Email might be the most effective and consistent communciation tool you can use to connect with your constituents. They may not see your social media posts each week or visit your website unprompted very often. But they will see your emails in their inbox, and if you’re following these best practices, they will open and interact with them. That’s why it’s so important to develop a content strategy that supports your overall messaging goals and the IU brand.
Brand strategy
Your emails are an important part of your overall communication plan, but also part of the university messaging strategy.
- To start, the IU strategy and messaging guidelines can help you consider how your emails strengthen the university brand of health and business. Know your campus’s differentiated value propositions as well, and incorporate those into your messaging strategy.
- Keep the university’s goals in mind, including student recruitment and retention. Your audience may not be primarily students, but it could include former or potential students, and those who support students, like faculty and staff, parents, or even organizations.
- No matter who receives your emails, they should all feel inspired to love IU for life.
Content strategy
After considering how your emails fit into the university messaging strategy, it’s time to think about your specific goals and the best way to use email to meet those goals.
- Use or develop communication goals and plans to outline the type of content you want to share, when it needs to be shared, and to which audience.
- Be thoughtful about the purpose of the email so that the message you send is direct and clear.
- Keep your email concise and make the call to action obvious and easy to interact with.
- Add an email subject and preheader that will compel the recipient to open the email.
- The subject should be less than 40 characters and describe what the email is about, like the title of a news article.
- The preheader is the text that appears under the subject when the email is in your inbox. It should be between 40 and 130 characters and give a synopsis of what is in the email.
- Consider how your email is connected to other content you publish. It could coordinate with social media posts or relate to another email you have sent out and all of them direct consitutents to a webpage. Make sure your message is consistent and optimized across all platforms, and that the webpage you send consituents to is relevant.
- When creating your email, be sure to put the needs of the recipient first. Be aware of the type of device they are using to read the email and accommodate for mobile; realize that some of your recipients may need accessbility accommodations; and know that each recipient is an individual with unique experiences.