Have you ever seen the inbox of a student who recently took the PSAT or SAT and scored really well? I have, and there are literally hundreds of emails from colleges and universities. These communications become white noise; the student no longer pays attention to the emails because there are just so many.

However, let’s say that your school was able to push through the white noise and garner an application from this highly sought-after student, and you have admitted them. You can be sure that this student has plenty of offers to choose from. This begs the question: What can your institution do to stand out from other schools?

Oftentimes, communications are sent as a means of sharing information and do not warrant a response. For example:

“Reminder: Spark University is having our Admitted Student Day on 3/11. Click here to register.”

These messages have a purpose in that we want to remind the student to register for Admitted Student Day. However, we want to mix these types of communications with more personalized messages that encourage the recipient to start a conversation with you. One example of a personalized message might look like:

“Hi, this is Julie, your Admissions Counselor at Spark University. Congrats on being admitted to Spark! I saw you visited campus last week. Are there any questions that came up after you got home?”

This type of message serves multiple purposes. It is a nice introduction of your admissions staff member; it provides a specific point of contact for that student; and the message is personalized to them and their experience.

You may be thinking, “How can my busy staff send out so many personalized messages to admitted students? How do I make time for this?” With your CRM, you can efficiently deliver personalized messages to your admitted students at scale. (Need help? The Spark451 team has experience creating, sending, and managing personalized communication workflows in whichever CRM you’re working in, and we’d be happy to discuss how you can leverage its capability to engage admitted students.)

When you adopt a consultative sales mindset, it means that you stop viewing yourself primarily as a representative of your institution, and instead, as a personal advisor to each student and family you work with. When communicating with admitted students and their families, the focus should be on building the relationship first. It’s important to be genuinely curious about a student’s needs, wants, and concerns. Once you feel that trust has been established, work with the student to encourage them to deposit at your school. Or, as the relationship develops, it’s okay if it becomes apparent that the student is not a good fit for your school. As an admissions/enrollment professional, of course it’s your responsibility to enroll students, but it is also your responsibility to be concerned about retention. If a student is not a good fit for your school, it is likely that the student will eventually contribute to the institution’s attrition rates.

Achieving your institution’s enrollment goals is critical, but fostering relationships, supporting students and their families, and helping them understand complex information to find the right fit should also be a top priority. Keep in mind, this approach not only engages the students that you have targeted for enrollment, but it also engages the biggest influencers for students — their parents or caretakers. Delivering excellent advice and helpful service to those key influencers is another way for an institution to set themselves apart from their competitors.

Like I mentioned above, being helpful is necessary and extremely appreciated by admitted students. Many students apply to multiple schools. Once they are admitted, they spend many hours comparing their top schools until they come to a decision. If they have a hard time finding what they need to make those comparisons, your school will be immediately off the table. Consider creating a college comparison checklist so your students can easily rate how they feel about the most important categories impacting their decision.

Rule of thumb: All applicable information for admitted students should be in one place and easy to find. At Spark451, we provide a robust personalized microsite for admitted students. This is where students can find all of the details needed to make a well-informed decision about where to attend. (We’d be happy to discuss our personalized microsites with you more, so your school can maximize its ability to provide all necessary information to admitted students and their families.)

In layman’s terms (we’re not getting technical yet), BIMI allows brands to show their logos in the inbox next to their messages.

Interestingly, BIMI was not necessarily created with marketing in mind, but moreso to make the email industry more secure. In a world where email scams and phishing are more prevalent than ever, there are specific email sending authentications needed in order for BIMI to work. (More on those specifications later.)

Think about it: If someone knocks on your door claiming to be Ed Sheeran and offering you free concert tickets without showing his face, would you trust them and open the door? I would hope not — that sounds sketchy! But if he shows his face and it is actually THE Ed Sheeran, you would most likely open the door! Admittedly, opening college marketing emails isn’t as exciting as opening your door to Ed Sheeran, but you get the point. There’s more trust when you see a face, or logo.

Initially, BIMI was only supported by a few ESPs, but now that Gmail announced their support of BIMI in July 2021, and now that Apple Mail is also on board, BIMI is officially a big deal for us as college marketers. Those ESPs represent a significant portion of our prospective student audience, at roughly 75–85%. Gen Z is a very visual bunch (looking at you, TikTok) and BIMI provides an opportunity to catch their attention in their already-flooded-with-college-marketing inboxes. Jumping on the BIMI train will be vital to the success of your email marketing campaigns.

I. Increased Open Rates

Based on the Yahoo Mail BIMI beta program, open rates increased by an average of 10% for emails using BIMI. Some studies even found that brand competitors that did not use BIMI showed a decrease in open rate, and that customer purchasing decisions were negatively impacted. This is your chance to stand out among competitor schools in the inbox — especially right now, while most schools don’t have BIMI.

II. Improved Email Deliverability (Inbox Placement)

Besides the obvious benefit of standing out in the inbox and attracting more opens, BIMI indirectly improves email deliverability, or inbox placement. By implementing BIMI, ESPs will see the increase in email engagement, proving that you’re sending legitimate and relevant messaging, AND that you’ve set the highest level of security to protect their users from phishing scams. Ultimately, the job of ESPs is to keep their users (our recipients) happy and safe. In turn, ESPs reward us by keeping our messages out of the spam folder and by giving us the privilege of showing our logos in the inbox: ✨BIMI✨

A few requirements need to be met in order to implement BIMI into your email marketing. You’ll most likely require assistance from your IT/web team.

Step 1: Ensure email sending authentications are set up properly, specifically the DMARC policy

To send emails legitimately and not be classified as a spammer, there are specific sending authentications that must be aligned in your DNS records: Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Something that makes BIMI a little more complicated to obtain is setting the proper Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) record, or DMARC policy.

Step 2: Provide logo in a secure format with specific parameters

Step 3: Obtain a VMC

Step 4: Publish the BIMI record in your DNS

What kind of students do you want to enroll? Where are they? What are their interests? Oftentimes, answering these questions is a daunting task in and of itself! Using tools like Spark451’s Purchase Modeling and Predictive Modeling can make this a breeze. By analyzing your institution’s historical data and comparing it with national enrollment trends, we can help you make a strategic name purchase, and then assign a score to those names ranking the likelihood of their enrollment.

27% of students from our College-Bound Student Survey indicated that they did not open an email from a college if it was too generic. While keeping brand messaging simple and clear is important, adding personalization is the name of the game. This is the Instagram/TikTok generation, where everyone has their own page, their own individualized timeline — and uniqueness is often celebrated. Getting creative with segmentation and personalized messaging is a great way to begin your relationship with these students.

Once you’ve managed to capture their attention, providing easy ways for them to indicate their interest is very important! Make sure you have a user-friendly lead form that is easily accessible in all of your communication channels.

Multi-channel communication plans are going to be the most effective tools for building brand awareness. To start, introducing yourself through digital media is an excellent way to foster passive engagement. Having a social media presence on Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat — or even better, running ads on these channels — is an excellent way to make your name more recognizable.

Of course, email will be the primary vehicle to discuss who your institution is and what it has to offer. 95% of students noted that they used email for their communication during their college search, with mailed materials (47%) and texting (43%) coming in as the next most popular channels. Reflective of this, students ranked email as their preferred communication method, with traditional mail coming in second and texting coming in third. (Also, 30% of respondents noted they were OK with receiving texts anytime!)

Once you’ve established your multi-channel communication plans, you can start passing the baton to your admissions counselors. Spring high school visits and college fairs are the best time to connect with sophomores and juniors in their natural habitat. In fact, according to our College-Bound Student Survey, almost 40% of students preferred to research a college with presentations/visits at their school. Pairing data insights from your communications with the student names you purchased (and potentially scored) can help you determine where to travel for the spring. Additionally, these trips provide the opportunity for counselors to make a personalized connection, as they can enter each visit with a list of students they know have already received and/or engaged with your communications. Making a good impression here, with the right students, is a recipe for success! (Did reading this just remind you that you need materials for the road? We can help with that, too!)

Another way to build relationships is to offer specific visit opportunities for sophomores and/or juniors on your campus. After all, 27% of the students we surveyed indicated that they knew their chosen school was right for them immediately upon visiting campus, so any way you can get students to your campus will likely result in a boost in enrollment later on. Something like a “Tips and Tricks for College Admissions” workshop could be a great way to garner interest from sophomores and their parents. For juniors, focusing more on your campus, scholarships, academic opportunities, etc., may be more appropriate.