You need a strong email marketing strategy to help your school create and maintain strong relationships with your potential students, donors, and alumni. A well-executed email strategy may help you contact your target audience and move them further down the enrolment funnel by directly addressing their specific requirements, motivations, and issues in an engaging way.
Email marketing is here to stay, as evidenced by the fact that there will be 4.6 billion global email subscribers by 2025 and that 376 billion emails will be sent and received every day. According to a recent study, email marketing generates an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent on it—despite the rise of numerous social media platforms and other digital marketing channels over the years.
1. Use Email Segmentation to Target Specific Types of Students
Sending out a bulk email to your subscribers isn’t always the ideal strategy to get your current news in front of your prospects. Instead, you should conduct research on your intended audience, construct student personalities, and then craft messages for each one. Research demonstrates that segmented campaigns have increased email income by a staggering 760 percent. It’s possible to use email segmentation in order to split down your email campaign and create a customized marketing experience for your school. By categorizing your target audience, you can be sure that your communication is reaching the people who need to hear it, and that your message is relevant to them.
2. For College Admissions Email Marketing, Fine-tune Your Subject Line
One of the most significant aspects of launching an email marketing campaign is the subject line of your school’s email messages. That’s why optimizing your email subject line is critical if you want to get recipients to open and read your entire message. As you’re putting together your subject line, here are some things to keep in mind:
- Use concise language that is easy to understand and emotionally captivating.
- Personalize as much as you can.
- Be open to taking action (CTAs)
- Whenever possible, carry out tests.
To get your prospective students to take action quickly, you may want to use a clear CTA like “Last Call – Register Today” in the subject line of your college admissions email, or you may simply want to pique their interest by drawing attention to issues they’re sure to be interested in.
3. Cultivate Meaningful Connections with Prospects by Embracing Hyper-personalization
Digital technology has made data an essential part of business in a wide range of industries, including education, in today’s digital age. Hyper-personalization is the process of customizing your website to each individual visitor based on their individual preferences and browsing habits. Cognizant found that 38% of Gen-Z participants prefer online ads that take their browsing history and leisure choices into account.
Think about implementing this strategy to please your prospective students and demonstrate your school’s concern for and attention to their specific needs and interests. Start by using tokens to personalize an email template with the prospect’s name and other relevant information.
4. Promoting Important Actions Through the Use of CTAs that are Compelling in Your School’s E-mails
This may not come as a surprise to you, but call-to-actions (CTAs) are a critical component of any digital marketing campaign you run. You can increase the number of individuals who click on your email links by including CTAs or call to action, in the subject line.
CTAs offer your email a disciplined emphasis, directing your prospects’ attention to the exact activities your school wants to encourage. CTAs may be a powerful tool for increasing traffic to your school’s website, as well as helping prospective students find new options with your institution.
A call to action (CTA) can be included in both the subject line and the body of an email.
5. Engage Your Prospects with Interactive Features on Your Website
Emails with interactive elements encourage participation and involvement from their recipients. In order to keep your email subscribers engaged for a longer period of time, you need to provide a memorable and enjoyable email experience. As a result, including interactive emails in your email marketing campaigns can really help them stand out.
There are a variety of strategies to make your school’s emails more engaging. One method to do this is to include videos that will appeal to your intended audience right away. If you have a video integrated into your email, you’re going to have a 12.6 percent higher engagement rate than if you’re just sending out a text-based email.
6. A/B Testing Can Help Your School’s Email Marketing Campaigns Succeed
Emails should be tested before they are sent out to guarantee optimum impact, allowing your institution to maximize its email marketing efforts. When it comes to email marketing for educational institutions, there are a number of factors to keep in mind. As part of this, you need to know when to use plain-text versus HTML emails as well as how to design captivating subject lines, as well as how to use great visuals, and how long to keep an email.
In order to improve and fine-tune your plan, you may use A/B testing to examine the impact of each of these elements on students. In comparison to those that don’t use A/B testing, those who did so in the Litmus study had a return on investment (ROI) of 42:1. If your school wants to avoid wasting time and money with an ineffective email marketing plan, then these tests can help you do just that.