Email marketing for post-secondary educational institutions allows universities and colleges to engage with prospective students, share information about their programs and facilities, and potentially enroll new students in various courses. In this sense, higher education email marketing is similar to lead generation. There are prospects, leads, nurture campaigns, and salespeople.

But post-secondary institutions also have the need to communicate with - not market to - students, faculty, staff, alumni and stakeholders. If you're a marketer, this article is for you and contains lead gen strategies for engaging prospective students. If you're a communications professional whose job is to communicate with stakeholders, by sharing optional and mandatory content, we invite you to check out our website. Envoke is an email marketing platform purpose-built for communicators, with an emphasis on compliance, subscription management and data security. One feature that’s especially useful for post secondary institutions is the ability to manage users and contact lists for multiple faculties and departments under one central account. Over the past 15 years we've worked with hundreds of departments of various universities and colleges and have the expertise to help you with your email communication strategy.

Looking for a new broadcast email communication or email marketing platform for your college or university communications team? Envoke can help.

In this article, we’ll share email strategies that your higher education institution can use to:

• Enroll and onboard new students.
• Provide students with personalized experiences.
• Send relevant emails that increase students’ completion rates.
• Engage with your alumni community.

Topics include:

• What is email marketing for educational institutions?
• 5 reasons you should use email marketing for education
• 3 Ways to build an email list for higher education institutions
• 3 Tips to improve higher education email marketing
• 11 Best email strategies for educational institutions
• 3 Higher education email marketing software options

Let’s start!

What is Email Marketing For Educational Institutions?

Email marketing for educational institutions is setting up email strategies and delivering targeted and personalized emails to your university students, your prospective students, alumni, and partners.

Email is among the best-performing channels for strategic marketing for educational institutions. It helps you personalize students’ experiences based on their preferences, data, and interaction with your educational institution.

5 Reasons 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 tops the list of cost-effective communication channels for educational institutions. So how much should you expect to pay for email marketing?

With an email marketing service provider such as Envoke, you can send unlimited emails to fifty thousand students for $479 (CAD) per month with our Pro plan.

For just a small budget, email marketing provides a wide range of opportunities and benefits to educational institutions.

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

Choose a higher education email marketing software product that’s right for you, and communicate effectively with your students.

2. High return on investment

According to Oberlo, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42.

Email is such and effective channel because it lets you:

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

And that’s what makes the positive ROI possible for universities that leverage email marketing power.

3. Increase student enrollment and retention

Students worldwide are applying to colleges and universities, whether it’s offering on-campus programs, distance courses, online courses, etc. But you’re not the only one who’s offering educational programs. Universities and colleges are continually competing to lock their market share.

While students compare different programs to decide which is the perfect fit for them, use email marketing to communicate the features that make your institution unique, and increase student enrollment. In this use case, email marketing helps you:

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

According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, half of the students who enroll in college will complete a degree or certification within six years at that specific institution. This means if you miss one student’s enrollment, you missed it for six years.

Email marketing makes it easy to increase enrolled students. With a smart strategy, the right software, and a little elbow grease, you can turn a 60-word email into thousands in 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.

And what makes email the best for all these communications is automated email marketing? 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

There are other ways to use email marketing software to benefit your college or university, too. Not unlike public sector email marketing, colleges, and universities also use email to communicate with existing students, not just market to them. Email can help you:  

• Inform them about news and announcements
• Engage them to participate in university activities
• Increase their participation level on campus
• Notify them about urgent matters like health and security issues

Email marketing for educational institutions is a significant player in promoting extracurricular activities. Based on students’ preferences when joining the university, you can segment them and send them emails that match their interest areas. This way, you’ll make sure you put the right email in front of the right student.

3 Ways to Build an Email List for Higher Education Institutions

When starting a higher education email marketing strategy, your first step is to build an email list of prospective students.

Here are the 3 best ways to build an email list for higher education institutions.

1. Offer downloadable brochures

When prospective students visit your college website, they’re looking for a variety of information regarding your institution.

• Subjects, classes, courses.
• Campus.
• City-related information.
• Extracurricular activities.
• Financial options.

And when you think of it, it’s very challenging to fit all the information a prospective student may need on a single website page. You could consider providing downloadable brochures to prospective students in exchange for their email addresses.

This strategy helps collect email addresses for your educational institution.

1. You collect more contacts.
2. You deliver more information to prospective students.

Here is an example of a brochure request form used by Temple University.

You can create similar forms that you can easily embed into your website using Envoke. 

You can also set up alerts for your different departments so you’ll be notified every time a prospective student downloads a brochure.

2. Display popups

Another way to collect email addresses for educational institutions is by displaying popups. A popup is an opt-in form that you can trigger for your website visitors to convert them from visitors to contacts.

As an onsite retargeting strategy, you can display opt-in forms based on your website visitors’ behaviour.

• Page scroll
• Time spent on-page
• Visited pages
• Number of visited pages
• Exit-intent

You can also invite prospective students who visit a specific course page to request a call from an adviser.

3. Embed opt-in forms and provide free consulting calls

When deciding on an education program, students have many concerns and carry unanswered questions. Engaging with these students to answer their questions is an opportunity to build a larger email list for your educational institution.

Embed an opt-in form to each course or program page. You can offer free consulting calls to help prospective students understand your programs better. This strategy leads to having a larger pool of students that you can onboard and enroll in your institution. And it’s excellent service-oriented communication, too.

3 Tips to Improve Your Higher Education Email Marketing

1. Segment your audience

Email segmentation is a must-have email marketing technique for educational institutions. It consists of organizing your contacts into different groups to deliver personalized emails.

• Segments for students may include prospective students, current students, alumni, etc.
• Segments for internal stakeholders may include teachers, administrative staff, facilities staff, department heads, directors, etc.

You can segment your institution’s email lists based on every field 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, use higher education email marketing software to create subaccounts for your different departments. 

2. Personalize your email campaigns

Email personalization is the process of using your contacts’ personal information to produce more targeted emails. It provides a more custom, personal experience for your prospective students and stakeholders. Personalization increases email engagement and overall email marketing performance.

You can use simple email personalization techniques to display information about your contacts in your emails, including their name, birth dates, course, activities, etc.

Try Dynamic Content Blocks

With Envoke’s dynamic content feature, you can automatically modify the content of your emails based on contacts’ data. For instance, you can create a single email campaign that has customized content assigned to different segments – Envoke will display the customized content to the assigned audience only. One segment may read content about athletic programs, while another may read content about arts programming, depending on their interests.

Dynamic content will save you a lot of time while sending the right email to the right contact.

3. Optimize emails for mobile

According to HubSpot, 35% of business professionals check email on a mobile device. 73% of millennials prefer communications to come via email. And when doing email marketing for educational institutions, you’re targeting millennials. And it’s no secret that Generation Z is attached to mobile devices.

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

• 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.

Now let’s see 11 email examples to help you get inspired.

11 Best Email Strategies For Educational Institutions

When planning higher education email marketing campaigns, it’s essential to consider how to keep students engaged while maintaining security and privacy.

Here are 11 higher education email strategies along with examples that you can learn from.

1. College admission email example

You should treat college admission emails with extra care as they contain sensitive information. Landing a college admission email in the spam folder can lead to a student missing an important deadline or important information.

For this, you must use reliable higher education email software to make sure that every email is delivered to students’ inboxes. 

Here is an inspiring college admission email example:

• Congratulates students.
• Presents a scholarship program.
• Sets the right expectations.
• Communicates a deadline.

2. Announcement email for students

Send announcement emails to university students to tell them about a new program, recent update, or an upcoming event.

The following college email template is sent from Texas A&M University to announce their new website and other updates.

3. Motivate social engagement and donations

Syracuse University sends the following email to motivate contacts to make a donation that would help students going through hard times.

4. Increase the number of students enrolled in online courses

Email marketing is your most valuable asset when it comes to marketing online courses and education. Once you have a wide-ranging list of contacts, structure your emails to encourage as many course sign-ups as possible.

Here is an online course email sample to inspire you.

5. Invite students to events

There’s no better way to reach an audience and maximize your event attendees than through email marketing. Here is an event email example sent to university students.

Its original copy, simple design, and clear CTA really stand out.

6. Onboard new students

Sending an onboarding email will help you guide new admissions, and explain the next steps the students need to take. NYU congratulates newly admitted students and provides them with a clear next step. 

Don’t forget to communicate deadlines, important dates, and actions in your university onboarding email.

7. Engage the alumni community

Consider this example from the Wisconsin Alumni Association. It’s a stunning, responsive email designed to engage alumni and share with them the most recent highlights.

This example will inspire you for your next alumni relations email campaign.

8. Send holiday emails

Higher education email marketing is not only about essential updates and campus news. You can take the edge off during holidays and send an email to your students to wish them a Happy Holiday or a Merry Christmas.

It makes your students feel relevant and recognized.

9. Raise students’ awareness

Similar to nonprofit email marketing, higher education email marketing is a powerful tool that can increase your students’ awareness of social issues. Arizona State University sets up the bar pretty high with a catchy email on Earth Hour.

10. Engage your community with weekly newsletters

Stevenson High School does a great job of keeping its community informed with its weekly newsletter. When email marketing to high school students, it’s preferred to reach out to the students’ parents or guardians.

Large, bold images, separate paragraphs, and scannable headlines make it easy for parents to find relevant content in your newsletter.

11. Send university summer email

For post-secondary institutions, the summer period is not only about admitting new students.  Preparing your freshman students for the next level is also important. Email marketing can help.

In the following email, ASU provides students with a summer checklist as preparation for the upcoming academic year.

Choose a Higher Education Email Marketing Software

Your institution’s email marketing success partially depends on choosing the right email software.

To help you decide, here are three higher education email marketing software to consider.

1. Envoke

Envoke is a Canadian, compliant, and secure email marketing software that has all the tools you need to engage and connect with your audience.

As a leading higher education email software provider for many Canadian universities and colleges, Envoke offers advanced automated CASL compliance, data in Canada, and all the necessary tools to send emails to your students:

• Data in Canada
• Robust contact management and segmentation.
• Compliance and consent management (CASL, CAN-SPAM, GDPR, etc.)
• Send mandatory and opt=in emails
• Drag & drop email editor.
• Higher education email templates.
• Dynamic content.
• Users and permission management.
• Customizable opt-in forms.
• Email automation, autoresponders, drip campaigns.
• Informative dashboard.

Multi-Department Features Cost Less and Provide More Control

From the internal educational institute perspective, you can use Envoke’s multi-department feature to set up different subaccounts for your various departments. These sub-accounts can interact with their own subscribers, and keep their own lists, while a central account controls access and permissions by assigning user roles. This feature allows for centralized control over branding, ensures data safety, and costs less than running individual accounts across your organization.

Here is a preview on Envoke’s user roles management.

The powerful segmentation and contact management features make Envoke a reliable email software choice for educational institutions.

You’ll be able to create different segments and send emails to students, alumni, prospective students, etc.

When it comes to data and security, Envoke is a security-conscious tool with data in Canada and end-to-end encryption.

Lastly, Envoke offers flexible pricing plans.

• Monthly subscription: Pay for the number of active contacts and send unlimited emails. Starting at $69 (CAD) for 2500 contacts on the Pro plan.
• Pay as you go: Store unlimited contacts and pay for the number of emails you send. Contact Envoke for pricing information.

2. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform. Its primary function is to send newsletters and automated emails to grow your business results. It lets you connect with your subscribers, engage with them, and build meaningful, long-lasting relationships.

Mailchimp gives you the ability to:

• Create opt-in forms.
• Create and manage mailing lists.
• Send newsletters.
• Set up automated campaigns and more. 

As an easy-to-use email software for higher education, Mailchimp lets you have control over your email marketing efforts. It gives you access to an array of email marketing tools, all conveniently located in one place.

Because the software is designed for small and medium businesses worldwide, Mailchimp doesn’t provide advanced consent and compliance tools suitable for Canadian higher education institutions. Mailchimp stores data in the United States. This blog shows you how the features compare with Mailchimp vs Envoke.

3. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is an email marketing automation software. With ActiveCampaign, you’ll be able to:

• Create automated marketing and sales processes.
• Manage and segment your contacts.
• Send more personalized and relevant messages at the right moment.

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation software for creating, managing, and extending your email marketing & autoresponder campaigns. Their dynamic content feature allows you to change the content of an email based on who a contacts’ data.

With tools to manage cross-departmental processes, you can manage:

• Students’ enrollment
• Orientation
• Alumni relations, and more.

ActiveCampaign provides multiple plans with a monthly pricing model based on how many contacts you have and features.

Conclusion

Educators and educational institutions can achieve a lot by applying the tips and examples covered in this blog. Email marketing for higher education helps develop relationships with students, facilitate new students’ onboarding, and communicate effectively.

Now the ball is in your court. You’ve seen examples and tips, and have the information you need to execute your email marketing campaigns.

Don’t forget to:

• Segment your contacts.
• Personalize your content.
• Choose a subject line wisely.
• Send responsive emails.
• Test and track your performance.

Envoke helps educational institutions enroll new students, sustain existing ones, and build stronger alumni relationships. Start your free 30-day free trial and explore it yourself.