5 wishes from current students about email communications

A university’s communications can make or break its relationship with its students.

But keeping in contact with your students can be a difficult task, and emails are particularly challenging. How can you avoid your important messages sitting in their inboxes unopened forever?

We asked some current students what would encourage them to open – and read – emails from their university.

Keep your content simple

“I like emails, but only when they are concise.”

Students are busy with lectures, essay deadlines, society activities and socialising. Reading lengthy communications from their university is not something that features in their schedules.

Therefore, it’s important to keep things concise. Don’t make students work for the message you want them to receive. Keep it short, to the point and with one clear call to action. Anything else will be put to the bottom of their long to-do list.

Highlight all of the opportunities on offer

“I love my university social media, as we get weekly updates about the top opportunities on offer that week.”

Students want to experience as much as they possibly can while studying at your university. For some, that may be visiting every bar within a mile of campus, but for most this also includes taking advantage of on-campus opportunities.

So show off everything you have to offer to students, from sports and work experience placements, to eating options and even part-time jobs.

Keep them up to date

“Sometimes I feel like I have no idea what is going on around campus or on my course as communication is so unclear.”

A recurring issue students reported to us was that their university wasn’t keeping them up to date. It is crucial to make sure that students feel in the loop about major developments, and this is even more important in the unfortunate situation that a crisis unfolds. 

Create a clear summary

Many students felt that the range of different emails they received was confusing. One student suggested:

“I think a summary each week would really help to make communication more clear.”

Rather than sending multiple emails with different messages and calls to action, consider coordinating across departments to send them a single roundup with everything they need to know for the week.

Think mobile

“Sometimes I can’t read emails from university on my phone, so I have to go on to my laptop”

Students are constantly on the go and many will be consuming your content – whether that’s emails, social media or online teaching tools – on their mobile. Always check that your content will display clearly on a phone, thinking about screen size too.

If you are struggling to get students to engage with your content, we can help. Whether you need to understand your audience more, get some help with content creation or just have a chat about where to go next, get in touch.