Email marketing- one of the most underutilized marketing channels presents a great opportunity to get undivided attention of people. The only thing is that you have to land on the right mailbox.
While email is just a channel in your marketing strategy, it’s a crucial one. The inbox of of your prospective students represents a direct connection to college recruits and their parents.
Choosing which college to attend is one of the major life decisions students ever make. And not only students, their parents and families are involved in the decision making. Email can support the admissions marketing from the beginning to the end of a student’s journey.
Everyone’s email is flooded with newsletters, offers, and personal emails. You need to stand out. Your email marketing efforts should speak. Offer them a personalized email message and make them feel that the email is specifically crafted for them.
Students may have submitted the lead form directly from the program page, or they might have come across a social media post leaving an inquiry, or they would have submitted their information on a landing page. Whatever the source may be, you need to engage them at every stage. A drip campaign can be a good idea to keep prospects engaged throughout their journey.
To do so, you need to define your target audience. Let’s learn how.
It’s important to know your audience. It is the foundational tactic for success of any higher education email marketing strategy. Education is a product that all prospects will take their time with while deciding where to invest their time and money. The target audience for a higher ed institution can be:
These types of prospects may have already shown some interest in your college either by filling up an inquiry or opting in for a newsletter or they may be a part of a database that you may have acquired.
Your audience can also be segmented in following ways:
Whatever your audience may be, remember that education is one of the most expensive products a student will consider in their lifetime, often with several years of time commitment. So, it becomes critical to sell them on why your institution is the right choice.
You will be able to setup an email campaign to each of this audience segment by funnelling them with proper strategy such as design and copywriting.
The higher education marketers work with a lot of contact lists including:
But what they need to consider before importing is what communication needs to go out to each of these lists. Every prospect journey begins with a show of interest. Email marketers can grow their list in a number of ways:
When you select the opt-in methods rather than involuntarily adding people to the lists, your emails seem more like a service than a nuisance. The recipients will now be prospects who have shown an interest in your institution. They can now sync up with your email as they can easily recall your brand.
Now that you have identified your audience, we can now talk about email drip marketing campaigns. What are these drip campaigns and how to champion your email drip strategy?
Email drip campaign, also known as an email workflow or a nurture campaign is a series of automated emails that are sent to your target audience over a specified period of time and strict goals. In case of admissions marketing, the goal to send drip campaigns is to move prospects down the admissions funnel and ultimately turn them into an enrolment.
The email drip campaign efforts of most of the schools are likely to fall under these four major buckets:
These are the campaigns crafted for individuals who are still in the stage of the funnel. You will have their information as they have downloaded the admissions brochure or any other content from your website which shows that they are interested in something.
These prospects require a gentle nudging to learn more about the benefits of type of education you offer. Build this campaign like you build a social media strategy. 80% of your content should be helpful and informational, and only 20% should be promotional. The goal of this email campaign would be moving them from the awareness stage to the consideration stage.
These prospects are likely to end up in some type of conversion, such a speaking to someone from admissions team, or attending an open house webinar, or any other action.
When?
These campaigns are really important to move a prospect from consideration stage to the decision stage. The recipients of the email in MOFU have already made a conversion which also indicates a high level of interest. The goal of this campaign is to get an application. The content for these campaigns should include subtle answers to why your college should be their preferred choice.
When?
BOFU campaigns are intended to keep the prospects engaged with your college to meet your enrolment goals. Because these candidates have filled in the application, the content for these campaigns must emphasize on answering the question – Why your school?
When?
Timing will play an important roll when the prospects has reached BOFU. You can run two popular drip email campaigns at this stage of funnel:
Drip campaign for applicants can go across weeks and months, while a campaign for accepted students is generally short span ranging from 4 to 6 weeks as they have to make a decision to get enrolled. For this reason, you may send them two emails in a week.
Engagement campaigns are used to aid the retention efforts. The goal is to create evangelists who help you in word-of-the-mouth efforts. The end goal of these campaigns is to gain positive online reviews, improve retention, or assist in the fundraising efforts.
Engagement campaigns need not to be a drip campaign. It can be a generic email giving valuable information and building trust with enrolled students and their families.
You should aim at creating lead nurturing campaigns that offers relevant information to the prospects at different stages of your marketing funnel. Here is how you should begin creating a drip campaign for your institution.
The first step towards success of any campaign is working towards a common goal. Identify your desired end results. A clear vision is required to drive email drip strategy and content. In addition to boosting enrolments, the campaign goals should also include:
Use SMART model to structure your goals.
Identify the number of emails it may take for your recipient to take an action. You may not get the number right in first attempt, but you can adjust it based on the performance of your emails.
Identify how long your email drip campaign will last and how frequently the prospects will receive emails. For example, if your campaign runs for two months, then you have to decide how often your emails will land into the inbox of your prospects.
Suppose, you have decided to send 8 emails in span of two months. You have to create content for each email in your cadence. Prioritize the content order so that it creates a momentum towards the end goal of the cadence.
Students prefer less text (150 words or less), with more actionable details and resources. Best writing practices include:
Of course, the email messaging would be different for everyone in your recipient list. If you have a series of emails for prospects at TOFU stage, ensure that prospects at BOFU stage must not receive these emails. There is a different set of messaging and emails for every group.
Once you are clear on goal, have emails ready, and segmented your audience list, it’s the time to set campaign. Use your email marketing software to its best. You can create an entire sequence or a workflow for sending emails.
Like any other marketing campaign, you have to check the performance of your email by tracking the open rate, click through rate, reply rate, and the conversion rate. As the performance starts sipping, you need to tweak the email copies a bit and present it more uniquely.
Email drip campaigns can help an institution build a strategic relationship with prospects and nurture them toward enrolment. By creating customized and timed content, drip email campaigns are the key to your college’s enrolment success. Start nurturing your prospects from today via email drip campaigns and achieve a great ROI than any other marketing channel. You will see a difference.