Make Sure Email is the Best Way to Reach Your Audience
- How many other emails will the student receive on this day? Steer clear of sending more than one email per day. Check in with the Student Communications team!
- Consider if the message is best conveyed through email, SMS, MyDCE announcement, or HAT. For example, the “Reminder [First Name]: Balance Due” SMS short code pilot message had a 100% success rate in getting students to pay their balance.
Pay attention to (short) attention spans
- Keep it short and sweet (200 words or less). Be mindful of your reader’s crowded inbox and if they need further information, link to a webpage.
- Use a single call to action (consider a button!) or create a checklist in the body of the email using bullet points when students need to follow multiple steps.
- Use paragraph breaks generously. Large blocks of text can be intimidating. Consider which example looks more visually inviting:
Version A
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Version B
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.
It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Write With Inclusion in Mind
- Avoid jargon. Consider if your audience is familiar with terms, acronyms, etc. If necessary, spell out or define words on the first reference, for example, The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) hosts the student portal called MyDCE.
- Speak globally. Culturally or regionally specific messages may not resonate with all audiences (for example, Happy Thanksgiving 🦃).
Accessibility is Critical!
- Use a legible font and font size. Simple, sans-serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica are great options; and your font size should never be smaller than 12 points.
- Consider your color contrast. For the easiest reading experience, use dark text on a light background, or light text on a dark background.
- All images should be paired with alt text. Briefly describe the purpose of the image and include any text on the image itself.
Alt Text: Harvard’s Memorial Church with grand columns and hanging banners displaying Harvard shields.
Take Steps to Stand Out in the Inbox
- Make your subject line a call to action — keep it brief (10 words or less) and expectation-focused (consider how you’d title a paper in a research journal, i.e., Topic + Key Takeaway/Hook = 5 Keys to Email Success: What to Do Right Now).
- Consider using brackets in your subject line to call attention to key info, for example, [Deadline Approaching].
- Think of the pre-header as a teaser for the information you’ll get inside the email, for example, The deadline is Tuesday, February 21 at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.
Bonus! Your Easy Guide to Images
- Email headers should be sized to 650 x 180 pixels.
- Images within the email body should be sized to 650 x 200 pixels or 200 x 200 pixels.
- JPG is the preferred file format for images to load quickly.
