Don’t Underestimate Email: The Most Trusted Channel in Higher Ed Still Works

Email Isn’t Dead. It’s Your Most Underrated Enrollment Tool.

Spoiler alert: Students do read their email. In fact, it’s one of the most trusted and effective channels in the entire college decision process. But most higher ed emails? They fall flat.

Generic. Boring. Forgotten.

At Boal Media, we believe email should be your most powerful tool for building trust, nurturing interest, and moving students toward enrollment—with clarity, creativity, and intention.

Why Email Still Wins (When You Use It Right)

Despite all the buzz around TikTok, texts, and DMs, email remains the one place students expect to hear from you—especially when it comes to admissions, deadlines, and financial aid information. But that doesn’t mean they’ll engage with just anything. Here’s what we know:

1. Students want answers, not fluff.

Can I afford this? Will I get in? What happens after I apply? Your emails should cut through the noise with helpful, human answers—not institutional jargon or pretty brochures disguised as HTML.

2. Segmentation is everything.

A high school junior exploring liberal arts isn’t the same as a transfer student’s parent or an adult learner in a nursing program. Different audiences need different stories, sent at the right moment, with a CTA that feels like it’s for them.

3. Email is where the journey is built.

Think beyond “send date.” Email is where you guide someone through your funnel—from first interest to application to orientation. A smart sequence of emails can remove friction, build emotional connection, and deliver the information students actually need to take action.

How Boal Builds Email Campaigns That Work

At Boal Media, we treat email like a living, breathing part of your enrollment strategy—not an afterthought. We design modular, story-driven email ecosystems that:

• Personalize content based on behavior, segment, and funnel stage
• Reinforce key themes from your paid media, organic content, and video
• Drive action while saving your team time and energy

Every subject line, CTA, and content block is intentional. Every campaign is built to plug into your CRM and marketing automation—so you’re not just sending email. You’re building a system that works around the clock.

Quiet Power, Loud Results

In a world of scrolls, swipes, and disappearing stories, email gives you a rare opportunity to speak directly and intentionally. No algorithms. No guesswork. Just a direct line to the students (and parents) who are deciding where to spend the next four years—and tens of thousands of dollars.

Email isn’t just alive. It’s one of your greatest enrollment assets.

Let’s make it unforgettable.

The post Don’t Underestimate Email: The Most Trusted Channel in Higher Ed Still Works appeared first on Boal Media.

10 Essential Ingredients for Email Copywriting That Work

Over the years, myths and misconceptions have led many marketers to adopt bad habits and the wrong ideas about how to write effective, persuasive email marketing messages. We’ve often heard people say “don’t use the word ‘free’ in the subject line” or “the shorter the better,” but those are not always helpful or correct rules of thumb. At Boal Media, we’ve been studying what works for years and are happy to share what we’ve found to be the most important ingredients for strong email copywriting that drives results.

1. Get people to open up. It’s the first crucial step towards having a successful email campaign. If your reader doesn’t open, then they will never see the rest of your message nor take any of the intended calls to action you included in your email. Invest the time to get it right.It’s helpful to think of the email FROM NAME and SUBJECT LINE as a mailing envelope and the email message as a letter. Then you can apply the same tried and true practices that direct mail has tested and applied for years.
   • Your “From Name” will help your open rates if your brand has a reputation of reliability, honesty, and quality. Another reason why it’s important to nurture and protect your brand equity.
   • The “From Name” is different from your email address and is what most people see in the name field when your email arrives in their inbox.
   • Be consistent once you pick a “From Name” to continue building your brand reputation. Your “From Name” should be one your audience will recognize, be consistent with the brand they subscribed to, appear legitimate, and reflect your company’s name or a highly recognizable figure within your company.

When writing the subject line, here are a few guidelines:

1. • Word order matters. Front load your most important message as most people’s inboxes cut off your subject line at about 60 characters
   • Be direct and allude to the message content. Clever but vague subject lines are generally less effective.  
   • Avoid asking Yes or No questions. “Find out” or “How to” approaches are stronger ways to entice readers to view your email content.
   • Take advantage of the preheader, which will appear in people’s inboxes at the end of your subject line, to build on your subject line’s message.
   • Deliver your subject line’s promise in the body copy.  If your subject line over promises on what is in your message, overall conversions will suffer and you’ll lose audience trust.
   • “Dear Jane” is okay, but don’t overuse it.  When you use first name personalization, make sure the message contents are well targeted so people feel you are sincerely starting a conversation and have tailored your message to their needs or interests. [Avoid being overly salesy.] First name effectiveness will only boost your open rate the first time you try it if you abuse it.

2. When writing the central body copy:
   • Keep it simple and straightforward using as few words and sentences as possible to grab people’s attention quickly. 
   • Break up copy with headlines. Since most people scan, headlines should summarize the main point of each section. As on a website, this helps people to instantly understand your message. Dense paragraphs without headlines put a strain on your readers’ patience and interest.
   • Include clear calls to action, such as buttons. With longer copy, it’s fine to include multiple calls to action or repeat the call to action in slightly different ways throughout the message.
   • Be specific with your “call to action,” avoiding “click here” or “learn more.”  A more tailored “ask” helps people to instantly understand why they should want to keep reading and further clarifies your message.
   • Prioritize message flow, so that your main points are read first. See item number 4.

3.  Create a strong opening. Each sentence should be persuasive and build upon the main message. 

4. Long copy or short? If you’re introducing a new product or service, a longer email can work well, similar to a long scroll website that:
   • Quickly and clearly states the primary problem you solve or the benefit your business will provide.
   • Defines the features and ties back to the overall benefit.
   • Includes “proof points” such as testimonials, third-party validation (awards, ratings, etc.), testing results, statistics are all good examples.
   • Makes your “ask” and “call to action” uber-specific.
   • Communicates your message as a compelling story.

5. Focus on answering “what’s in it for them?” Each line should address this for your audience. If it doesn’t, leave it out. Take note of how often you’re using “me” and “I” vs. “you” and “your.”  Talk to and about them, not about you. 

6. Be direct, informative, fun, and speak to the heart.  Some people try to lead with clever, fun copy which doesn’t actually persuade them to read on. Being clever is not the same as inciting curiosity, so be sure your main message is clear and compelling from the start and conveys urgency. Then look for ways to incorporate some fun into your writing that enhances the main message. A little bit of humor helps humanize your message.  Appeal to their emotions by tapping into their hopes, dreams, and fears.

7. Don’t worry about avoiding “spam filter” words. Spam filters have become much more sophisticated than in the early days of email.  Emails are most often flagged as spam today not because of the language you use, but because of how engaged your audience is with your message.  If you send highly relevant, targeted messages, you’ll be fine using the word “free” as much as you need.

8. Test and target! Start your testing with the subject line. 
   • We prefer split stream tests where a percentage of your list receives each version (A/B) and the remainder of the list receives the top performing option. This works best when your email subscriber list includes 5,000 emails or more since you’re then more likely to get results that are statistically significant.  Be sure to measure the level of confidence using a statistical significance calculator.  
   • The more targeted you can be with your messaging, the better performance you’ll see. Personalize the messaging with their interests, profile, and anything else that’s going to make the message more relevant to your audience.

9. P.S.: Take advantage of the power of the P.S. to reiterate your message. This is another direct mail tactic that works well in emails.  

10. The same proven direct mail copywriting principles also apply to email copywriting.  Study the early trailblazers, such as John Caples and his classic Tested Advertising Methods for insights. Other books with spot-on insights include Adweek Copywriting Handbook, Ogilvy On Advertising, and Scientific Writing by Claude Hopkins.  

Reach out if you’d like to discuss how your brand can improve their email marketing effectiveness. Each business has its own unique value proposition, voice, and messaging strategy that works best. Copy is just one of the key components of email marketing success. We’d love to help you tap into your winning formula.

Happy writing!  

The post Improving Email Marketing Response Rates With Persuasive Copywriting appeared first on Boal Media.

The limitations of standard email marketing reports

Like a lot of marketers, you’re probably pouring over your campaign results to check on the latest open and click rate, and wondering which elements to test to improve results.  But when was the last time you also looked over your subscriber response behavior over time?  That’s where most reporting falls short.  It’s also where there’s the greatest opportunity to improve the results of your email marketing. That’s because every email subscriber represents a contact to a specific customer and they experience your brand as a series of interactions and a chain of emails.

The most common email campaign reporting dutifully reports how many were sent, opened, clicked, bounced and unsubscribed.  You can see what links received more clicks than another and can run A/B tests on subject lines, etc.  All of this is important and good for measuring performance.  But the basic email reporting that’s available today misses one key element: a longitudinal look at subscriber behavior. 

What subscriber behavior can reveal

It’s time to change our perspective and not just look vertically at reporting for one email campaign, but also to measure how emails are performing over time.  This helps to answer questions such as:  

• How many subscribers have not opened one of your emails in the last few months  
• Who opens emails more often or always
• Which emails do certain people open and click on over other email messages
• Who clicks regularly but doesn’t convert  

To really know what’s going on, you need to know these subscriber-centric answers.  The good news is that the data is already available with most email service providers; it’s just not organized in an actionable way.

The deliverability risk

If you’re not measuring your email subscribers’ behavior over time, you not only risk losing their attention or seeing engagement decline, you may also experience seriously detrimental effects toyour email deliverability.  Enough unresponsive email addresses on your file will cause the majority of your emails sent to Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and other free, web-based platforms to end up in the spam folder or not get delivered at all.  Therefore, ignoring the responsiveness of your file can also hurt your ability to communicate with the people who want to hear from you the most.

To remedy these issues, first see what types of behavioral reports or queries are available through your email service provider.  Some may not have reports that measure behavior this way but may offer options to query your database so you can build your own report.  Other email service providers don’t have query tools, so building a report becomes a more tedious, manual process.  Some of the enterprise email service providers have such engagement reports you can easily start using.  

Subscriber health reporting

Data analysts would call this “longitudinal reporting,” one that measures the impact over time.  Think of it as “subscriber health reporting.”  

One classic method for studying this is to apply a Recency Frequency Monetary (RFM) model to email behavior.  This simple model provides a snapshot of how many emails are dormant, how many are active, and your file health – how many are active, engaged, and converting. It has issues in terms of predicting future behavior but can be a good starting point.

There are other new methods for reporting and managing subscribers now that AI and predictive modeling software are more readily available.  These enable us to better determine what people are interested in and predict how they might react to new content over time.  

Once you start to think about your email program this way, you’ll start to learn more about what motivates your subscribers and keeps them engaged.  It’s time to get closer with your subscribers and deliver more of what they want and move towards better email marketing results.  Are you ready to make the pivot and think longitudinally?  Contact us to see how we can help. 

The post Want to boost your email marketing? Improve your reporting. appeared first on Boal Media.