Tips for Crafting Email Campaigns for Your Adult Degree Completion Programs
The decision to return to school and earn a bachelor’s degree for an adult student is a big one—one that usually isn’t made right away. In fact, it can take a prospective adult student a year or more from when they start thinking about returning to school to actually apply.
That’s why it’s important to develop a strong and consistent email lead-nurturing campaign to keep your school top of mind for prospective adult students. Remember, more and more non-traditional adult students are looking to return to school to earn their bachelor’s degree, a trend that will only continue.
Here are some things to keep in mind when developing your email campaigns for prospective adult students:
Educate them more than you sell to them.
Of course, the goal of any email campaign is to drive prospective adult students to apply and eventually enroll. But it’s not enough to continually email prospective students about your features and offerings while peppering them with blatant calls-to-actions (CTAs) like “Apply Today!” Prospective students will become irritated by this overbearing pushiness and will likely unsubscribe.
Instead, your email campaigns should offer content that has immediate value to students. Maybe you present a series of messages giving tips on how to change careers, since many prospective students are considering earning a bachelor’s to make a job change. Or how about an email detailing your faculty’s top picks for business-related books or publications? In other words, can you provide something that is relevant and educational—a form of high-quality content marketing—to help prospective students get a better sense of the type of school you are. This way, when they’re ready to apply, they will associate value and quality with your adult degree completion programs.
Ask them to engage in more ways than one.
There is a tendency to put the weight of getting prospective students to apply on every single email. But email nurturing campaigns are about nurturing prospective student engagement over time. This means that not every single email needs to have a call-to-action (CTA) to apply to your school.
There are other, more subtle ways to engage your prospective students. How about inviting them to sign up for an info event or free webinar? What about encouraging them to speak with a counselor to learn more about your program offerings? Or how about highlighting a free one-on-one career consultation with someone in your career office? Of course, there will be times when you need to boldly ask them to apply to your program, but those instances should be part of a longer strategy of inviting prospective students to engage in less commitment-heavy ways.
Empathize with your audience.
Most adult students have very different needs, concerns, and goals than your traditional undergraduate students. In some instances these prospective adult students may have been away from school for several decades, therefore harboring major concerns about their ability to succeed at your school. Or they may be juggling families and full-time work, making the time commitment of attending your program seem quite daunting.
Your email campaigns can address these concerns to help put their minds at ease and diffuse, at least partially, their anxiety. How about highlighting an opportunity to speak with a current adult student who has kids or who is making a career change? Can you offer a white paper or article outlining the importance of earning a bachelor’s degree to remind them that their sacrifice would be worthwhile? When prospective students feel that your school understands them and their unique situation—that you are empathetic to them—then they will be more likely to consider attending.
Consistency is key.
The truth is that crafting email lead-nurturing campaigns is, well, a lot of work. If some students aren’t making a decision right away, that means you need to be sending emails that are fresh, interesting, and compelling for several months at a time. This doesn’t mean you need to be emailing them every other day—or even necessarily every week. But it is important that students are receiving consistent email contact from your school.
Consider developing a three-month series where an email goes out once a week to new prospective adult students. This way you help cement your school as a real possibility in their minds (and they don’t forget about you!). Then you can transition your email stream to once a month to keep them connected to your school, occasionally reminding them of upcoming info events or application due dates. Of course, you can build out all sorts of campaigns to varying degrees of sophistication depending on your available time and resources (e.g. emailing local students customized content, sending unique content to students with an interest in a particular program, etc.). Depending on your long-term goals, it might be worth considering a robust marketing platform like Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, or Ontraport if you aren’t already using a more advanced platform.
Regardless of how robust or customized your email campaigns are, make sure you are reaching out to students in a consistent fashion. An email once every two weeks for several months can be more effective than an email every day for two weeks followed by several months of silence.
If you’re thinking, how in the world do I have time for this?—It doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it may sound.
At 5° Branding, we’re here to help you evaluate your current communication tools and develop a plan that’s effective and manageable.
