By “great,” we mean emails prospective students will open, click on, and engage with.
At CollegeXpress, Carnegie’s lead generation experts, we send A LOT of emails and we’re good at it. We’re talking hundreds of millions of emails sent to university-bound students resulting in millions of leads sent to partner institutions. Looking at our email data from 2021, as well as examples from brands most popular with our Gen-Z audience, we’ve learned a few things worth sharing about high-performing emails in the higher education space.
Before we get any further, let’s talk about the elephant in the email room…iOS 15. The following conclusions are based on data from 2021, with special consideration taken to account for changes in open rates due to the launch of Mail Privacy Protection in September 2021. In summary, iOS 15 changed everything, but we kept this in mind.
Make your emails stand out in a jam-packed inbox
Your emails are not the only ones to hit the inboxes of prospective students. Between competitors, retail brands, and Aunt Ruth’s email chain, give your message a fighting chance and do the following:
Personalize subject lines
Even if all you do is add a first name, it will help. CollegeXpress emails with personalization in the subject lines have open rates 8.5% higher than those without. Other than the first name, easy fields to use in subject lines are GPA and major of choice.
Use emojis
Our subject lines with a good old-fashioned perform 10.7% higher than those with only text. Emojis are a standard in Gen-Z digital communication, so don’t be afraid to make your subject lines a bit more fun. Keep in mind, emojis evoke a more casual and informal tone. Depending on your brand or specific message, they may not always be appropriate i.e. “You have a massive tuition bill .” Probably not the best use-case for an emoji.
Clean up your preheader with this hack from Litmus
In most cases, email preheaders are followed directly by the first line of body copy, causing the preheader to get lost in a sea of text. Add this bit of code to the top of your emails to ensure your preheaders stand out in an inbox. Our open rates increased 5.1% in less than two months because of this enhancement alone.
