My son is a high school junior who recently took the PSAT, so he’s receiving a ton of prospecting mail from colleges. The other night we went through a stack of these direct mail packs, and it was interesting to see his reactions.
There was a lot of good stuff. Overall, the colleges did a strong job of presenting what makes them unique, and if it’s not a good match for my high school student there’s no fault to either side. But he had a couple of interesting comments from which lessons can be learned.
A couple of colleges disqualified themselves for consideration with cut-rate production. Here’s a college he’s never heard of, and you send him a solicitation that looks like you’re operating on a shoestring, and out you go into the discard pile. Lesson: be aware of the competitive environment in which your solicitation is viewed. If you really can’t afford a professional photographer and designer, maybe a heart felt letter from the president, in laser addressed envelope, is the way to go.
And, a good third of the schools wanted my student to continue the dialog by going to a special web page and logging in with his name and password. This is Gen-X, or even Baby Boomer, marketing: assuming people will feel special because you’ve gone to the trouble to set up a “personal web page”. My millennial found it laughable. Passwords and user names are for World of Warcraft and a discussion of them usually leads to how you have been hacked. He also drew amusement from how he was “gmaxwell” on some college sites but maybe “gmaxwell3” on others and wondered if that meant he was less desirable to the latter.
To me, the best of the bunch was a completely non personalized self mailer from Carleton College with body copy that started: “Nice work on the PSAT!” Do they have access to his score? No matter. Why not assume the best about him and give him a compliment he may or may not deserve?