Comments on: Why Do Schools Suck At Marketing?

By: Damian

Damian — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:15:21 +0000

I am in college and I receive many e-mails from my High School that just fill up my inbox with information that I will never even look at because I know it is just a mass message and. They teach us from day one in our classes not to make mistakes like this. When sending out a cover letter you need to personalize it for the person who is going to read it. Sending out the same cover letter to different employers does not pass the “eye test” of whether or not to even read it.

By: Kelly Watkins

Kelly Watkins — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:10:49 +0000

I called alumni for four years to solicit for donations, and we do our best to try and engage them in information they’re interested in. However, sometimes certain departments/organizations don’t keep us up to date with information (or give us no information at all) which is frustrating especially when an alum was really involved with something very specific.

It also seems that by now schools would have figured out for ways to limit the amount of “junk” they send to alumni. I can’t believe they don’t have an option for you to opt out of the e-mails though, that seems shady on their part.

By: Dale Hanover

Dale Hanover — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 03:36:34 +0000

As a School marketer, I was also interested in your post.

Remember that Schools are not huge multi-national companies and the marketers they employ are second or even third tier. The good ones are snapped up by those companies who can afford to pay $200K.

Although there is no excuse for spray and pray emails these days, we are all guilty of it and, if we had the infrastructure and the manpower (most school marketing departments are departments of one) we would do it better.

By: Kelli Helms

Kelli Helms — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 22:28:24 +0000

I completely agree. The people in the Communications area at schools just do not put forth enough effort in order to prevent mistakes such as this. The e-mails should be specific to the people being sent to, instead of sending a personalized e-mail out to all those involved, or have been involved in the past. The most important concept I have learned in one of my journalism classes is to NOT let a mistake like this ever happen; such as with sending out cover letters and personalizing resumes to the job applying for.

By: Craig Cowbrough

Craig Cowbrough — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:27:04 +0000

I think it is a classic marketing example of the tail leading the nose. If such organsiations would bother to find out what alumini wanted to hear, how they wanted to hear it and how often then everyone would be whole lot better off. Why not offer them some marketing comms advice in lieu of cash donation? It would work out for them all the better in the long run.