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EMAIL ESSENTIALS A BRIEF GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE STUDENT EMAIL COMMUNICATION
TABLE OF
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Auditing the Inbox
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Nine Shared Email Standards
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Email and the NYU Student
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Putting the 9 Email Standards Into Action Key Takeaways
AUDITING THE INBOX In 2018, the Enrollment Management marketing team began an audit of all official, internal email communications (excludes club and faculty emails) sent to current students. Until that time, there was no clear record of the volume and content of email that the student body was receiving. A common refrain among University administrators was that “students don’t read email,” but without a deeper understanding of email communication on campus, this was little more than a broadbased complaint with no clear resolution. This manual presents the quantitative and qualitative results of this audit, along with a framework for best practices to communicate with students via email.
A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE EMAIL COMMUNICATION • 1
NINE SHARED EMAIL STANDARDS Our Students First Guide outlined nine standards for providing exceptional service within Enrollment Management. We’ve adapted those standards in this guide to help us consistently deliver concise and personal email communications to our students.
UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMER Never mind what we need to tell our students. Start from the point of “What do they need to hear?” Think about where they are in their student lifecycle, and how our message will impact their experience.
BE AN AGENT, NOT A GATEKEEPER Advocate for a better communication, aligned with students’ interests. Is this the right communication right now? Are we reaching out from a point of empathy or urgency? In an academic year, students might receive up to 1,800 emails. Does this one add value, or is it just one more message?
USE CHARITABLE ASSUMPTIONS Assume that your important email is one of 1,000 important emails that our students will receive today. They want to read it, but there are just so many. How do you make your message easy to understand and easy for students to prioritize among the many other demands on their attention?
BE HUMAN AND ACCESSIBLE
SURF THE WAVES LIKE A SWAN
Address students by their preferred name, if they have one (this only happens about 7.5% of the time right now). Send information that you know will be pertinent to them. If they feel like a real person sent them an email based on their own specific circumstances, they’ll get more out of the interaction.
Communications is a profession and a discipline. Working in communications means working smarter, not harder. Think strategically about inviting engagement with your content and managing response volume. If that means “more emails,” you’ll know the emails you’re sending are the right ones.
CARE ABOUT QUALITY
RESPECT OUR CUSTOMERS’ DATA SECURITY
Send an email when you have something important to say and something that matters to students. Make it searchable in the inbox. Make sure the sender of the message is obvious (students have received emails from 220 different institutional senders and 191 different email addresses), and use the subject line to make sure the content is clear.
BE A PROBLEM SOLVER The problem is simple: NYU is big and complex. How is your email communication helping to make the University feel smaller and easier to navigate?
“N Numbers” have no place in our email communications. CCs and long recipient lists are the enemy of private communications. Never reveal too much about what you know about students—just enough that they know it’s personal.
OWN IT Sign your emails. Give reply-to information or follow-up instructions. Email doesn’t float off into the abyss; it lands in someone’s inbox. Claim accountability for the message though a personal sign-off (56% of our email communications to students are not signed by anyone). Encourage engagement with your message.
Hello, {first},
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EMAIL AND THE NYU STUDENT NYU students are busy doing amazing things, while simultaneously reading a lot of University-sent emails. Let’s take a look at what we send them and when.
NYU EMAIL BY THE NUMBERS INSIGHT INTO INBOX VOLUME It’s helpful to see what’s going on in our students’ inboxes before we make any meaningful recommendations on how to improve. ■ Our students receive
approximately seven official emails from NYU per day from an average of 164 unique “senders” across the University.
■ While we send our students a
high volume of emails, it’s not necessarily an overwhelming amount.* And most emails do not require a response.
■ It would take a student
24 straight hours to read all of the emails they receive from NYU in a year.
* A Harvard Business Review article from 2019 reported that working professionals receive 120 new emails per day on average, and respond to about 25% of them.
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656 164 Average number of “senders” across the University
Average number of emails received per account over a 13-month period
277,383 Average total word count across all accounts
24 HOURS
7.5
emails a day
50.2
1,815
a week
Total freshman emails
A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE EMAIL COMMUNICATION • 9
DON’T BE DENSE DENSITY = WORD COUNT + GRADE LEVEL The volume of email that students receive is an easy target when evaluating internal email practices, but a more tangible dimension for improvement is “email density,” a factor of word count, design, and the grade reading level comprehension of the writing. ■ On average, the emails we sent
to students contained 425 words (267 median). ■ Email marketing best practices
suggest 50–125 words generate maximum response rate, but these are internal communications—not 50% off promotions—so we have some latitude to extend. ■ We use “grade reading
level” as a measure of the sophistication of the language used in an email. Emails from NYU Leadership are generally written at a grade reading level of 13, while Public Affairs emails average a grade reading level of 4.
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■ Grade reading levels are not a
judgment on quality of writing. It is entirely appropriate for Senior Leadership to write about complex ideas in a sophisticated way—just as it is appropriate for Public Affairs to write in a brief, punchy way. ■ Density is only a problem
when it interferes with our students’ ability to understand the messages we are trying to convey. When in doubt, strive for a reading level of 7 for easy comprehension.
WORD COUNT
425
267
Average words per email
Median word count
GRADE READING LEVEL
UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Grade reading level 13
Grade reading level 4
“
I feel like a lot of the emails are also written very convoluted, so I was trying to make sure that I understood it, because I was freaking out. But before I wanted to open this big drama, I wanted to make sure that what I read in the email was also what I understood from it. Like, we actually have to move out within 48 hours.
”
nnabelle, NYU Stern A Class of 2023 A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE EMAIL COMMUNICATION • 11
DIFFUSION = CONFUSION WHAT DO WE WANT THEM TO DO? The majority of University emails have a singular purpose, or action we would like students to take. When we give them too many options and calls to action (CTAs), we diffuse our message and undermine our own efforts. ■ Our NYU emails contained an
average of eight links per email, with at least one email in our study containing 204 links. ■ Ask yourself what you want
the student to do with this information and design your email with language and graphics that will drive that response. This design should include an appropriate set of links (buttons and hypertext).
■ In order to make the most of
your links and CTAs, you need to be clear about your goal. Examples include: • RSVP for the Career Planning
session • Download the guide • Register now for
spring courses • Read the COVID-19 Q&A ■ If you find yourself loading up
your email with links, consider spending your time creating a more intuitive website structure and linking to that instead.
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Average link count in data set (Range: 0 to 204 links)
DIFFUSION: LINKS Here’s how the percentage of clicks perform as the number of links increase in email campaigns: 28.00%
21.00%
14.00%
7.00%
0.00% 5
10
15
20
For comparison, here’s how click rates perform as unique URLs increase: 30.00%
22.50%
15.00%
7.50%
0.00% 5
10
15
20
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THE E-COMM ECOSYSTEM LEVERAGE ALL THE CHANNELS In classical advertising parlance, the primary objective is “reach and frequency.” In many ways, this aphorism applies to our email messages, which are part of a larger, cross-channel marketing ecosystem. ■ As members of Generation Z,
our student audiences move fluidly across digital platforms for their information consumption. Our messages should move along with them. ■ Think of email as part of a
continuum of communication alongside social media, the website, and word-of-mouth marketing (peers).
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■ The perceived importance of
a message increases the more our audiences see it, especially across various channels.
PEERS
SOCIAL MEDIA WEBSITE
“
I know it’s important if NYU went the extra mile to post it on their Instagram and be like, ‘swipe up.’ If I see it on their Instagram and I hadn’t read the email then I go back and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I should look at this,’ but if they’re not going to post it in multiple places it really isn’t something that needs to be seen. Ryan, NYU Gallatin Class of 2022
”
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PENETRATING THE FILTER LEVERAGING PERSONALIZATION By the time students reach our halls, they have had around nine years of experience working with email. In that time, they’ve built up sophisticated approaches—both mental and technological—to filter their inboxes. We can use personalization to overcome those filters. ■ Our students are experienced
email practitioners, and they implement their own mental systems for filtering email messages. These internal algorithms tell them to read, ignore, or discard images in an instant. ■ More personalized messages
can help penetrate the students’ mental filters, and to date, we haven’t done the best job here. ■ Only 7.5% of the emails in
this study used a student’s preferred name in the greeting.
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■ Universities are meant to be
full of people, so why are more than half of our emails coming from “no one?” 55% of emails in this study had no sign-off at all, creating a missed opportunity. ■ When students feel there is a
real person behind a message and that the message is addressed specifically for them, they will be more likely to engage with its content.
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Age at which most of these students got their first e-mail address, which means they have amassed nine years of email “experience” by First Year.
“
It could be less, I guess, but you can unsubscribe from the ones that you don’t really want to see. And yeah, just the mental filtering makes it bearable.
”
Aisha, NYU Gallatin Class of 2023
7.5% 55% of emails used a student’s preferred name in the greeting.
of emails had no signature.
“
For mass emails, I never really respond. That would be weird, I guess. But when I get individual messages from like… ‘Mike’ who works in financial aid, then I’ll try to respond.
”
Freddy, NYU College of Arts and Science Class of 2023
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Hello, {first},
PUTTING THE 9 EMAIL STANDARDS INTO ACTION Okay, so now you get the picture. Students receive a lot of email from NYU, and we need to make it relevant, personal, and actionable. Now, let’s look at some specific ways to make that happen.
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF E-MAIL BEST PRACTICES PERSONALIZATION ■ Always use personalization
in both the greeting and email signature.
■ When your messages are part
of an ongoing series, diversify your “From” field to capture the reader’s attention.
DESIGN ■ O ptimize the layout of your
emails. Include adequate line spacing and white space, making the layout of your email feel less dense and cluttered. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) suggests line spacing of 1.5 is preferred to single line spacing in an email. ■ Only use layouts and templates
that are mobile friendly.
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■ Use programs such as Litmus
to view how your message, and any designed elements of your template, render across different email clients and devices. ■ Try to put the main message
and call to action above the “fold” on a mobile device.
CONTENT AND DENSITY appropriately, adding links and calls to action to influence behavior such as click-throughs, RSVPs, registrations, etc.
■ Prompt a reader to open an
email by including engaging preview text. ■ Keep your messages short
and direct, minimizing word count. Consider 250 words a guidepost.
■ There is no hard and fast rule
■ Clear writing is easier to
understand and will help students retain more of what they’ve read. Use tools like Hemingway Editor to ensure your messages are an adequate grade reading level. Most messages should be written at no higher than a seventh grade reading level. ■ Know your purpose and
design the email experience
on the maximum number of links, but make sure the CTAs you do include are guiding your readers toward the goal of the communication. ■ If you have a very large number
of links, consider hosting them on a website instead. ■ Do not use “no-reply@nyu.edu.”
Using this language goes against our shared standard of “Be Human and Accessible” and overall, makes you feel unapproachable.
CHANNELS ■ Reach your target where they
are by cross-promoting your campaigns. But be selective. For content that is time sensitive or extremely important, repeat the message across channels such as social media and the web.
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ACCESSIBILITY ■ First and foremost, an image
does not qualify as email content. Never send an “image-only” email. ■ Always use the ALT attribute
for images to give descriptions of the content of your graphics. ■ Make your emails more
accessible by keeping the copy scannable and readable. Break up large paragraphs, and make sure that the elements are semantic, using appropriate tags for headers and paragraphs, so that users can scan and skip with screen readers.
■ Make links clickable/tappable,
ensuring that buttons are large enough to be used by thumbs and fingers on mobile devices, and always use appropriate link text. Never say “click here.” ■ Use role=“presentation” on all
your presentational tables. ■ Our world-class digital
accessibility team is an amazing resource for assistance with these challenges. Email them at digital-accessibility@nyu.edu.
TRACKING AND OPTIMIZATION ■ A /B testing subject lines
and call-to-action text is a great way to see how specific messages resonate with your audience. ■ Ensure that every link in your
email is trackable, and analyze each one’s performance.
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■ Pay attention to your email
send times. Time of day and day of the week are important metrics to track and plan around.
KEY TAKEAWAYS EMAIL COMMUNICATION NEEDS TO BE PROFESSIONAL New hires and new communicators need to be trained on more than just the functionality of the tools that they use, but also best practices and strategies for effective communications.
EMAIL IS A BRAND OPPORTUNITY Email is an opportunity to deliver a consistent University brand, while expressing the unique characteristics, voice, and personality of your office.
CARE MORE ABOUT QUALITY Gen Z students can tolerate a high volume of information in the digital space—but we should be strategic, not tolerable.
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