About HubSpot Emails
Maricopa Community Colleges uses HubSpot’s Email tool to engage with prospective students, applicants, enrolled students, and alumni. From encouraging students to complete the application process, promoting programs, offering information about scholarships, or sharing key updates on student services, this tool allows us to personalize and tailor content to ensure each message resonates with our audiences.
🏆 Email Best Practices
Send Emails to the Right Lists
Creating the correct list to send an email ensures the right messages reach the right people. Creating and segmenting the proper email list is a crucial first step in crafting effective email campaigns. See our Knowledge Base article on Lists.
Ensure Proper Email Branding
Following our brand standards in email marketing is essential because it ensures consistency, professionalism, and recognition across all communications.
District Marketing, in collaboration with college marketing teams, has created many templates for your use, which can save your team time by eliminating the need for branding, design, coding, and user experience setup from scratch.
Write Meaningful Copy
The body of your email should be consistent with your institution's voice, whether formal, friendly, or academic. Use the Maricopa Community Colleges editorial style guide to create proper and consistent writing.
Stick to one main topic, such as an upcoming event, application deadlines, or new program announcements.
Tailor your email content based on the recipient's specific interests, program of study, or lifecycle stage in the admissions process.
Create an Engaging Subject Line and Preview
Use clear, actionable, and enticing subject lines. Ensure they align with the body of the email and are personalized when possible.
The preview text is the snippet of text that appears next to or below the subject line in an email inbox, providing a brief summary of the content. It is the first piece of information recipients see after the subject line and plays a crucial role in the email's open rate and engagement.
Use Images That Resonate With Your Audience
Choose high-quality, optimized images that look great on any device. Images of campus, student life, or recent events help capture attention and create visually engaging emails.
Use Calls-to-Action (CTA)
A well-crafted CTA is crucial in any email. It eliminates confusion, providing a clear, direct path for the recipient to follow. Whether it's applying for a program, signing up for a campus tour, or registering for an event, the CTA needs to clearly define the action you want the recipient to take.
CTAs are also important in that the create email engagement, which promotes Click Rates and Click-Through Rates (CTR), both of which are essential to HubSpot’s email health.
Time Your Emails Correctly
According to studies, emails sent on Tuesday at 11 a.m. have the highest response rates. For colleges, consider timing emails around essential events like admissions deadlines, enrollment periods, or mid-semester updates.
đź’» Watch Our Video on Emails
https://vimeo.com/1023432952?share=copy
đź“„ Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating and Managing Emails
 Access Email Templates
Access Your College’s Email Templates
To see your college’s emails in HubSpot, navigate to Marketing > Email.
If you cannot see emails or do not have access to create them, you will need to reach out to your college enrollment and marketing teams for permission.
Here, you will see the emails already in place for your college. If you have questions about existing emails in the system, contact your local college Marketing department for clarification. In general, District Marketing and your college marketing team have collaborated on your college’s emails, so these will have consistent branding, proper formatting, and compliance.
 Build a New Email
Build a New Email
Navigate to Marketing > Email.
Clone an existing email to ensure consistency with branding and compliance. To do this, locate an email with a layout and design that suits your needs, hover over the email title, and select the Clone button that will appear off to the right.
Next, you will select your college, which HubSpot refers to as a “Business Unit.” You will also need to choose whether you want this email to be a Regular or Automated email. A Regular email cannot be used in workflows for email automation, meaning it can only be sent to existing lists. An Automated email, on the other hand, is dynamic and can be sent as users are added to lists that exist in workflows. You can change the email type in the editing phase, though not after an email has been published.
Change the name of your email, as it will inherit the name of the email you cloned.
Emails in HubSpot work off drag-and-drop elements. On the left, there are various options, shown as icons, that you can drag directly into the email builder, such as image, text, and button, among others.
When images are uploaded to an email these images are stored under Library > Files. This folder is one that is shared amongst all of the colleges. In order to help others keep track of their images, please name your images starting with your college acronym or move them once uploaded into your college specific folder.
Once you add elements, HubSpot uses standard word processing tools to format your message.
You can also add personalization tokens to your email. For example, if you would like to reference a student’s name in the greeting, you can select Personalize. Then on the "Insert Token" window, select "Contact" and then the "First Name" token
When using tokens, be sure to include a “Fallback Value” to be used if the email recipient’s information is not available.
 Configure Email Settings and Send
Before sending your email, you will also need to go into the Settings tab to choose your email settings.
Here, you need to indicate the From Name, the From Address, the Subject line, the Preview Text and any other details you would like to include.
Once done, you can preview your email to ensure it looks correct on desktops and mobile devices. It is strongly recommended that you send yourself a test email to ensure that any personalization or content appears correctly to the recipient. When you receive the test email, make sure any links work and go to the correct webpage.
Send Your Email
When you are ready to send your email, navigate to the Send or schedule tab, select the Contact list you would like to send to from the dropdown , and choose Send Now or Schedule for Later.
When you are sure everything is correct, select Review and Send.
Also be sure to add your email to the correct folder using the Actions dropdown.