve with static images alone. Check out this brand story video from Berkley as an example:
By showing students and faculty in action, Berkeley demonstrates discovery and innovation, two of its brand values. The video helps elicit emotion with music, inspiring narration, and dynamic video clips.
Images are also key for boosting email engagement. Try to select images that highlight special attributes of your school and brand. Ideas include:
- Campus aesthetics
- Student life
- Academic excellence
- Diversity and inclusion
- Sports and extracurricular activities
- Alumni success stories
- Events and celebrations
Be sure to add image alt text, which provides a short text descriptor for each picture. Alt text helps sustain engagement if images don’t load—and is an important accessibility practice for those with visual impairments.
5. Avoid the spam folder
The more people that read your email, the more engagement there is. Here are a few things to consider to improve email deliverability:
Purge your email list:
In email marketing, this process is also known as list hygiene. Ensure you are sending campaigns to valid and deliverable email IDs. You can remove leads who have not engaged with emails in the past six months. The deliverability of your email depends upon the quality of your list, not the quantity.
Another way of cleaning your email list is by running it through an email validation tool. This tool identifies the bounced, invalid, or undeliverable emails and removes them from the list.
Use double opt-in
Double opt-in is a process used in email marketing to ensure that subscribers explicitly confirm their intent to join an email list. It involves two steps:
- Initial sign-up: The user provides their email address through a subscription form on a website, landing page, or other platform.
- Confirmation email: The user receives an email containing a confirmation link. They must click this link to verify their email address and confirm their subscription.
Only after completing both steps is the email address added to the mailing list.
Avoid spam trigger words
Here are a few examples of spam trigger words: Free scholarship,100% tuition-free, no fees required, Guaranteed financial aid, Act now—limited-time funding. These words can set triggers and flag emails as commercial or promotional.
Do not use all caps or exclamation marks in your email. Also, make sure that the spelling and grammar are correct.
6. Streamline email strategy across departments
Coordinate content calendars if other departments also manage student communications. A streamlined, cross-departmental strategy helps ensure clear and effective prospect communication.
Consider setting regular meetings to discuss ongoing email marketing plans. You can use the following as a checklist for evaluation:
- Is email distribution spread evenly over some time?
- Does email timing conflict?
- Is content repetitive or contradictory?
- Is the institution brand consistent?
7. Optimize for mobile—and multiple-device
Studies show that over 85% of people read email via mobile. Therefore, marketing emails must be mobile optimized to reach prospective students effectively.
Ensure your email marketing software offers a mobile-responsible design. For larger campaigns, you might consider different templates customized per device (smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc).
When designing emails, consider the following mobile-friendly tips:
- Make sure the text is large enough and readable
- Use CTA buttons for clickability versus links
- Prioritize image use
- Adjust CSS code for different email providers, like Outlook or Gmail
- Test your emails on multiple devices before sending out. Check the visibility of the email in both light and dark mode.
Check out this well-designed mobile email from Washington University School of Law:
WashU structures content in evenly spaced vertical boxes and sizes text appropriately for mobile users. While the school doesn’t use large CTA buttons, WashU does utilize images and ensures links are easily readable and accessible. (Credit: HEM Solutions)
8. Write compelling subject lines and CTAs
64% of recipients open or delete emails based solely on their subject lines. This underscores the importance of crafting compelling and engaging subject lines to capture attention. Consider the following best practices:
- Keep subject lines short, under 60 characters
- Use action words to induce curiosity (i.e., explore, discover, inspire)
- Include preview text
- Personalize, which can generate 50% higher open rates
To conclude your email, include an inspiring call to action. Every email should include a CTA with clear next steps to direct readers.
A few CTA best practices include:
- Use action words
- Format as a button
- Use contrasting colors to help stand out
Check out these two CTAs from educations.com emails.
This email’s CTA, intended for prospects interested in a specific program, helps inspire action with a personal statement of intent: “I want to learn more.” The CTA is formatted as a button and shaded bright pink to stand out from the rest of the text.
Check out this second example for other action-oriented ways to write a CTA. Note the color differences for added effect.
9. Integrate with other digital marketing efforts
You can optimize the effectiveness of your email marketing by integrating it with other efforts, like social media, text marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and other campaigns.
Today’s students prefer Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube for social media. Prioritize cross-promotion on these platforms by:
- Including social media buttons or links in emails
- Promoting newsletter signups on social media
- Repurposing email content on social media and vice versa
Take a look at this example from Syracuse University.
Syracuse includes a branded hashtag, #GivingCUSEday, so that recipients can share on a social media channel of choice. This integrated strategy helps amplify efforts both through email marketing and social media. (Credit: Emma)
PPC also offers a strategic opportunity to integrate marketing efforts. Digital ads on platforms like Google and Facebook are especially helpful for generating new leads.
To integrate with PPC ads, consider:
- Setting up an email address form as a primary conversion goal
- Capturing buyer’s email address during transactions
- Directing prospects to a landing page that collects email addresses
10. Get strategic with timing
Strategically timed emails are essential for visibility in people’s packed inboxes. The more convenient and relevant your timing, the higher the likelihood a prospect will open your email. This is particularly important for higher education institutions aiming to recruit students from different time zones and countries.
According to a few studies, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the most popular email send days. Other timing tips include:
- Sending between 9-11 and 1-3 pm
- Testing different times and dates with various segments
- Staying mindful of time zone differences
Be sure to double-check where prospects are located. A student from across the country or overseas will need a different send-out schedule than someone living locally.
Some CRMs allow you to map recipient time zones and automate email delivery time based on location. Alternatively, consider segmenting lists by location and managing delivery manually.
11. Test, monitor, and optimize
After sending each email, be sure to track results and performance trends. Set aside a regular time to evaluate how to improve strategy and approach.
Consider the following performance indicators:
- Open rate
- Click through rate
- Number of unsubscribes
- Response rate
Knowing specifics is also important, especially when focused on increasing conversions. Consider evaluating specific email elements, such as:
- Subject lines
- Formatting of email
- Graphics and pictures
- Send times
A/B testing, or split test, allows you to experiment with different variations of your email content to determine what resonates best with your audience. By testing elements such as subject lines, sender details, and more, you can analyze lead engagement and identify the most effective option. Based on the results, you can choose the winning email manually or set it to be selected automatically for future use.
A/B testing is a smart way to figure out what works better for who. For example, you want to figure out what subject line works better for a follow-up email regarding the last date of application:
Option A: “Don’t Miss Out—Apply to [Institution Name] Before the Deadline!”
Option B: “Final Reminder: Application Closes Soon at [Institution Name]!”
With the split test, you can send multiple emails (one with each subject line) to your leads and analyze which one receives more opens/clicks. Based on these results, the winning email is sent to the rest of the database.
Effectively engage prospective students. Whether honing your higher education email marketing or launching a program, we hope these tips help boost your ROI and your school’s enrollments.
Are you curious to learn expert tricks and tips from someone who has sent over 2 MILLION emails? View strategies for creating impactful email campaigns!
How Does an Email Marketing Software Help Create Better Emails?
An email marketing tool takes the weight off your shoulders by automating tasks and providing detailed reports that help you craft impactful email campaigns. Higher education institutions can seamlessly manage high-performing campaigns with these tools, ensuring better engagement and results.
For higher education institutions, email marketing software offers essential features, such as:
- Template selection: Choose from various pre-designed templates to create professional emails effortlessly
- Content personalization: Tailor your messages to resonate with individual students, increasing relevance and impact
- Campaign execution: Easily schedule and send campaigns to reach students at the right time
- A/B Testing Experiment with different variations of your email content to determine what resonates best with your audience.
LeadSquared’s email marketing software goes further with advanced features like email subject line analysis, which reveals which subject lines generate the highest open rates. By analyzing click-through rates (CTRs) and response rates, you can understand what content resonates most with your audience, enabling you to refine future campaigns.
Timing is crucial in email marketing, and this software simplifies the process by identifying the optimal days and times for sending emails to maximize opens, clicks, and responses. These insights help you consistently run high-performing campaigns.
Additionally, the software provides device usage reports, letting you know which devices your students use to open emails. This ensures you can optimize your emails for various screens. With a preview feature and test email option, you can see exactly how your emails will appear on different devices, ensuring a flawless experience for your audience.
Email marketing software empowers you to deliver messages that reach your audience and leave a lasting impression.
Learn more about email marketing software for higher education by clicking here. Want to skip right to the free demo? Click here!
Get 15 higher education email templates to boost enrollment. Free downloadable templates! (CTA button)
FAQs
Marketing automation software enables you to analyze the effectiveness of your email campaigns with comprehensive reports. The Email Campaign Report offers valuable metrics, such as the percentage of leads who clicked on links, opened emails, or unsubscribe. These insights help assess your campaign’s impact and engagement levels.
Additionally, the marketing automation software can automatically create segmented lists based on prospect actions, such as clicking a link, unsubscribing, or marking the email as spam. You can design and send targeted email campaigns tailored to each group’s specific behavior and preferences using these segmented lists.
Common mistakes include lack of personalization, sending generic content, ignoring mobile optimization, and failing to segment the audience properly. Avoiding these pitfalls can improve campaign effectiveness.
Compliance involves adhering to laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act and GDPR, which require obtaining consent, providing clear opt-out options, and protecting recipient data. Staying informed about these regulations is essential.
Given the high mobile usage among students, emails should be responsive, with concise content, clear calls to action, and easily tappable buttons to enhance the mobile user experience.
