DUKE UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS
“Please Apply” Campaign
Campaign Strategy · Audience Strategy · Email Marketing · Copywriting · CRM
College-bound students receive a staggering amount of email. So when you're communicating with an audience of 100,000–130,000 prospective students, getting into the inbox is only the beginning. You have to earn their attention once you get there.
Writing for where students are
Our prospective students are at different stages of the enrollment funnel. Some are just beginning to explore Duke; others are seriously considering whether to apply.
Rather than treating that audience as one giant mailing list, our communications consider where students are in their college search and what might be useful, interesting, or unexpected enough to make them engage.
I like to keep messages around 250 words. Students are busy, colleges are competing for their attention, and another 1,000-word marketing email probably isn't doing anyone any favors.
We design for both desktop and mobile, with clear hierarchy, concise copy, strong imagery, scannable content, and an obvious next step.
And sometimes, you lead with puppies.
One of my favorite messages had a very sophisticated subject line: PUPPIES!
It was playful, unexpected, and intentionally designed to stand out in a crowded inbox. But the puppies weren't just clickbait.
The message introduced prospective students to Duke’s Canine Cognition Center, using something immediately engaging as an entry point into a larger story about research, academics, animal behavior, and undergraduate opportunities.
That balance gets at one of my favorite questions in enrollment marketing:
What gets someone's attention—and what do we do with that attention once we have it?
Bringing Search in-house
My work on prospective-student communications also led to a bigger question: could we rethink how we were building and engaging our audience in the first place?
I proposed bringing more of our student Search strategy in-house rather than relying as heavily on outside services.
The shift significantly reduced costs while giving our team greater ownership of audience strategy, segmentation, messaging, and campaign development. It also created a stronger connection between who we wanted to reach, where they were in the enrollment funnel, and what we chose to say to them.
What I lead
Campaign Strategy
Enrollment funnel · Audience strategy · Message planning · Campaign sequencing
Writing + Creative
Copywriting · Subject lines · Storytelling · Content development · Creative direction
Email + CRM
Slate CRM · Segmentation · Personalization · Responsive design · Campaign implementation
Measurement + Optimization
Click engagement · Audience behavior · Desktop + mobile experience
Search Strategy
Audience acquisition · In-house strategy · Process development · Cost savings