Archive for 'Email Recruiting'

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Is this message necessary?

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We live our lives in a rush. Don’t be late to work, hurry home… it’s exhausting! Five minutes to yourself can be a welcome gift.

As busy as we are in the professional world, imagine being 17 again. Going to school 7 hours a day (keeping your grades as high as possible to get into the perfect college), followed by working as many hours as possible to save up for college, to buy a car, to take a date to prom — participating in enough extracurricular activities to put on your college applications, studying all night, and still having an active social life.

So how do students process the messages that we send? Before you hit the Send button, think: Is this ...

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Categories: Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Communication, Email Recruiting, Marketing

3 mistakes that are killing your marketing efforts

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I admit it.  I was pretty jazzed about the Spice Girls reunion at this year’s Olympic Closing Ceremony.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em — for me it was a fun journey down memory lane with the gals who literally laid the soundtrack for the era of “girl power” (plus I’ll take anything that brings me back to the 90′s).

In honor of those brassy Brits, today I’m relating some advice on how to, ahem, “spice up” the writing in your marketing communications.

It comes from “copyblogger,” a favorite of the Marketing team here at TargetX.  If you don’t already subscribe, you should.  I mean it.  Don’t even read the rest ...

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Categories: Blogs, College Recruiting, Communication, Communication Plans, Email, Email Recruiting, General, Marketing, Online Experiences

Season's E-Greetings

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Holiday emails are a great opportunity to engage prospective students. You can share with them the celebrations and traditions of your institution, or share all the fun and interesting activities that the New Year will bring to your college. Not sure how to execute the perfect holiday greeting? You’re not the only one.

“Season’s E-Greetings! Great Examples of Year-End Outreach” by Jennifer Doak provides us with some best practices for creating effective holiday e-cards, videos and messages that resonate with your audience (and she shares some examples from colleges and universities too).

Here are a few tips from Doak’s post to keep in mind while creating your college or university’s message:

Tap into student and alumni talent. Alumni can tell stories of their ...

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Categories: Best Practice Documents, Branding/Marketing/Recruiting, Email, Email Campaign Ideas, Email Recruiting, Videos

Email metrics that matter

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Admissions offices are always seeking ways to be more effective. Especially when it comes to communicating with prospective students. With email still one of the most popular channels, how can you be sure that your email messages are effective and breaking through the clutter?

Measuring email effectiveness doesn’t have to be difficult; and Chris Chariton of MediaPost Publications identifies the most important metrics to evaluate when sending email communications. Chariton establishes which metrics matter most through three simple questions:

1. Is my list good? Make sure your list is up to date and accurate. It’s the foundation of good email communication. The metrics for review include — emails sent versus emails delivered and your soft and hard bounce count.

2. Is my content ...

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Categories: Email, Email Recruiting

Persuading the parents

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Beware the parents, says popular thought leader Jeff Kallay. They’ve morphed from the relatively benign helicopters to more savage stealth bombers, and you’d better be prepared to make a good case for why they should pay all that money to send their kids to your school.

Today’s college-bound students are the offspring of Generation Xers, who are more cynical, skeptical and stealthy than the parents of your previous classes. So forget the hype, be authentic, demonstrate your return-on-investment, said Kallay in a rousing conclusion to TargetX’s Xpert Summit — the company’s annual event for users of its technology and consulting services.

Kallay’s concluding keynote was not the first time many of the attendees thought about parents during the two-day conference. In fact, ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, CRM, Email Recruiting, Generations, Millennials, Parents, Xpert Summit

Don't forget to test

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Email marketing is so economical, it can make us lazy. Many marketers who work hard at testing their direct mail so they can roll out the best offer, headline or creative, don’t bother to do the same with their email.

“Email marketers all too frequently ignore years of direct marketing lessons,” says Jared Blank, an analyst at JupiterResearch. “They won’t or can’t or don’t test aspects of their email messages. They think, ‘Email is so inexpensive, why bother testing?’”

The answer, says Blank, is that email carries a different kind of cost when it is not as relevant or effective as it could be. “Email is very expensive when its irrelevance drives prospects away. Or when recipients delete your message at first ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Email, Email Recruiting

Irresistible subject lines

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For level of scrutiny and intensity of debate, there are few marketing topics that generate as much interest as email subject lines.

Do a quick Google search and you’ll have your choice of over 6 million references — advising you to keep your subject line to 45 characters or less…or be purposefully vague because that intrigues people…or ask a question since that’s sure to draw your reader in. Or not.

A recent subject-line advice column questions conventional wisdom that shorter is better, and backs up the claim with some research results.

Brad Bortone, an editor with online publisher MarketingSherpa, posted an entry to the Marketing Experiments Blog. He reminds readers that most people aren’t looking for a reason to respond to your email; ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Email, Email Recruiting, Subject Lines

Making email mobile

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If you’re like most marketers, you work hard to understand good email design. Then everything changes.

A few years ago, email design needed to adjust to the increasing use of preview panes and to images being blocked by default, says marketing researcher Chad White. Now you have to adjust again — to the wave of HTML-friendly smartphones and the exploding popularity of tablet computers.

“Sales of smartphones that render HTML email well are booming thanks to the iPhone and a mega-slew of Android-powered phones,” he writes in MediaPost’s Email Insider. And contrary to the common belief that email readership is languishing, these smartphones are driving increased use of email — especially among teens.

White offers several recommendations for adjusting your email design to ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Email Recruiting, Facebook, Millennial Generation, Mobile Marketing

College for colleges

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There’s a good chance you’ve heard some of them present at a conference or workshop on student recruiting. And if you have, you probably noticed the room was packed and the energy level high.

Adrienne Bartlett noticed, especially when people approached her after her sessions and remarked that she and her colleagues at TargetX consistently give the most informative and entertaining presentations. She began to realize that TargetX is viewed as more than a technology provider, more than a source of admissions consulting. “First and foremost, we’re educators,” she says. “People rely on us for our industry expertise — our webcasts, weekly tips and trends, workshops, conference presentations.

“All of that expertise goes into our products and services, of course, but it ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Email Recruiting, Generations

Video in recruitment

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Are you utilizing email effectively?

With all the recent additions to our marketing plans, we often forget about the power of this tool. Enhance your recruitment campaigns by including video messages.

Georgia Christian focuses on this topic in “Using Video in Email — Facts, Figures and Benefits,” on TheEmailGuide.com. Did you know that there is a 96.38% higher click-through rate and 5.6% higher open rate for email that contains video?  That statistic alone should give us reason to give this medium a try.

If not, here are some additional benefits that may persuade you:

Video is simple to use. All you need is your content and something to record with (phone or flip camera) and you’ll be all set.

It’s a standout. According to Christian, ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Communication Plans, Email, Email Campaign Ideas, Email Recruiting, Videos

XpertTip No. 168: What's new in eXpress 8.4

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We’ve recently released eXpressEmail 8.4 — the latest version of our original email broadcast system.

Have you seen what’s new?

Today I’m stepping aside and inviting you to watch a short video from Dara Corrato, our Director of Client Support.

Dara will be your guide around eXpress 8.4 and its newest features — which include the ability to:

  • Search and sort campaign intelligence
  • Save your frequently-used queries and data import mappings
  • Create html messages using our in-line editor

Just click below to visit our Video Library and then click “Learn about Enhancements to eXpressEmail (3:51)”:
video

You’re less than five minutes away from saving time and working smarter in eXpressEmail.

Adrienne

P.S.  If you’ve got questions or ...

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Categories: Email Recruiting, eXpressSUITE, Videos

XpertTip No. 155: Email as "old media?"

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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending some time here in Philadelphia with the one-and-only Bob Johnson (of Bob Johnson Consulting, LLC).

Bob was in town for a conference and was kind enough to join myself and Brian Niles for an evening of red wine and admissions shop-talk in our fine city.

Those of you who know Bob (or know of him) will understand why I always appreciate the chance to swap stories and pick his brain.

For me, his keen sense of where we’ve been as an industry and penchant for understanding what prospects want now combine to form one of the most unique perspectives in higher ed marketing (IMHO, at least;)

Not surprisingly, the topic du jour ...

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Categories: Email Recruiting

XpertTip No. 151: How much is too much?

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Last evening I had the pleasure of attending the President’s Welcome Reception here at SACAC in Jacksonville, FL (that’s the Southern Association’s regional conference for any of you following my jet-setting as of late;)

As fun as those receptions can be, I did eventually get around to talking about work with some pretty smart SACAC clients and friends.

Lee Ann Afton, the Associate Vice President for Enrollment at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA asked me a question about email that we all agreed would make a great tip — “How much is too much email?”

I get this question all the time.  But it’s really hard to give a cookie-cutter answer because it really should be different for every campaign, every audience ...

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Categories: Communication Plans, Email, Email Campaign Ideas, Email Recruiting

The evolution of email

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Email has aged well, believe it or not. “Is it still cool?” asks Wendy Roth. “Sure. It’s just not the same way it was when it was the shiny new toy that every marketer was scrambling to implement as the 1990s faded away.”

With young people using email to communicate with “old” folks — like college admissions officers — the tool continues to play a role in the recruitment of traditional age students. And it’s a great way to stay in touch with their helicopter parents. It also remains the best way to communicate with working adults looking at part-time graduate and undergraduate programs.

But email has evolved, says Roth, who trains companies on how to use it effectively. She says there ...

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Categories: College Recruiting, Email Recruiting

Writing good subject lines

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It’s the most frequently asked question in email marketing, “How do I write a good subject line?”

Email experts have spent a lot of time exploring the mysterious subject line. Here are some of their findings and recommendations:

- Include a benefit. Give the reader a reason to open the email by answering that age-old question, “What’s in it for me?”

- Segment and personalize. That doesn’t mean merging first names into the subject line; it means tailoring your content to the specific needs and interests of your audience. For example, including intended major in the subject.

- Use action words and active tense. Experts say these are more likely to motivate readers to open the message.

- Put key words at the beginning of ...

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Categories: Email Recruiting, Subject Lines

XpertTip No. 128: Special request from me

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Last night was a late one for this Philly girl — but hey, when October baseball calls, I answer.

Unfortunately for me, it’s Monday now, and that means back to work.

Here at TargetX world headquarters, I’m gearing up for my webcast this Friday (“Top 10 Tips for Writing Better Email Messages”).

Care to give me a little help?

Today I’d like to make a special request that each of you submit a question about composing email messages for recruitment.

Here’s the deal:

1.  Post a comment below with your question so we can start a conversation and keep it going online.

2.  I’ll choose a few gems to incorporate into Friday’s webcast (with a plug for your school if you’re ok with that).

Sound good?

Think ...

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Categories: Email, Email Recruiting

XpertTip No.126: Email stats to use at parties

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These days, there’s no shortage of chatter about the effectiveness of email marketing.

Does it still work? Is it all just spam? Do teenagers even read email?

I do tend to agree that email’s status as a “star” now more closely resembles a “cash cow” — but, presently, cash cows like email are the glue that hold the marketing mix together.

Email is still one of the most successful and cost-effective ways to communicate with prospects and parents — and therefore is still a force to be reckoned with. If it’s done correctly.

In fact, email is so important that we’re devoting our next Free on Friday webcast to helping you create better messages.

On October 16th, yours truly will ...

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Categories: Email, Email Recruiting, Webcast

Keep it relevant

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Ask any email pundit the key to successful email marketing and you’ll get a one-word answer: Relevance.

While Loren McDonald understands that, he wonders what makes one email message more relevant than another. So he asked other email marketers what “relevance” means to them.

“Most agreed that a core principle of relevance is ‘the right message at the right time,’” he writes in MediaPost’s Email Insider. And he adds these thoughts:

- The foundation of relevant email is that a subscriber has knowingly and actively opted in to receive your messages. That’s why email continues to be an efficient and cost effective tool for communicating with prospective students who have expressed an interest in your school.

- Your messages must be timely, fitting in ...

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Categories: Email Recruiting

XpertTip No. 119: Before you click send

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Ok, pop quiz time everybody.

Question:  What do professional athletes, Fortune 500 CEOs and successful Admissions Directors all have in common?

(Hint:  It’s not salary;)

Answer:  They consistently execute on fundamentals.

And, fortunately for us, email campaigns happen to have a pretty specific set of fundamentals that have been time-tested and proven to get results.

Think you’ve got the rules of the road down?  Check out this list and see how your school’s process measures up.

Before you click send, do you:

  • Double and triple-check your data set?
  • Merge in first name and/or additional demographic data?
  • Customize the “From” and “Reply To” lines?
  • Choose a subject line that both creates interest and describes the message content?
  • Add html letterhead or an image (when appropriate)?
  • Include a link with a clear ...
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Categories: Email Recruiting

XpertTip No. 104: Calculate Your CTOR

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“The proposition for e-mail marketing in the Web 2.0 world is simple: a low-cost medium with a good return on investment that can be easily tracked.”


Last week’s eMarketer study agrees that email isn’t going away any time soon. In fact, its relatively low cost and ability to deliver measurable results only underscores its value as a communication medium.

But you can only take advantage of email’s inherent value if you know what works and what doesn’t. And that requires a steadfast dedication to tracking, analyzing and adjusting accordingly. By now, you should all know the drill — it’s like wash, rinse and repeat.

I’m sure many ...

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Categories: Email, Email Recruiting

Chronicle Survey Summary Misleading

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On May 2nd the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) published a summary of research done by the Maguire Associates that gave the impression that only 5% of colleges in the study utilized email as a recruiting and communication tool.

Unfortunately, this information is very misleading – in fact, grossly inaccurate.

In an email exchange with the two researchers who did the study, I was told today that the Chronicle summarized the answers provided in an open-ended “Other” option, in which some participants listed “Email” as an answer. Email was not one of the options to choose from.

It surprised us at TargetX because we know that most colleges use email to recruit and communicate and ...

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Categories: Email Recruiting

Episode #22: Rant on Email Search Campaigns

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In this episode, Brian, Ray and Scott review almost 150 email campaigns sent over the past four months to a high school junior from colleges. What ensues is part bashing of these email messages but more importantly an enlightening conversation on probably more effective ways to reach today’s “connecting-needy” generation.

Subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes Here
Download the free iTunes Application Here

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Categories: Email Recruiting