In today’s competitive enrollment landscape, being able to reliably reach students with your messaging has become more essential than ever. For years, email marketing has reigned supreme as the most trusted and efficient way to communicate with students and generate consistent inquiry volume. But continuing shakeups to the email landscape have challenged that precedent by making it more difficult to reach students through this time-tested channel.
For institutions running their own campaigns without the technical expertise and infrastructure of a large marketing vendor built to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape, these challenges can seem confusing and almost insurmountable. That’s why we brought in Tom Hockey, Director of Campaign Management for Two Ocean Education Partners, the enrollment marketing services division of MARKETview, and Stefan Bauer, MARKETview’s Chief Technology Officer, to help compile the essential knowledge and context needed to help enrollment professionals navigate the complicated world of higher ed email deliverability themselves.
The Moving Target of Email Deliverability
Domain health, which is a score assigned to email senders that determines if an email will deliver successfully, has been one of the biggest roadblocks to reaching students in recent years. The score is determined by a capricious algorithm that has made improving domain health an imprecise science. Most experts agree that email engagement (the recipient clicking a link or interacting in some way) plays a big role in determining this score, but otherwise it can seem like a guessing game for institutions looking to improve.
However, there are some levers to pull when trying to boost domain health. Hockey shared his expertise on how to shape marketing campaigns with domain health in mind.
“Relevant emails that get high engagement are crucial to ensure your messages make it into inboxes,” Hockey said. “What we’d consider ‘relevant’ emails are those that get in front of the right students with the right message at the right time.”
Two Ocean’s technical team has deep expertise in domain health, actively monitoring scores on a daily basis and implementing immediate, cutting-edge remediation strategies if a score drops to give partners the best chance of successfully reaching inboxes.
It’s also important to prepare an email domain for mass sending by ‘warming’ its score before launching into an expensive enrollment marketing campaign. That means focusing content on engagement and crafting institutional messaging that keeps students interested enough to click a link. Sending targeted emails with unique and interesting content to a small number of ‘high engaging’ students can go a long way toward improving domain health in the long term.
As Hockey mentioned earlier, another important consideration is the timing of email sends. Bauer recommended sending communications tailored to what students are thinking about at the time.
“You have to understand the student lifecycle and the timing of when to talk to them about certain topics,” Bauer said. “Make sure that you’re not sending at a time when it’s not as likely to be seen.”
Shoring Up Technical Infrastructure
In February 2024, Google tightened up their technical security standards and most of the other major email providers have since followed suit. If an email sender doesn’t meet these new requirements, they’re going straight to the spam folder or being blocked altogether.
To be compliant, make sure to implement list-unsubscribe headers and honor any opt-out requests within two days. Also, it’s important to verify any sender identities by authenticating them through the latest licensing systems.
The Future of Email in the Enrollment Space
The barrage of disruptions to the email marketing landscape has given way to the rise of new methods of communicating with students. While email remains an important part of enrollment marketing, Bauer speculates that it may not be the most effective channel for communicating with students going forward.
“At least for the nearer to medium term, I don’t think email goes away,” Bauer said. “However, student preferences are evolving, so to remain relevant, recruitment marketing is evolving too.”
Sending communications through text message (SMS) has emerged as another effective channel for communicating with students. Email was the previous method of choice because it was the best way to meet students where they were — but that has largely been supplanted by text messaging with today’s students.
Many institutions have also been exploring social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to help communicate with students directly in the online spaces they frequent. But, as Hockey explains, these platforms are not without their own difficulties.
“The emerging challenge is attribution,” Hockey said. “It can be difficult to show the return on investment for channels where student actions cannot be directly tied to enrollment activity.”
Keeping Your Enrollment Marketing Strategy Change Agile
In a student recruitment landscape that’s always shifting, it’s valuable to have a marketing partner that can stay ahead of these major shifts. A team that’s adaptable and able to see what’s happening across the market can be an invaluable asset. Two Ocean Education Partners uses real-time data to mold their student outreach strategy around where the recruitment landscape is heading, instead of reacting to changes as they occur.
Student outreach can be a big investment, and it’s essential to make sure that messages are successfully reaching their audience by targeting the students who matter most to achieving any institutional objectives.
Interested in enrollment marketing informed by the latest real-time data on student preferences? Two Ocean Education Partners takes advantage of custom multi-channel programs for Student Search, Application Marketing, and Deposit/Yield Marketing.
If you’d like to learn more, schedule a demo with Two Ocean or MARKETview today.