Your Emails Need To Be Shorter, Not Longer

By Jeremy Tiers, Senior Director of Admissions Services

2 minute read

What you say matters, especially when it comes to educating prospective students and parents about the different parts of the student experience on your campus.

Same thing goes when you’re trying to get them to visit campus, sign up for a virtual event, or finish their incomplete application.

If you want to get (and keep) their attention, the length of your message matters.

With this generation, we continue to find that getting to the point gets your email remembered. Remember, text messaging and DMs are the primary way that young people communicate in 2021.

Shorter is what they’re used to.

Adding in a bunch of “fluff” and multiple calls to action not only makes your email longer than it needs to be, it will also decrease the chance of any action being taken, and it will feel less personal.

Take my advice: More often than not, you need to make your emails shorter, not longer.

Here are five tips to help you do that:

1. Set a time limit whenever you write an email. For me, it’s 10-15 minutes max per message. Say what you want to say, connect the dots for the reader, and then move on. The longer it takes you to write your email, the more likely you are to edit, revise it multiple times, and make it way too formal sounding.
2. In your next message, consider picking up where you left off in the previous message.
3. Stick with one main point or topic. You don’t need to tell them everything at once. You just need to tell them enough to get their attention, create curiosity, or create a conversation with you. Plus, if you want a student or parent to remember a key theme or point you’re trying to make, not having multiple value points on a topic or multiple ideas for the reader is important.
4. Visually, include lots of white space with short paragraphs. We read things that are easy on our eyes. The look of your message matters a lot to this generation.
5. At the end of your email, have one clear call to action. Tell the reader what you want them to do (reply back with an answer to your question, choose a date to visit campus, etc.), then sign off.

If you want to talk more about something I said, hit reply or email me here.

And if you found this article helpful, forward it to someone else in your campus community who could also benefit from reading it.