8 Best Practices for Higher Education Email Marketing

Email marketing for post secondary institutions is a way for universities and colleges to engage with prospective students to enrol them into various programs. Higher education email marketing is no different from lead generation for any other type of business: there are prospects, leads, nurture campaigns and sales people. This article will cover some marketing strategies.

What is Email Marketing For Educational Institutions?

Email marketing for educational institutions involves creating email strategies and sending targeted and personalized emails to university students, prospective students, alumni, and partners.

Email is part of a broader marketing mix that also includes Webinars, digital advertising, social media, and content marketing. Email is a key part of an effective marketing strategy for educational institutions. It can be used on its own or as part of a broader marketing mix that also includes webinars, digital advertising, social media, and content marketing.

Serving students in a way that reflects their individual preferences, data, and interactions with your school creates a more personal experience for them.

5 Reasons Why You Should Use Email Marketing For Higher Education

Every marketing project begins with a ‘why.’ Universities use email marketing for specific reasons. Here are some of the most common ones:

1. Cost-effective communication channel

Email marketing is a very effective way for educational institutions to communicate. It is also one of the most cost-effective methods.

How much you should expect to pay for email marketing depends on a variety of factors. The most important factor is the number of subscribers you have. The more subscribers you have, the more you’ll pay. Other factors include the type of plan you choose and the features you need.

If you use a service like Envoke to send emails, you can reach 50,000 students for less than $300 per month.

Email marketing provides a wide range of opportunities and benefits to educational institutions for such a small budget.

• Convert prospective students to enrolled students.
• Retain students.
• Inform and engage, etc.

When you are ready to communicate with your students about higher education opportunities, choose an email marketing software that will help you get your message to them effectively.

2. High revenue on investment

For every dollar you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of 42 dollars.

Not for the fact that students use email. But because email for educational institution helps:

• Create different segments.
• Personalize communication.
• Track email performance.
• Make data-informative decisions.
• Build scalable campaigns.

This is what makes it possible for universities to make a profit from email marketing.

3. Increase student enrollment and retention

More and more students are choosing to study at colleges and universities that offer a mix of on-campus and distance learning options.

These consumers are few and far between so they command a high price of admission. You are not the only one who offers educational programs, as universities and colleges are always competing to maintain their market share. These consumers are rare and therefore can charge a high price for admission.

Email marketing can help you increase student enrollment while students are comparing different programs to decide which is the perfect fit for them.

In this use case, email marketing helps you:

• Promote your educational programs.
• Showcase your educational institution benefits.
• Offer online consulting for prospective students.
• Propose your academic programs, etc.

According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 50 percent of students who enroll in college will graduate with a degree or certification from that institution within six years.

If you miss one student’s enrollment, you miss it for six years.

With the right email marketing strategy and software, you can increase your enrolled students and revenue.

4. Promote your university

University email marketing helps you promote your institution. It includes promotional communication that covers:

• General details about your educational institution.
• Admission details and process.
• Alumni relationship and community.
• Athletic and extracurricular activities.

The best thing about email marketing is that it can be automated.

You can automate your whole college email communications. This allows you to:

• Automate repetitive tasks.
• Make sure emails are sent at the right time.
• Send personalized dynamic content.
• Save your time.
• Send triggered behavior-based messages.

5. Engage students in extracurricular activities

Similarly to public sector email marketing, you don’t send emails to  university students to convert them, but to: 

• Inform them about new announcements
• Engage them to university activities
• Increase their participation level
• Notify them about urgent matters like health and security, etc.

Email marketing is a significant way to promote extracurricular activities for educational institutions.

You can divide students up based on their interests and send them emails relating to what they are interested in.

This ensures that the correct email will be seen by the intended student.

3 Tips to Apply When Doing Higher Education Email Marketing

1. Segment your audience

Email segmentation is an email marketing technique that is essential for educational institutions.

You can organize your contacts into different groups to deliver more personalized emails.

• Contact data for students: Prospective students, students, alumni, etc.
• Administrative data: Teachers, staff, departments, directors, etc.

You can segment your institution’s’ email lists based on every field you hold on the contacts in your database, including:

• Studies data: Courses, seniority, grades, language, etc.
• Demographic data: Age, gender, background, financial status, family data, etc.
• Psychographic data: Lifestyle, activities, personality, etc.

For the internal administration level, this may include segmenting based on:

• Positions,
• Roles,
• Departments,
• And other responsibilities.

To keep your data organized, it is recommended that you use a higher education email marketing software to create subaccounts for your different departments. This will allow you to keep track of your data more easily and ensure that it is organized properly.

2. Personalize your email campaigns

Email personalization is the process of using your contacts’ personal information to produce more targeted emails. This process can involve including the contact’s first name in the email, or tailoring the content of the email to match the contact’s interests.

It provides more personalized attention to your potential and current students, which in turn increases email engagement and overall email marketing performance.

Email personalization is when you take the data you have on your contact and turn it into a message that they will respond to.

can be stored in your account and used to fill in automatically generated emails. You can personalize your emails by automatically displaying information about your contacts, such as name, birth date, course, activities, etc.

Envoke’s dynamic content feature automatically changes the content of your emails based on your contacts’ data.

You can example, send separate programs to students based on their financial backgrounds, all in a single email campaign.

Dynamic content can help you save time by personalizing your emails so they are more relevant to the recipient.

3. Optimize emails for mobile

According to HubSpot, a large majority of business professionals prefer email communications, with over a third checking email on a mobile device. This is especially true for millennials, with over three quarters preferring email communications.

When marketing to millennials through email, you are targeting individuals who are currently enrolled in or have recently completed an institution of higher education.

There is no secretAttachment to mobile devices is something that is very common among generation Z.

Here are seven tips to consider when designing your responsive email:

• Use a short subject line.
• Add an email preheader.
• Write brief and straightforward content.
• Break up the text.
• Optimize the images.
• Keep CTAs centered.
• Preview and test emails before hitting send.

See the 11 email examples below to get inspired.

8 tips for creating a successful higher education email marketing campaign

Higher education marketers understand that they have the opportunity to connect with potential and current students and alumni. However, this generation can be difficult to engage and there are many other challenges facing university marketing efforts in the modern world.

Almost three fourths of colleges and universities plan to increase their email campaign budget, so it is important to make sure that this money is well spent. Here are eight tips to help engage your audience.

1. Segment and automate your emails

To segment your email list, you’ll need to collect data points like job title, department, and geographic location. Email marketing 101 includes segmenting your email list. This is especially important for higher education marketers who need to collect data points such as job title, department, and geographic location.

It is important to remember that your audience is used to technology that provides them with benefits when they need or expect it. You can create a similar experience for your audience with your email messages through segmentation and automation.

The more information you have about your potential customers, the better. This data can be used to segment your audience so you can create targeted messaging and touchpoints for each group. By doing this, you’ll be able to create a customer journey that covers all the bases.

Creative ways to segment your audience include:

• Enrollment status

• Major or school

• Campus living situation

• Home location

• Extracurricular interests and social clubs

2. Raise students’ awareness

email marketing can be used to increase your students’ awareness in a similar way to how it is used for nonprofit organizations.

Your email marketing campaign for educational institutions can reach a wider audience by sending out emails that are tailored to them.

3. Motivate social engagement and donations

Syracuse University students are facing many difficult challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.