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Athlete Match places a good deal of emphasis on the college recruiting communication process with college coaches. In addition to phone calls, and social media, email is a primary communication tool with coaches you are interested in. In fact, a recent AM survey of 100 college coaches from NCAA Division I, II and III schools found that 98% of college coaches considered personal email to be their PRIMARY method of communication with potential college recruits. The survey showed that these coaches value email, and more specifically personalized emails, over any other form of communication. In addition, the survey revealed that coaches do not like emails from recruiting services as these are often impersonal, mass communications that require the coach to take additional steps to find out more.
Sending college coach emails is reasonably more complex than most expect, especially if you want to stand out in the sea of interested athletes competing for limited roster spots. Here are 7 reasons your college coach emails aren’t getting responses.
1. You make the email about yourself
Most recruiting services will tell you to talk a fair amount about yourself. Don’t! If you want to stand out to a college coach, tell them about them! Send a very personalized email that makes it clear to the coach that you have researched their college and are familiar with both their team and their academic programs. Telling a coach about his or her college shows them that you’ve done your homework, you understand FIT, and that you’re truly interested in moving forward in the recruiting process with their college.
2. You don’t address the coach by name
It’s ok to send your email to more than one coach from the same college, but make sure you get their names right and that the spelling is perfect! Using a generic title like ‘Coach’ tells the coach that you don’t care enough to send an individual email, so always include his or her last name when first reaching out.
3. Your email is too long
Remember – coaches are busy. They probably won’t look at your email for more than a minute or two, so keep it relatively brief and to the point. It will take some time to compose college coach emails that are both personal and concise, but it is worth the extra effort if you really want to stand out over other recruits in the coaches’ inbox. The goal is to communicate and show who you are, without forcing the coach to spend a significant amount of time and effort to get an initial impression of you.
4. Your athletic resume isn’t attached
Don’t paste your resume in the body of the email or it will make your email too long. Instead, save it as a PDF and attach it to the email. The resume should include all of your academic information including grad year, GPA, class rank, SAT/ACT, etc as well as your athletic information, including height, weight, club team, awards, etc. You DO want to include your highlight video link in the actual email, because college coaches will most likely take a quick look if it’s easy to find.
5: You don’t follow up
Following up with a college coach multiple times shows that you care. If you don’t hear back, follow up within 7-10 days. Make your subject line ‘Just checking in’ or ‘Follow up’ in order to differentiate yourself in a coach’s inbox. College coaches are busy and receive a lot of emails, so persistence is key. When you do get a response — don’t delay — follow up promptly within 24 hours! Prompt follow up is critical to letting the coach know that you are serious about them.
6: You email directly from the wrong college recruiting service website
The recent Athlete Match college coach survey revealed that less than 5% of coaches listed ‘Mass Messaged from Recruiting Services’ as a preferred method of communication. The first reason these emails are being ignored is because they basically tell coaches that you are using a mass recruiting service to find and email as many coaches as possible. A college coach who receives a recruiting email with branding or links to one of the notorious college recruiting website knows that the same email is most likely being sent to many other college coaches.
Coaches want to feel special in the communication process, they want to feel like their college is one of the only schools that you are trying to be admitted to. The Athlete Match Individual Plan allows you to contact any coach in the country, but is designed around sending a limited number of emails to the schools that are a best fit for you. If a coach receives a message from AM they know that the Athlete is genuinely interested in their program and they are much more likely to follow up.
7: You use a bad subject line or email address
It is important that you avoid having an inappropriate subject line or email address for your college coach emails. A subject line such as ‘Watch my mad skillz’ or an email address name of ‘SoccerKIDzz’ is going to result in your email being ignored or sent to spam by the coach. Many potential recruits take these two minor details for granted when they are sending college coaches emails. For an effective email template, see the AM sample emails to coaches post. Taking the time to create some good sample emails for college coaches to send to your college coach email list will improve your odds of a successful recruiting outcome significantly.
When used effectively college coach emails can be a powerful method of getting to know a coach and subsequently moving forward in your recruiting journey with the respective college. An effective college coach email strategy can help you stand out from the pack.
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