3 Things If You Want More Responses From Students

What gets you to engage with with a complete stranger?

Studies continue to show that when someone is approachable, sounds genuine, and is clearly trying to be helpful, that’s a good start.

If your emails sound too robotic and transactional, and they look like a marketing message that is trying to “sell” a student on your school, that’s a big part of the problem.  

Here are three things that will help increase the chances that a prospective student replies to your email.

1. Eliminate the fluff and unnecessary information. Doing that makes your message shorter, and a shorter message is more visually inviting which increases the chances it gets read and responded to. Unnecessary information includes you introducing yourself at the beginning. All that information is in your signature. You should also get rid of the bullets and paragraphs that word vomit all the same information that’s on your website. Instead, get right into the reason for your email – trying to better understand a student’s wants, needs, or concerns, or to get their thoughts about something. 

2. Include a clearly defined next step. If you want a student to respond, you have to encourage and prompt that action. “Reach out if you have any questions” or “Send me your questions” are not phrases that ask and give them a reason them to respond. Replace those with a single direct question that’s related to the content of your email or something related to the stage the student is at in the process. Make sure your question isn’t too open ended and is easy enough for the student to answer – meaning they don’t have to think too hard or too long. To further increase your chances, make it clear when to reply. Saying “Email me back” doesn’t provide much clarity. Should they respond back after they read the email, the next day, or?

3. Make good use of your subject line. Remember, almost 21% of students continue to say in Top Tier Higher Ed surveys that the subject line is the number one thing that gets them to open any college related email. To increase your response rate, if your email is going to ask a question, use a subject line like “One question for you about college classes” (or whatever the question is related to).

If you consistently do these three things, I’m confident you’ll see a big bump in your email response rate.

HAVE YOU HEARD THIS YET?

My newest Mission Admissions podcast episode offers a University President’s perspective on recruitment, retention, and leadership. Listen to my conversation with Dr. Emily Messer from Texas Wesleyan on Apple, Spotify, or here.