Branded email templates are very popular in college recruiting now.

These are the emails that coaches send to recruits that have pictures of the university, and school colors and action shots, and more. Coaches love to send them out because they really can pop-out of a recruit’s inbox, especially compared to the standard black & white text-only email.

We think they can be a great recruiting tool when used properly. The key part of the previous sentence is “when used properly”.

As most of you know, we build email templates for coaches as a service (full discloser) and we often times see coaches relying on the template as a crutch instead of using the content of the email to be the true marketing and recruiting message.

Let me explain:

Your content, your written word, your emotions in the text…THAT is what is king. The images and pictures that surround the template are just the supporting cast. We recently had a coach ask us to take a look at an email that he sent. It was clear that the coach and our design team spent a ton of time on the branding and the pictures and the colors but it was also clear that the coach did not spend anytime on the content of the email. It was almost like “check out how cool my email template is” instead of “here is a really well written email”.

An email to a recruit should be a great email to a recruit regardless if there are pictures and colors and logos. If the email is well thought out and personalized and truly gets across your message then it can be a great email whether it is fully branded or just black and white. In fact, this is a good litmus test for any recruiting emails sent. Is this email still good without all of the colors and branding? Better stated, is this email great as just a black and white email? If it is great as just a black and white email, then it will be really great fully branded.

When a recruit receives your email, they will be impressed with the pictures and logos and colors but they will be recruited by your content. Its your message that is what is important, not the eye of the designer. 10 out of 10 times it is better to send out a well written, well thought out email in black and white, then send out a sub-par email that is fully branded.