Over the past few years, business reply mail has been slowly dying off. It’s trend that’s become more apparent as the next generation of students who virtually live online come of age. The defining moment for me was the day my son asked me how he was supposed to respond to a college search letter that included a business reply card.

Confused at why he was asking, I told him to fill out the card and mail it back to the college.

He asked me for a stamp.

After explaining the concept of business reply mail, he looked and me and said, “Wouldn’t it just be easier for me to check out [ABC College] online?”

I had to agree. My son was was  looking for an online vehicle to respond, but he didn’t have one. Which leds me to think, how many students could institutions be missing if they don’t integrate the call-to-action on their search or open house communications with a form of online response?

At the very least, it’s beneficial to give students the option to respond to a subfolder on your site, like ABC-College.edu/OpenHouse. At Spectrum we often use an online response mechanism called a personal URL (so our clients can track all responses) in which a student’s name is placed right into the response address JohnSmith.ABC-OpenHouse.com

But either way, it’s no surprise that students respond online about 98.5% of the time in our market tests.

Business reply mail was perfect for the 20th century….too bad its the 21st century.

[P.S. It looks like this post inspired another business reply mail-themed post from Andrew Tweeddale in our data department. Look for that in the next few days!]