Effective communication with college coaches is vital in the recruiting process, and College Pipe's message template feature is a powerful tool to streamline and personalize this outreach. This article delves into how to leverage message templates, the different ways communication can occur, and the benefits of using this feature.
College Pipe offers flexibility in how coaches are contacted, which may align with different recruiting models:
Recruiting Expert (You): As the recruiting expert, you have the ability to contact coaches, including sending emails in bulk. This allows for efficient initial outreach to multiple universities.
The Athlete: Athletes can also contact coaches directly through the system, but typically only individually. This empowers athletes to take ownership of their recruitment while ensuring each message is sent one by one.
The approach to who contacts coaches (expert in bulk or athlete individually) can often be tailored to your specific business model.
Message templates are pre-written email drafts that you can create, customize, and save within College Pipe. They serve as a starting point for your communication with coaches, ensuring consistency and saving significant time.
Accessing Templates: You can typically find the option to manage message templates within the College Pipe interface, often when initiating contact with coaches.
Building Your Message: When creating or editing a template, you'll focus on two key areas:
Subject Line: Craft a concise and attention-grabbing subject line that provides essential information upfront. Consider including the athlete's graduation year, key academic stats (like GPA), and perhaps a notable characteristic (e.g., "2026 | [Athlete Name] | 4.0 GPA").
Email Body: Write the main content of your message, introducing the athlete and highlighting their relevant information and interest in the university.
Personalization with Placeholders: This is where College Pipe's templates become incredibly efficient. You can insert special placeholders into the subject line and body of your email. When you send the email, College Pipe automatically replaces these placeholders with the specific information relevant to the coach and the athlete. Examples of placeholders include:
HiCoachFirstName or CoachLastName: Automatically inserts the coach's first or last name for a personalized greeting.
university names: Inserts the name of the university you are contacting.
city: Inserts the city where the university is located.
Other placeholders allow you to dynamically include athlete-specific facts that you have entered into their profile.
Adding Personal Touches: While placeholders automate basic personalization, it's important to add genuinely personal touches within the template. You can include sentences or phrases that you will manually tailor before sending, or structure the template to easily insert specific reasons why the athlete is interested in that particular university or program, making the outreach feel less generic.
Including Contact Information: Remember to include relevant contact information (your email, phone number, or the athlete's preferred contact methods like WhatsApp, X, or Instagram) within the email body so coaches can easily follow up.
Saving: Once your template is ready, College Pipe allows you to save it for future use.
Sharing: A significant advantage of College Pipe's template system is the ability to share templates. You can typically:
Share a template with a specific athlete, providing them with a pre-written draft they can use for their individual outreach. This is particularly helpful in guiding athletes on what to include in their communications.
Share a template with all your athletes, ensuring consistent messaging across your entire roster's outreach efforts.
Share templates with your colleagues within your organization in College Pipe, facilitating collaboration and standardizing communication practices across your team.
Sharing templates is a crucial step in empowering athletes or ensuring consistent, high-quality communication originating from your organization.
Even when sending emails in bulk, the personal aspect is very important. Using placeholders and adding specific details helps achieve this.
Furthermore, if you have an email integration set up with College Pipe, the emails you send can originate from your own email address and go through your email provider. This makes the communication appear even more personal and professional to the coach, rather than coming from a generic system address. This capability allows for sending bulk emails in a highly personalized manner.
In summary, College Pipe's message template feature, combined with its personalization options and email integration, provides recruiting experts with an efficient and effective way to manage communication with college coaches, whether sending messages in bulk or providing templates for athletes to use for their individual outreach.