An Afternoon with Steve Syverson

Student Horizons, Inc. recently had the pleasure of meeting with Steve Syverson, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Lawrence University.

During our meeting, Steve shared his thoughts on the current state of admissions and student recruiting. We discussed the huge changeover occurring in admissions and higher education as a whole, between old and new. Institutions have begun incorporating electronic mediums into enrollment strategies to compliment print, and older faculty have started working with their younger counterparts as the retirement of their peers makes way for additional staff. The transition sometimes causes tension, and as a result, many schools find themselves caught somewhere in between. Steve suggested that, as a vendor of the higher education market, we always remember to know our individual clients well and cater accordingly.

Steve also shared his thoughts on the decreasing level of control that colleges have over the dissemination of messages, the challenge of “stealth inquiries,” how society has created the need for our kids to overachieve, and colleges’ attempts to out-do each other.

Steve has been at Lawrence University since 1983. Lawrence recently adopted the test-optional admissions policy. The university has focused its marketing efforts toward individual attention in recent years, seeing less inquiries yet a higher volume of applications.

5 Tips for Writing Better Subject Lines

Most of us receive dozens of email messages on any given day. And rarely do we get through even half of them. In our last issue of Enrollment Marketing Best Practices we gave tips for increasing the number of people who open your email.

1. Keep it short.

Remember that the subject line length is limited (usually about 45-50 characters standard). Watch out for truncation by email providers.

2. Tell it like it is.

Use a subject line that adequately reflects the content of the message. Don’t mislead the reader.

3. Send it to yourself first.

Not sure about a subject line? Send it to yourself first. Is it inviting? Does it come through as a "must open immediately”, “delete” or “read later”?

4. Test and test again.

What might work for one campaign, may fail for another. Make testing subject lines a part of your ongoing audience-learning process. If you mail to 10,000 or more recipients – test 2 different subject lines. Which garnered a higher open rate?

5. Know what might get filtered out.

Beware of spam! The majority of email providers filter out “junk email,” automatically sending unauthorized messages to a separate folder rather than straight to the inbox. You don’t want your message to get trapped. Certain words trigger this process, such as free (as the first word), click here, casino, win, etc. Avoid “spammy words” whenever possible.

Read the entire newsletter here.

Thanks for reading!

Holiday eCards

The Holiday season is officially in full swing. Here at Student Horizons, Inc. we recommend that our schools send their prospect and inquiry pools a Holiday eCard like this one (created by our design team) this season! This will keep the school fresh in prospects' minds as they break for the holidays. And who doesn't like holiday greetings...