In our blog, The Lost Art of Communication, we discussed the many ways we can communicate with each other in the office. The most used mode is email and we provided some best practices for your business communications. Communicating with your students is a whole other story. We still use email, but generally our colleagues are interested in our communication where our students may not be. And, in a world where half of all emails wind up in a spam folder, your email may not even be getting in front of them.
First things first, you need to ensure that your email is delivered and hopefully to an inbox rather than a spam folder. Using your campus email system to send emails to students’ school email addresses is a safe bet. If you trigger your emails from your financial aid management system (FAMS) or use an email service provider (ESP), you are more likely to avoid the spam folder by doing three things: 1) make sure your sender (From) name is consistent in all the emails you send and 2) put some thought into your subject line as certain words trigger the recipients spam filter. Here’s a list of words to avoid from HubSpot. Note that almost any word about money is a no-no, which means you’ll need to be creative with your subject lines.
Next, you need to ensure that the student opens your email. This is where some of the best practices from marketing email programs are applicable. Again, your subject line is critical to ensuring your message stands out in a full inbox. It should be short, but descriptive. It’s OK to express urgency if that’s appropriate for the email content (marketers have found it to be quite effective). Limit the use of punctuation (like exclamation points) and emojis (this also helps to get past the spam filter). If the platform you use allows you to include preview text, make sure to take advantage of it. Preview text is the little snippet of the email you can see in your preview pane and can often improve the chances of recipients opening the email to see the rest of the content.
Finally, you need to create content the recipient will consume and act on as intended. A little personalization goes a long way. When you apply personalization, the student knows the content of the email is specific to them and not some general FYI. Even if you’re using Outlook, you can still personalize your emails by using the mail merge functionality. So, try to greet your recipients by name rather than Dear Student.
We work in a very technical field that has a lot of rules, processes, and jargon. It’s tempting to put everything you know and everything you want the students to know in your email; however, most people today will not read an email that has more than one or two paragraphs of text. And if you already have all the details you’re trying to share on your website, use the email to drive students to the information where it lives. The other problem with an email that is text-heavy is you’re probably asking the students to do something, and it is getting lost in the blocks of text. Call out boxes and buttons are great ways to isolate the most important content of your email and make it clear that action needs to be taken. These are easy to do when you use an ESP, but may not be so easy with the email design function in your FAMS. When you don’t have a lot of design options, use all bold text, italics, underlining, or a larger font size to ensure the most important part of the message stands out.
Finally, make it easy for the email recipient to do what you are asking. If you want them to read something in more detail on your website, hyperlink the text of the request to the specific page, and if you can, use anchors so they land on the information when they click the link and don’t have to scroll to find it. If you’re inviting students to an event and need them to RSVP, first give them a calendar file to import to their own calendars (so they don’t forget!) and provide a digital way to RSVP. The students reading your email at 10 pm are unlikely to remember to call your office the next day.
Yes, email makes sending the same message to many students easy, but at the same time, if your emails are not being delivered, opened, read, or acted on, it is not an effective medium. Luckily, by borrowing a few tips from the marketing world, we can be better at it. Speaking of acting, did you know that through the Higher Education Assistance Group you can hire acting financial aid directors, assistant directors and counselors? Visit our website to learn more about our interim staffing solutions. Or send an email to info@heag.us.
Sources:
https://blog.beehiiv.com/p/email-like-a-boss