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One Stupid Thing College Coaches Do To Depress Their New ProspectsTuesday, November 1st, 2011

Yes, it’s stupid.

The good news? It’s easy to fix.

Actually, the fact that it’s so ”easy” is what makes it so stupid, in my opinion.

I’m talking about your new prospects who do what you want them to do by going online, finding your program’s web page, hunting down the recruiting questionnaire link, taking the time to fill out the form, and then click “Submit”.

Many coaches’ reaction to that effort?

Nothing.

No immediate response. No courtesy email. No follow-up phone call or letter. Nothing.

This is starting to come to light through some of our recent focus groups with client athletes on college campuses around the country. What we’re hearing is that at the start of the recruiting process, coaches are dropping the ball by not immediately replying back to those new prospects who take the time to fill out the form that you’ve provided on your website.

As they explain it, they are disappointed because they are excited to have made a psychological commitment to filling out the form and “choosing” the college in a small way. Filling out an online form, which is probably an afterthought for most adults, is a huge choice for a teenage prospect. They don’t fill out forms for fun; it’s a sign of interest. It’s a vote in your favor. It’s a choice they are making.

Coaches, on the other hand, don’t usually show the same enthusiasm in response to that allegiance. On average, it takes college coaches anywhere from two weeks to five month to respond to Junior or Senior athlete inquiries to their programs.

And that’s where we wander into “stupid” territory, Coach…

By not sending some kind of response to your new potential recruit, you run the risk of having them assume you aren’t interested. And why shouldn’t they? Have you tried filling out the form on your website? It takes quite a bit of time, according to your prospects. Anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the sport and the information you are asking them to submit.

So what’s the fix for correcting this stupid oversight, and prevent your prospects from feeling down and depressed about not getting a response? As is usually the case, the answer is simple:

Respond.

A good solution: Include an auto-responder tied to your online web form that they’re filling out. This is the simplest, but least personal, reply that you can use because it’s automated. There is no required interaction on your part. That makes it easy, and also makes it inexcusable not to use.
A better solution: Send a quick personal email to them anytime you get a new inquiry or submission. Nothing fancy, but something that tells the athlete that they didn’t just get an automatic reply message. Let them know that you saw their information, and you’ll be talking to them further. “Hey Chris, just got your information that you sent us in our online recruiting form. I’ll be looking it over and will start telling you about what we’re all about here. Thanks again…talk to you soon! – Coach Johnson” That’s a 20 second investment of your time. The pay-off is huge.
The best solution: In the message above, add two things that you liked about their information that they just gave you. An award they won, a time or mark that they’ve achieved, their grade point average…something that tells them that you actually took a minute to evaluate them, and something that positively identifies some areas where there might be interest on your part. That’s an additional two minute investment on your part, but it will pay big dividends.

So, if you’re a coach that is reading this and you feel like you aren’t taking the right steps towards kicking-off your relationship with these new prospects in the best way possible, here’s a good first step for you: Take the list of prospects that have filled out your online form and create a personal reply to them immediately. Apologize for the time it’s taken to get back to them, and let them know that you’re reviewing their information and will be in touch soon. Then, plug them in to your regular series of recruiting messages that you hopefully have put in place.

Simple as that.

This is a small detail, but an important one for your prospects. When they click “Submit” and send you the information that you say you want from them, the clock is ticking…and they are waiting. What is your response – or lack of response – communicating to them?

Are you looking to get more in-depth knowledge about recruiting, what today’s prospects look for, and how to communicate more effectively with recruits? Join your fellow coaches from around the country at the upcoming National Collegiate Recruiting Conference. Get all the details here, and consider investing some time this Summer to improve the most important part of your coaching career: Knowing how to recruit effectively!

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The Right “One-Two Punch” for Your Recruiting EmailsSunday, October 9th, 2011

by Sean Devlin, Front Rush

Branded email templates are very popular in college recruiting now.

These are the emails that coaches send to recruits that have pictures of the university, and school colors and action shots, and more. Coaches love to send them out because they really can pop-out of a recruit’s inbox, especially compared to the standard black & white text-only email.

We think they can be a great recruiting tool when used properly. The key part of the previous sentence is “when used properly”.

As most of you know, we build email templates for coaches as a service (full discloser) and we often times see coaches relying on the template as a crutch instead of using the content of the email to be the true marketing and recruiting message.

Let me explain:

Your content, your written word, your emotions in the text…THAT is what is king. The images and pictures that surround the template are just the supporting cast. We recently had a coach ask us to take a look at an email that he sent. It was clear that the coach and our design team spent a ton of time on the branding and the pictures and the colors but it was also clear that the coach did not spend anytime on the content of the email. It was almost like “check out how cool my email template is” instead of “here is a really well written email”.

An email to a recruit should be a great email to a recruit regardless if there are pictures and colors and logos. If the email is well thought out and personalized and truly gets across your message then it can be a great email whether it is fully branded or just black and white. In fact, this is a good litmus test for any recruiting emails sent. Is this email still good without all of the colors and branding? Better stated, is this email great as just a black and white email? If it is great as just a black and white email, then it will be really great fully branded.

When a recruit receives your email, they will be impressed with the pictures and logos and colors but they will be recruited by your content. Its your message that is what is important, not the eye of the designer. 10 out of 10 times it is better to send out a well written, well thought out email in black and white, then send out a sub-par email that is fully branded.

If you aren’t using Front Rush to improve the look of your recruiting emails, you’re missing out! It’s one of the things that can really set your communication apart from the crowd. Click here to see what Front Rush can do for you. And, if you need help with the content in your emails, let the messaging experts at Tudor Collegiate Strategies give you a research-based, customized set of text for those emails that will go great with your fantastic looking emails. It’s the best one-two punch in college recruiting!

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7 Ways to Restructure Your Game Recap MessagesMonday, September 5th, 2011

You are probably sending your recruits some information about you and your program that you are really proud of.

And you’re missing a golden opportunity.

Why?

Because they aren’t reading the way you’re hoping (or assuming) they are reading it.

I’m talking about your game and season updates that you send your prospects: You win a big game, and out goes the email with the game summary and recap written by your sports information director, linked to your college website. Your star Senior wins Player of the Week honors, and you link to the story on Facebook. Local T.V. has highlights of your team’s winning play, and you send out the video to your entire prospect list.

And on the other end, your prospects rarely read it. And if they do, they are probably more than a little bored by them.

Here’s why:

According to the feedback and research we’ve done over the years, one of the biggest non-factors in the decision making process for your typical recruit is the regular season update email updates that you send them, primarily because most teenagers aren’t avid readers of news. Especially when it’s written. Studies show that teenagers don’t typically read newspapers, or even any long text articles online.

The bottom line – as sad as it is for me to say as the only person on my block who still stumbles out in his robe every morning to pick-up the morning newspaper – is that today’s generation just doesn’t care that much about your game results, and they certainly don’t want to read articles about something they don’t care that much about.

Which brings us back to those updates that you send your recruits: Are there ways to actually get them engaged with those updates, and get them to care about how your season is going?

We think so. Here are seven ways that we’ve seen coaches improve the way they update their prospects on a regular basis:

Always…ALWAYS…give your summary ahead of the actual article. If you’re going to forward your prospect an article about your team, make sure you give them your take on the outcome before the actual article. One big reason why: First, it’s unlikely they’ll read the actual article. They’ll just rely on your summary, and see the link to the article as proof that you’re view is accurate.
Instead of the article, send a video. After the win (or even a loss) send them a short video from either yourself or a couple of players on your team. Your prospect cares much more about hearing directly from you or their future teammates for a few seconds instead of an article that was in the newspaper.
Print it out and mail it. Would you believe that most prospects read printed articles you send them instead of a link that you send them? It’s true. By the way, when you send them that article, I’d recommend that you highlight a key paragraph that you’d want them to focus on, and add a quick personal note to it.
Limit it to once every two weeks (at the most). The one sure way to wear-out your prospect is to send them your game and season updates every week. Don’t subject them to that. Try to limit updates (even the improved versions we’re suggesting here) to once every two weeks, at the most. It might seem like you’ll be missing a lot, but not to worry…they don’t care that much about your day-to-day operation all that much yet, and they certainly don’t want to have to try to keep up with you on a weekly basis.
Ask a question. In every communication plan we create for our clients, we work hard to make sure that regular communication creates a reaction from the prospect receiving those messages. The same should hold true for your season updates. Try to work in questions with your game updates. Seriously, coach…how cool would it be to get actual reaction from your prospects after they read your updates? (Trust us, it’s a good feeling).
Make your updates shorter rather than longer. If you don’t want to make any of these more in-depth changes, try to drastically shorten the game updates you send your prospects. No more than three paragraphs. Please. And, one of those paragraphs should be a quote from you or one of your players about the game.
Give them a preview of what’s coming next. I’m not talking about your next game. I’m talking about what they need to look for in their mailbox or Inbox from you in the coming days. The worst thing a coach can do is to send out a game update as a stand-alone message. Try to tie it in to your upcoming messages, which is hopefully a part of a complete compelling story that you’re telling them.

There is a better way to send out your game updates, Coach. In fact, you can turn your run-of-the-mill game updates into lead-generating messages that can get your prospects more focused on what you have to offer them.

Need more tools to help you design a more on-target recruiting strategy? There are lots of great resources that college coaches have relied upon for years, and you can get access to them, too. Just click here to take a look at our best selling training DVDs, recruiting guides for coaches, and in-depth research studies.

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How to Use Headlines to Keep Your Prospect’s AttentionSunday, June 12th, 2011

In the give-it-to-me-quick-just-the-facts world that we (and your prospects) live in, what and how you communicate is crucial.

Think about it: How easy it to tune something out that isn’t worded just the way we want it? Or skip reading something that isn’t easy to read visually?

Most recruiting letters and emails we see when we begin working with a new client ignore this common sense rule. And the price to those who send letters that look and sound the same as they did in 1983 is heavy: This generation of athlete will tune out a coach quickly if the message doesn’t match their need for fast, accurate, interesting information.

The fix?

Something they did really well back in the 1930′s: Creative, bold headlines.

No, you don’t want to make your recruiting letters look like an old fashioned newspaper…that’s not what I’m getting at. What I mean is that your text needs some guideposts to keep your reader (the 17 year old impatient kid that you’re trying to recruit) engaged in what you’re saying, and not bailing on your message ten seconds into it.

The best way to do that is to insert a headline every once in a while. A statement, in bold type, to give your reader and idea of where you’re going and what’s in it for them if they stick with you. Something like this:

There are some AMAZING benefits to coaches who write with headlines:

Does that make you want to read more? Does it give you a little taste of what’s to come? Does it create a little bit of curiosity?

That’s the power of a well placed headline.

So, if you think you’d want to start to use these powerful, easy-to-use weapons in the war of attention you’re fighting with your recruits, here are some tips that we see working for the coaches who are beginning to use them:

Try a “How To” Headline. They work. We all want to know how to do something, and if there is one group of people who are looking for how to do something (namely, play college sports) it’s your recruits. Whenever you want to highlight an action you want your prospect to take, start with “how to” to do it.
Give them a promised result. If you are tempting them with a “how to”, don’t stop short…finish it off with a result they can expect once they follow your recommended action. Let them know what will happen next, what they’ll get from it, and why they should follow your direction. It’s critical that you give them an idea of what’s in it for them when you if they stick with you.
Visually, they help guide your readers’ eyes. Headlines in the middle of text will cause your reader to jump down the page and stay engaged with what you’re saying to them. For this generation of teenager, they need all the visual cues they can get to tell them what to do.
We remember headlines. They are a short summary of what we want the reader to know about our topic. If they don’t happen to read your entire message, the headlines have a powerful way of helping them to remember your take-away from that message. That’s really crucial as you fight to get your prospects to remember your message instead of your competition’s.
They break up your message into logical sections. Not only does that help your prospect “digest” your message more easily, we find that it helps coaches stay on topic and keep their message simple and on point. So, if you’re a coach that struggles with what to write, this trick should help you to stay on topic.

So, what should you do next? Simple…

Take a current recruiting message and break it up into sections. Then, add a quick ”headline” to each of those sections. If you find that it’s too long of a message, or jumps around from topic to topic, break it up into shorter, multiple messages.

Take a fresh look at your overall recruiting message using this proven, easy-to-use strategy. The result should be a more engaged, interested recruit reading – and understanding – your letter or email.

Are you one of the growing number of college coaches that use Twitter to promote you and your program? We have a bonus article to give you…it’s all about writing the right headlines when you tweet on Twitter. All you have to do is click here, “Like” our Facebook fan page, and get these great tips for carving out your place in the Twitterverse.

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4 Easy Ways to Get Your Recruiting Message ReadMonday, May 2nd, 2011

Over the years, we’ve focused a lot on the negative aspects of recruiting.

What not to do.

Today, we’re staying positive. We’re focusing on your recruiting letters and emails, and how to get your prospects to pay more attention to them. Because the more effective you are in your writing, the better you’ll be able to tell your unique story to your recruits.

Why? Like it or not, the first step in the entire recruiting process usually starts with a written message from a coach. So, it’s important for coaches to take the subject seriously.

Even more compelling? Our studies show that a recruit will most often draw their initial picture of a coach and program that starts to recruit them through the letters and email messages that they receive.

So, see if you can apply these proven tips to your recruiting messages to get more meaningful response from your recruits:

Write your letter and email copy like a website. How do you look at a website? If you’re like nearly 80% of the country, according to a recent study, you ‘scan’ websites for information. Do your letters and emails have the same look and feel of a website? If not, you’re not taking advantage of our society’s new way of looking for (and finding) information. Your recruiting letters need to look, sound and “feel” different than they probably do now.
Ask a lot of questions. What we find in our research is that this generation of student-athlete is that they need you to ask them questions. Even if they don’t answer every one of them, they will actively engage with you in their mind. Eventually, they stand a better chance of replying to you and taking the next step in the recruiting process. Make sure you ask them questions. Lots and lots of really good questions.
Use bullets. Bullet points break up ideas into easy-to-read chunks that let your prospect ‘scan’ your message more effectively. It’s easier on our eyes, and is one of the ways we like to drive home the main points we want our client’s prospects to understand. That’s what we’re doing here with this numbered list…see how it helps you take in the information we’re presenting?
Be bold and use bold. Bold type is another way to set your ideas in motion with your recruits. We see a lot of coaching letters that coaches write with bold type in a traditional place…usually at the beginning of a sentence or main idea. Nothing wrong with that. It’s better than nothing. But if you really want to interrupt your prospect’s train of thought, try bold face type at the end of a main idea. That way, they’ll have to re-read what you were talking about before the bold face type, which further engages your reader.

Those are four very easy, very effective ways to re-capture the attention of your recruits when they get one of your envelopes or open one of your emails. Your homework: Take just one of your tired, old messages and apply these four techniques. See if it looks and sounds more like something one of your recruits might want to read and (more importantly) want to respond to.

Getting your recruiting messages read should be Goal #1 of any serious college recruiter. Make sure you re-tool your approach as soon as possible, Coach!

One month and counting to our biggest and best conference ever, the 2011 National Collegiate Recruiting Conference in Nashville, Tennessee on June 3rd through 5th. If you haven’t made your plans to be there, hurry! Our block of heavily discounted on-site hotel rooms are almost gone, and the deadline for registration is approaching fast. Just click here for all the information and to register for this Summer’s NCRC!

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Fascinating New Research on How to Effectively Email Your ProspectsMonday, March 28th, 2011

Our latest round of research is in, and it contains some really fascinating details on how your prospects are now using email in their regular communication with the coaches who are recruiting them.

Among the highlights of our most recent findings:

About 55% of today’s student-athletes that are actively being recruited by a college coach check their email daily, which is up by 20% compared to two years ago.
One of the key reasons for that increase? A rapidly growing number of college prospects now use web-enabled smart phones (iPhones, Androids, and others) that have their emails tied to their phones. So, it’s easier for them to answer your email message than it was just two years ago, when most of them would have to log-in to an email account from a home or school computer.
One of the most interesting aspects to this most recent study: While a clear majority found email to be the most convenient way to communicate with a college coach, a surprising 71% said that receiving a letter or personal note from a coach was seen as more influential and “important”, in their eyes. That’s up by about 20% than just a short time ago when we last tracked that question.
One thing was unchanged: 83% said that the number of contacts from a particular coach wasn’t as important as what they said in their message, and how consistently they sent that message.

The rest of the study is reserved for our use in creating our client’s messages, but here’s what I see as a few of the practical applications that any coach, at almost any level, could use to communicate with their prospects given this most recent research that we’ve gathered:

Make sure you’re consistent. It gives you the best chance of hearing back from the athlete, because it tells them that you’re serious about them and are willing to invest the time to reach out to them.

Change up the type of email message you’re using. If your last one was informational, make the next one a little less formal, and make the next one all about them and then ask them a question that would prompt a reply. Changing your message regularly is important…it prevents your communication from looking like the same type of message over and over (and over) again.

If your initial messages are getting ignored, be patient. If you’ve read our second workbook, “What They Didn’t Teach You About Recruiting”, you’ll remember that it often takes weeks and weeks – sometimes several months – before an athlete chooses to respond to a message from a coach they are hearing from for the first time. I find that many coaches give up way too soon after not hearing from a prospect immediately. In my experience, they’re hurting themselves and giving their opponents (the coaches who stick with it!) an easy win for the services of that recruit.

There’s another big piece of advice I want to offer you…but I’ll post that on our Facebook fan page. Get it by clicking here.

A lot of coaches are mystified as to why their emails aren’t being opened, read and responded to by their prospects. It’s not a mystery…they’ll do it if it looks and feels right, and if it talks to them in a way that they’re used to.

Try this: Take one or two of these principles and try to apply it to the next email you send a prospect. I’ll bet you’ll start to see a difference in the response you get quickly! If you have additional questions, or want me to take a look at what you’re planning, just email me at dan@dantudor.com.

Effective email practices are one of the cornerstones of any solid recruiting campaign. If you’re looking for more tips and techniques that you may not be using properly, add our two recruiting workbooks for college coaches to your office library. We outline plenty of proven strategies and findings that you can use to increase the level of communication with your prospect list. Click here for all the information.

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More Ideas on Incorporating Headlines Into Your Recruiting MessageMonday, November 15th, 2010

If you believe that the principle of using headlines in your recruiting message makes sense, but you don’t know how exactly you’d incorporate those concepts into your letters and emails, I wanted to pass along some ideas to help you get started:

Make your headline ask a question or promise something.
Use your email subject line as your headline to readers…and be creative. Don’t type a subject line that blandly says “State University Baseball”. Make the reader curious about what’s waiting inside your message to them if they click on it.
It’s o.k. to use multiple headlines throughout your message. Try using them to headline key thoughts every paragraph or two.
Make your headline bold face, and have the font size just a little bit bigger than the main body of your text.
Ask a question.
Promise something.
Make them curious.
Make a bold claim, and then work on proving it to them.

Headlines are an effective tool to inspire and direct your reader – your prospects – to follow your story and engage in your line of conversation. Make sure they’re creative, engaging and focused on the athlete.

If you need help, just email me at dan@dantudor.com. We’re here to help.

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Using Headlines to Captivate Your ProspectMonday, November 15th, 2010

Is it possible to get a prospect to read a LOT of information about your program and school?

Maybe…if you have a headline like the one I found while tumbing through a magazine on an airplane earlier this week.

Here it is:

The headline is brilliant: “It is against international law to force prisoners of war to read this entire ad”.

The rest of the text? It’s more than 1,000 words talking about how a virus software works, and why I needed to buy it. Why did I read it all? Mainly because I was trying to figure out how they were going to tie-in the whole prisoner of war thing with the oh-so-exciting world of software utilities.

They never did. The headline stood on it’s own, and achieved it’s desired purpose: I can now tell you more than most other human beings can about software virus protection. I read the whole thing.

Here’s why this great advertising principle – and the 10 minutes of my life I sacrificed reading this two-page ad for our loyal readers – can offer some important recruiting lessons for your next series of emails or prospect letters:

We love headlines. Headlines tell us whether or not we should read something or not. Whether it’s a newspaper article or a post on the internet, we look for headlines to answer some immediate questions for us.

We like to be puzzled. The thing about the headline in the advertisement I showed you above is that it hits you out of the blue. The phrase isn’t something we read everyday, but we know enough about the subject (forcing prisoners of war to do something that’s against international law) to wonder what the rest of the small-print text says. In a world of ordinary, something out of left field really catches our attention.

The visual layout matters. Look at the two-page ad again. Notice how all the print is taking up literally the entire page? Most of the time, I’d advise against that. But the designers of this ad take “too much text” to the ridiculous extreme. It stands out because visually it breaks too many rules to ignore.

Asking the reader to take action helps it to all pay off. If the headline grabs their attention, and the layout puzzles your prospect and draws them in, you need to take advantage of their attention and ask them to take action. A call to you, and email giving you a piece of informaiton…something. “Static information”, as I refer to letters that only give a reader information and no way to get involved and take action, does very little to further the recruiting process. Ask your prospect to take action. A good headline is a start, but it’s only a small part of an effective message that resonates with your prospect.

Take a look at your letters and emails that you’ve been sending out lately. Can you find a way to add an effective headline to draw your reader in and tell your story effectively by giving them some headlines to help guide them into your message?

Knowing how to communicate with your prospect is key to effectively recruiting them. Our special research study, “Inside the Mind of Your College Prospect”, unlocks the secrets of what today’s high school prospect really want from the coach who is recruiting them – including what they want to read in letters or emails that you send them. It’s information you need to know, coach. Click here for more information.

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Writing Recruiting Email Subject Lines That Get ClickedWednesday, September 1st, 2010

What emails do you decide to open every morning?

How do you make that decision?

Be honest…do you judge each email by the subject line?

I’ll bet the answer is “yes”. Most of us do. It’s a quick and easy way to make a snap judgement on what to spend time reading, and what to wait on and read later (eventually to be deleted without being read, more than likely).

The same type of decision making takes place every time one of your highly recruited prospects goes to his or her email Inbox and finds messages waiting. Which ones do they read? Which ones to they not pay attention to?

Just like you, it often comes down to the subject line.

So, what makes a great subject line? There are a few key questions that savvy college coaches should make sure are answered in future emails:

Is it useful to the prospect who is reading it?
Is it specific and direct?
Is it remarkable in the way it’s worded?
Is it urgent?

Let’s go through each one of these principles step by step:

First, focus on useful and ultra-specific as a coach who is contacting a recruit, even if you have to ignore unique and urgent. There are plenty of others who work at unique and urgent with every subject line — we call them spammers. Don’t cross the line into subject lines that are perceived as garbage. But do throw in a bit of a tease.

Secondly, when every email from you is urgent, none is. At least thats the way most recruits view it. Use urgency when it’s actually useful, such as when there’s a real deadline or compelling reason to contact you now about an opportunity with your program. If you’re running your email recruiting based on developing a relationship and talking about things that today’s recruits are really interested in, recruits won’t want to miss out and need to know how much time they have to get back to you.

Lastly, subject line space is valuable…there’s a limited amount you have for your subject line. So, the more compact your subject line, the better. Don’t forget useful and ultra-specific, but try to compress the fundamentals into the most powerful promise possible.

Two final things I want you to understand about the way prospects treat emails from coaches:

When your email goes to their Inbox, that’s sacred ground. You’re showing up in their home, on their computer, and in their life. Be aware that emailing a prospect is usually the first chance they’ll have to interact with you. Don’t waste this valuable opportunity to connect with them.
Your email may also increase their stress level. Make sure you use this opportunity to be a coach who comes alongside your recruit and offer help, and your expertise about manuevering through the complicated maze of recruiting.

Email gives you an incredible opportunity, Coach. And it all starts with an effective subject line in your email to your prospects.

Now is the time to schedule Dan Tudor to come and speak at your college this year. Our On-Campus Workshop has criss-crossed the country since 2006, training hundreds of coaches and athletic departments on more effective ways to recruit this generation of prospects (as well as their parents and their coaches). Get the details by emailing Dan directly at dan@sellingforcoaches.com with the subject line, “Let’s hear more about you coming to campus!” We’ll respond with all the details.

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The Most Two Most Important Things Your Recruiting Letter or Email Should DoMonday, August 16th, 2010

I ask it often when I’m in front of coaches when we’re leading a workshop on their campus…

“What do you want a letter or email to your prospect to do?” Or, to put it another way, “What do you want the result to be?”

Here are the answers I hear most often:

“I want to see if they’re interested in us.”
“I want to tell them what we have to offer here.”
“I try to make them feel special and tell them how much we like them.”

All good answers. However, there’s an even better strategy that we’ve found to work great over the years. For those coaches who have signed on as clients, they see this strategy being used on a regular basis with great success.

It’s a strategy that is simple: When we create a message that will go to a recruit, we want them to reply to that message, and we want it to set up the next message.

Let’s breakdown each of those strategies, and why they are vital to your recruiting results when it comes to generating an effective recruiting campaign through the mail or electronically:

Get the reply. The point of a letter and email should not be to sell your program, or convince a prospect to choose your school based on what’s written in one letter. The focus of each of your written communications should be to generate a reply from your prospect. Most likely, that will be in the form of an email or a phone call. Why is a reply so important as your primary goal? Simple: You aren’t going to be able to ”sell” your program until a prospect feels like he or she can be comfortable interacting with you.
Set up the next message. One of the most stark facts we gathered in our research study on how today’s prospect makes their final decision was the importance of the prospect knowing what to do next in the process. When you send a prospect a letter or email, make sure that you let them know what’s coming next. In other words, a letter that goes out next week should set up an expectation that another message is following in the coming days after. They should be expecting the next step, not wondering when it will come…and the only way to do that is to very clearly spell out the steps that you are taking in the process.

It’s important to establish this system as early in the recruiting process as possible. As many of you get ready to begin written contact with a new Junior class, make sure your letters and emails include these two important elements.

If you include them, and they are structured correctly, you’ll get results and response that exceed your expectations.

Did you know that you can get expert assistance in creating a focused, results-oriented recruiting plan for this upcoming recruiting year? The pros here at Tudor Collegiate Strategies, lead by nationally recognized recruiting expert Dan Tudor, can revise your current recruiting messages, develop a new plan and messages, and assist you with your top prospects on an ongoing basis.

If you’d like to learn more, just email Dan Tudor at dan@sellingforcoaches.com with the subject line “Tell me more about becoming a client” and we’ll outline exactly how we work with a coach and their program, and why so many other programs choose to bring us in as a part of their program’s recruiting staff.

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Dan Tudor

One Stupid Thing College Coaches Do To Depress Their New ProspectsTuesday, November 1st, 2011

The Right “One-Two Punch” for Your Recruiting EmailsSunday, October 9th, 2011

7 Ways to Restructure Your Game Recap MessagesMonday, September 5th, 2011

4 Easy Ways to Get Your Recruiting Message ReadMonday, May 2nd, 2011

Fascinating New Research on How to Effectively Email Your ProspectsMonday, March 28th, 2011

More Ideas on Incorporating Headlines Into Your Recruiting MessageMonday, November 15th, 2010

Using Headlines to Captivate Your ProspectMonday, November 15th, 2010

Writing Recruiting Email Subject Lines That Get ClickedWednesday, September 1st, 2010

The Most Two Most Important Things Your Recruiting Letter or Email Should DoMonday, August 16th, 2010

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Dan Tudor

One Stupid Thing College Coaches Do To Depress Their New ProspectsTuesday, November 1st, 2011

The Right “One-Two Punch” for Your Recruiting EmailsSunday, October 9th, 2011

7 Ways to Restructure Your Game Recap MessagesMonday, September 5th, 2011

How to Use Headlines to Keep Your Prospect’s AttentionSunday, June 12th, 2011

4 Easy Ways to Get Your Recruiting Message ReadMonday, May 2nd, 2011

Fascinating New Research on How to Effectively Email Your ProspectsMonday, March 28th, 2011

More Ideas on Incorporating Headlines Into Your Recruiting MessageMonday, November 15th, 2010

Using Headlines to Captivate Your ProspectMonday, November 15th, 2010

Writing Recruiting Email Subject Lines That Get ClickedWednesday, September 1st, 2010

The Most Two Most Important Things Your Recruiting Letter or Email Should DoMonday, August 16th, 2010

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Archives