My son is getting the usual (insane) amount of mail from colleges right now. Some pieces are very nice, some violate my design sensibility, and some standout.
Among those that standout are the handwritten postcards from Allegheny's current students, (effective) and some that look like invitations to join a country club (which is kind of ironic).
Last week's haul had 3 pieces that stood out, but for very different reasons.
These 3 schools have nothing in common, but all appear to be using the same direct mail agency. And this agency must have learned their trade from the pre-approved credit card business.
I noticed this when my son brought one to me. It was actually from a school he was interested in, and he was interested in the piece because it offered a free, seemingly priority application process. But something seemed off to me, and then I remembered that it looked extremely familiar. It looked familiar because I had seen the same pitch earlier that week from a different school. As I sifted though the week's college mail I found it...and then found another just like it.
All 3 pieces use the same pitch. They promise a special, exclusive level of access. They use that trick of printing a special username and password to make you believe you're special. That they've reserved a special place for your interest. And if you act now...
This probably did not come from the school, but was outsourced to a lead mill that gets paid by the response. Because these schools need to hit lead quotas, they signed on with the lead mill to nudge the numbers up. And why not? If it doesn't generate a lead they don't pay. If it does they pay for a qualified lead. No problem, right?
It might have worked if my son had seen only the one from the school he was interested in. Instead, he saw 3 nearly identical pieces in one week, and we sniffed out the scam. The 3 pieces (above) use the same template, with enough variation to appear different, but it doesn't take much to see that they've all come from the same place (and not the school shown).
Now, instead of thinking he was noticed by a school on his list, his perception of that school changed. He now had cause to ask: is this school serious about me? Probably not. During one week he received a handwritten postcard from an actual current student and cheap credit card-style pitch. Both made an impression.
