College admissions and enrollment is a fast-paced world, full of creative and contemporary strategies designed to reach more prospective students. Staff members are already juggling multiple tasks to communicate with new recruits and engage existing students. As a result, time-saving measures are especially important for busy campuses.

So how can higher education marketers save valuable time and effort when it comes to releasing new email marketing campaigns to target audiences? Customizable, personalized emails are the secret to finding value and achieving better outreach goals.

In this post, we’ll start with the basics of what a higher education email marketing campaign is, why you should consider templates to make life easier, and what to look for in a student engagement platform designed to attract prospective students. 

The definition of an email marketing campaign is actually quite simple—it’s a set or series of pre-written emails designed to go out to a specific audience in a sequence. Most often, the messages are scheduled in a specific order and are delivered to inboxes through an email provider. Email messages and subject lines can be written ahead of time and scheduled with the intention of attracting, reminding, or helping potential customers (or in this case, future students).

At the college or university level, your marketing team might use email campaigns for a number of reasons. For example, you might have a standard follow-up campaign that you send to new students who submitted their contact information at a recruitment fair. You could also have a more specialized campaign sent out to deliver targeted messages to students who have been accepted but have not sent in a deposit.

There are multiple outcomes that colleges and universities can look for when building new campaigns for more than one department. These results might include:

Providing more education to a segment of your target audience

Following up after making specific contact (by recruiting students either in person or virtually)

Offering additional information that aligns with the student’s stated interests

Attempting to encourage students to take a specific action (such as submitting an application or sending an initial deposit for enrollment)

Distributing event invites from different departments or offices

Depending on the goal of each email campaign, your messaging, style, visuals, and calls to action can be adjusted to become more actively engaging.

Learners are in the driver's seat and it's up to schools to apply to today's students—not the other way around. Are you ready for the new world of student-centered enrollment?

Qualities to Look for in Email Marketing Software (Plus, Templates for Higher Education)

Recent data shows that some of the most important metrics for email marketing in higher education (like open rates and click-through rates) are up dramatically over the past few years.

These trends illustrate the popularity of email messaging for a university's enrollment and showcase the importance of working on new email strategies that provide relevant, timely content with a compelling call to action. 

Even though building multiple email marketing campaigns can be time-consuming, there’s good news. A marketing automation platform like Element451 does the heavy lifting for you, with pre-written and pre-designed email marketing templates that you can change according to your school’s goals and purposes. 

As you weigh the options of your email marketing strategy, look for the following characteristics in any type of template that you choose to use in your student-forward campaigns. 

While it’s true that email marketing templates can remove the tedious process of building new campaigns from scratch, they should be built with flexibility in mind. With Element451, you’ll get a library of ready-to-publish email and SMS campaigns that can be adjusted based on the specific verbiage you want to use to reach small sample groups of students.

Pre-written templates with customization options also allow you to get a head start on some of your most vital marketing messages, without losing valuable time in the planning or brainstorming stages. It’s all done and ready for your unique spin and dynamic content.

What’s a good email without great design? Email readers are likely to engage with visuals just as much (if not more) than with the body copy of any email. That’s why it’s important for marketing teams to include top-notch visuals that take every email message to the next level.

Without an in-house designer or a large graphic design budget, some smaller schools might struggle with how to incorporate the best design aesthetic. That’s where templates can save the day and transform a set of boring emails into something more magical.

Plus, with Element451, users have access to professionally-designed graphics that look great regardless of how the student views them—including on mobile devices. This means that students will get a well-designed experience no matter where they pick up the message.

Branding is another important aspect to look for when considering a templated email marketing tool. Although pre-made templates are helpful, schools want to set themselves apart from the pack. Branding options allow each college or university to place its own unique colors, visuals, or logos in prominent places within each email template—which may help your emails stay clear of spam filters.

In Element451, even content that’s related to specific details like a school’s majors and programs can be entered one time and cascade to other messaging segments. If stats and figures change, you simply enter that information once in Element451, and it’s up to date for the rest of the messages within each campaign.

Audience segments are essential for narrowing down your messaging to a specific group of readers. While you might have some emails that go out to everyone, you may have other messages for which you need to create targeted sending schedules.

With Element451, audience segmentation is a breeze. Audience data gets pulled from updated contact lists to eliminate tedious list-building. These features help you send relevant content to the right people at precisely the right times. Whether you’re looking to reach high school seniors that live in-state or international graduate students, you’ll have the data and messaging ready and waiting for specific campaigns.

Practical Examples of Email Marketing Campaign Templates

Now that you know more about what qualities to look for in your email marketing campaign templates, you might wonder how to practically put them to use to reach university students. There are multiple use cases and ways to use customizable templates in your marketing for higher education. Many schools have some variation of the following pre-set campaigns.

Initial outreach – Finding students earlier in their high school careers (sophomore year) and connecting with parents and families to deliver more basic information

Recruitment campaign – Engaging with older high school students who are ready to be recruited and are actively searching for potential schools

Admissions campaign – Providing insight into the admission process and sending out targeted reminders about upcoming deadlines and requirements 

Enrollment campaigns – Working alongside approved students to provide admissions steps, secure deposits, and receive new commitments in time for deadlines 

Gen Z expects brands to communicate with them like they know who they are. Why should colleges and universities be an exception? Learn how to create personalized campaigns at scale with this guide.

Leverage Higher Education Email Templates to Engage Students

When you’re working on prioritizing the needs of prospective students, you shouldn’t have to get bogged down with tedious email drafting and design. Premade templates remove the stress of manual email work while allowing you the freedom and creativity to reach prospective students and keep readers interested.

Plus, you'll be able to seamlessly deliver your school’s unique message and positioning without complicated email software or pricey email providers. 

Schedule a demo today to get started with Element451, a student engagement platform that helps you manage your templates and campaigns with simple, stress-free email marketing efforts that deliver results.

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