Joe Gaylor is a photographer who specializes in photography for Higher Education Recruitment– “viewbooks and other admissions recruitment publications” if we want to be a little bit more specific. Obviously someone to be a little wary of, but my suspicion was tempered by his assurances that “We try and get the real natural look at what happens on campus, not staged or phoney.” Sadly, I never received materials from any of the schools Gaylor has done work for, (many: see his website!) so I could never check the final results of his work, but from the shots I saw on his website I have to agree that they seemed pretty authentic.

A little bit ago Joe asked me for my thoughts about general university practices on viewbooks etc and I told him that I kept everything significant, in terms of mail, that I’ve received and have been able to protect from my parents’ wishes to fill the recycling bin. That’s why you’ll see mention of a school’s promotional materials as I talk about them in the months to come.

In any case, I got another e-mail yesterday.
Joe asks:

OK, I have a quick question for you… In terms of importance between web and print marketing material, where do you stand and think schools should be doing? Should they do away with print? Should they scale back on print and focus on web? Should web be first line of contact and then strengthen position with print? Just curious as to what you think…

I started typing a response right then, but stopped realizing that this really needed a lot of pondering and consultation. This is a very big question, which I think I will address in multiple posts. The base question is “quick” but answering that opens up Pandora’s box. I’ve decided to try to first explain my own thought process when I receive either a piece of mail or something new to fill my inbox. This is both a compare / contrast and a “limitations / liabilities” of each medium, to some extent. So here are the top three things I ask, which I think are necessary to understand before I answer the print / web question:

1. “How much thought went into making this?” That’s the first thing I ask myself when I get something. This is why thin envelopes filled with nothing but bland “please consider” form letters are used as coasters and never make it to my “keep for later” pile. It’s also why I delete on sight most of those summer school e-mails. If you got my name from the Student Search service and make that fact painfully obvious, don’t expect me to consider your 25 cent investment in my contact information hugely indicative of your interest in me. Likewise, just because you e-mail me five times after I don’t respond to your first form e-mail asking me to “please request” something, doesn’t mean I’m going to care any more about it the sixth time.

Take this line, from an e-mail Williams sent me last february: “Samuel, I’m worried you didn’t receive my previous email or the letter I mailed to you.” Actually, I did–and if I didn’t, sending things to the same address over and over again won’t help me or you. Are you trying to distinguish yourself from other schools by delivering so much mail that I finally break down, stop, and reply in the hopes of halting the unending torrent? I’m not directing that at Williams–that’s at most schools. Untargeted e-mail does not catch my eye! I consider it spam which I happened to opt into. This is why I had a folder on my e-mail called “College Spam,” and that is where I put all of these e-mails until there one day became so many that I stopped bothering with it all together and simply sent them straight to the trash from the inbox.

Letters can be held in your hand (duh), which gives them a certain cachet which e-mail doesn’t have. A frequent letter-writer myself, I know the value of the written word. That worth diminishes a little bit when it is printed and sent third class mail. Even so, everyone likes to receive a letter (or postcard). That’s why my dog gets excited when he gets credit card offers. Letters cost more to send than e-mails, and I recognize that fact when I see something in the (real) mailbox.

At the same time, that’s why I expect a certain level of professionalism and information in e-mails that I might not on a little postcard. I understand that not everyone sends HTML mail because it might harm someone’s precious plaintext-only inbox, but that “someone” is not young enough to be applying to college. Whatever the flashiness of the e-mail, I don’t like little one-liners imploring me to do something because of my “demonstrated academic prowess.” If it feels like a human wrote it, rather than a PR drone, I’m going to be more inclined to read it: If it was important enough for someone to sit down and write something significant, it might be worth my while. If someone typed up some tripe one-handedly while drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, well, I can’t make any guarantees. I am hugely more likely to read anything that is delivered to me by US mail for many reasons, namely the simple fact that in the year 2006, surface mail seems somewhat nostalgic to teenagers.

2. “Does this target me as an individual?” As I said above, I first ask myself how much effort went into the production of whatever I’m looking at. I don’t throw away anything without looking at it, but that’s just out of respect for the people who did work to make whatever it is that came that day. “Diamonds in the rough” doesn’t seem to usually apply to cheap mail. If I’m going to be mass-mailed, I would at least hope that the barest effort to custom-tailor that message is made. My name is a good start; details about me help, too. That’s why I smile particularly when I read letters about multicultural programs or anything from the “director of minority recruitment” or similar title: it seems pretty obvious that I’m being targeted for these letters because of my self-reported biracial-ness. It makes me feel important and special if I’m contacted. If you contact my address it’s not going to pay very much attention, and it’s not applying to college anyways.

Here’s one of my biggest pet peeves: schools that contact me with introductory mailings when I’ve already clearly expressed interest–sometimes in more than one way. “Learn more about X University?” yes please, that’s why I’m on your mailing list and signed up at the college fair–now send me something meaty, rather than lame offers to “win an iPod!” It warmed my heart to see Wesleyan put this at the bottom of an e-mail they sent a long time ago based on Student Search Service names: “P.S. We did our best to limit this e-mailing to students in our Student Search Service database who had not yet inquired about Wesleyan; we apologize if we included you in error.” Yet there are some schools so eager to contact students that they seem to have decided it was best to just play the lowest common denominator game in terms of contacting us. If you want me as an applicant, do your best to treat me as an applicant, rather than a number. Easy enough, I hope.

3. “Does this offer compelling information?” I got a postcard last week from Colgate. There was nothing particularly wrong with it, but there was nothing particularly right about it, either. On the reverse: Some random information about the school and a snippet about visiting: the latter is useful, since I haven’t visited yet (although I don’t plan to, either…). I turn to the other side, and what do I see? A human skeleton. It’s a model hanging in a science classroom. “Wow,” I think to myself. “Colgate must be a lot of fun!” That’s not what I thought, but you can imagine my reaction at seeing a picture of a human skull mailed to me. “A great way to spend four years” was not my first thought.

Take note that in this context, “compelling” could be “whimsical.” What I ask is whether or not this is something worth reading. An interesting or revealing fact about the school is welcome information; information about the nursing program when I only expressed interest in political science is not. The saying “know your audience” could be good advice for some of these marketers, as with that Colgate postcard. If you don’t send me something which is interesting, why should I read it? Contrived marketing ploys–”Did you know our school was ranked #3 for best lasagna sandwiches in the mid-atlantic region?” need not apply.