I sometimes hesitate to point out that a big percentage of my work in higher ed marketing is in the realm of email. It's a bit more glamorous than that - it runs on a very sophisticated digital experience and automation tech platform, but at the end of the day, the communication delivery is still mostly via email.

I'm hesitant because I don't want to seem out of touch. Email marketing was declared "dead" over a decade ago when paid digital and social channels started to show growth and email marketing results were leveling out.

But here it is, 2022 and we're STILL talking about email marketing: its ability to perform, but also its place within your larger marketing strategy.

In many marketers eyes, email is "so 2005". It's not cool. It's not revered.

But it IS effective. Even in 2022. And especially in higher ed.

Hubspot recently reported that 78% of marketing professionals have seen an increase in email engagement over the past year.

And the ROI of email is there too. According to McKinsey, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter, combined.

For one of our strategic higher ed partners, we've been able to achieve an average open rate of 63% and an average click-through rate of around 10% (averages in education are 28.5% and 4.4% respectively, according to campaign monitor) for the first two weeks of our email nurturing communication plan. The majority of those clicks are to "apply now."

Why is email such an effective tool in enrollment marketing?

One of the most effective ways to use email is to nurture prospects to become customers (or students in the case of higher ed). The decision to enroll in a course or program isn't taken lightly and the value of higher ed is being questioned like never before. The "buyers journey" can take many months and more than 1,000 digital touchpoints (according to Google) before a prospective student enrolls, which makes lead nurturing a critical factor for effective admissions and enrollment in 2022. In fact, in that same benchmark report from Campaign Monitor, education has the highest email benchmark performance rates of all industries listed.

If you want to learn more about strategies for effective prospective student nurturing, I'm planning to write a series that dives deeper into tips on execution.