Category: branding

Giving voice to student bloggers

Furman University has been receiving many kudos in higher ed marketing circles for their innovative use of the web. See this summary of Furman’s work, presented at EduWeb 2006, to bring you up to speed.

But what I really love about Furman is their hands-off approach to student bloggers who keep online journals for the school’s Engage Furman admissions site. Consider this post from a former Furman student, who decided to transfer. In an entry sure to make most admissions officers and college presidents squirm, he explains his reasons for posting this news on his journal:

Why did Furman put these freshman journals online? Surely not as another method pro-Furman propaganda, encouraging you to jump on the first flight over here because there is no other college worth going to. That’s for the rest of the site to tell you. No, it’s our job to give you a firsthand experience, to cut through the gleam and glamor you see on the admissions website and give you both the diamonds and the muck hidden underneath. In other words, we have to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

How many other schools would have the guts to allow this post to go live? How many would dare to give voice to a student who was leaving? Hats off to Furman for setting the bar high, for keeping it real, and for valuing the authenticity of voice.

Enticing email for AutoPreview surfers

…some pretty big mailers (Target, The Company Store, the DMA and ourselves among them) have blah, please-don’t-open-me AutoPreview copy.

You know the routine. If you’re like 69 percent of Outlook users, you scan through the morning’s email using AutoPreview, deleting all the html-email marketing pitches that show up as a hairline box outline where some image is supposed to be and the text, “”Click here to download images.”

Instead, you click to delete.

Again. And again.

So, what if your prospective students, alumni, potential donors and other potential readers are doing the same thing with your oh-so-important email messages?

The crack research staff at Marketing Sherpa has combed the web looking for good examples of email that just might make it past the Outlook AutoPreview gatekeeper. According to Marketing Sherpa, “some pretty big mailers (Target, The Company Store, the DMA and ourselves among them) have blah, please-don’t-open-me AutoPreview copy.”

But there’s hope. In this article, Marketing Sherpa offers some great tips for more readable email.

Among the tips:
Start with compelling copy. “Instead of beginning the text-version with administrative crud, emailers including JetBlue, Mystery Reader and the Motley Fool launch directly into their content — the letter or article summary that the email is hoping recipients will react to.”

Use CAPS to catch the eye. “The average Outlook in-box screen has five-six emails when viewed in AutoPreview. So, your message is competing with four-five other messages to get the open. Putting all caps in your subject line is a no-no due to spam filter restrictions these days.”

Use text symbols to catch the eye. Adding a row of symbols is another way to catch the eye in a busy in-box.

Bonus: some examples of what and what not to do.