Email Guidelines

Follow these Enrollment Management guidelines to help you create effective, timely and approvable emails for prospective, admitted and current students.

Content Guidelines:

Content

Subject Line and Structure

• Use a clear, attention-grabbing subject line that tells readers exactly what the message is about.
• Prioritize key information at the top, and weave important details throughout the body.

Audience-Centered Writing

• Write with your audience in mind—consider their interests, behaviors, and mindset from a college or career interest perspective.
• Keep the tone aligned with Purdue’s brand voice and tone.

Clarity & Brevity

• Keep emails concise—ideally under 300 words.
• Focus the message around one core takeaway and one clear call-to-action to improve engagement and tracking.

Content Strategy

• Avoid overwhelming the reader with excessive information or lists.
• Do not overuse bullet-pointed lists of links—keep it narrative and purposeful.
• Be intentional: Tell a compelling story that shows how your area creates opportunities for students, not just a list of facts.

Style and Compliance Notes

• Avoid hashtags in the body content. Only use them if prompting the student to share on social media (e.g., “Tag your post with #OnlyPurdue”).
• Don’t include “Purdue University” in your signature; the context is already clear from the sender, logo, and footer.
• For new admitted student mailings after March 1, avoid congratulatory phrases unless it’s part of an already-running campaign.

Final Touches

• Proofread carefully. Check spelling, grammar, and confirm all links are correct before sending.

Variable Data

• Make sure you have the Sender, Recipient, CC, and Subject fields populated before submitting an Email Campaign request.
  • Sender field: “Your Preferred Sender Display Name“ <Sender Email Address> (example: “Enrollment Management at Purdue University” <admscrm@purdue.edu>)
  • Recipient field: {{Email}} or {{Parent-1-Email-Address}}, {{Parent-2-Email-Address}}, {{Legal-Guardian-Email-Address}}
  • CC field: usually variable fields for Parents if applicable (see above)
  • Subject: populate with your desired subject line.
    
• If using the student’s name in your message, make sure you’re using the correct variable field: {{First-Name}}

Design Guidelines

Purdue Brand

• Fonts: The Email Builder tool is set to Georgia, 16pt font.
  • If you copy and paste anything into the Slate mailing WYSIWYG, please make sure you clear formatting on the text so font codes stay uniform.
     
• Bold and Gold your hyperlinks.
  • If you add hyperlinks in the Slate mailing WYSIWYG, make sure you adjust the hyperlink color to Aged Gold or another AA Compliant Purdue brand font color.
  • Do not leave the hyperlinks as the default black color.
    • If you do, when you do a test send of that mailing, you’ll see that those links come through as the blue default hyperlink color.

Images and Video

• If you have an image in the body of the email, make sure it is sized intrinsically to fit the template and center aligned in the mailing.
  • For images the intrinsic size is the size that an image would be displayed if no CSS was applied to change the rendering.
  • The following Email Builder tool templates require the following Top Hero Banner Image sizes:
    • Basic, Advanced, or Profile Email template: 600px wide maximum
    • Newsletter: 480px wide maximum
  • At the bottom of this page, you’ll find steps on how to resize an image in either Photoshop or Canva.
    
• You are welcome to upload your graphics/images to the Slate library – but once your image is loaded in and used in a Completed (Sent) message, you cannot move that image.
  
• Images require alt text to be accessible. If you change an image, you’ll need to update the alt text. 
  
• Ensure the image relates to what’s being shared in your message.

How to resize an image for your email

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