A full-day interactive workshop for university staff responsible for creating emails for prospective students, supporters, teachers, current students, and internal stakeholders.
Tuesday 17 November 2026
9.30am to 4pm
STEAMhouse,
Birmingham
£275 + VAT
Early bird price until 16 October
20 spaces
Do you send email communications at your university?
This training workshop has been designed for you.
You will learn how to create emails which are…
Detailed descriptions of all three sessions can be found below.
Today reignited why I do what I do, and gave me some great ideas to use moving forward. Thank you for such an insightful training day. The venue was great, and the speakers were inspirational.
Clear concise sessions that target exactly what you need, and leave you wanting to put new strategies into action. I want to say a massive thank you to UniTasterDays for your in-depth and inspiring day!
I had a great experience attending the UniTasterDays training in Birmingham. Huge thank you to UniTasterDays for bringing together professionals from universities all over the UK, and providing the opportunity to brainstorm, engage, and inspire one another.
This training is for any university staff member who is responsible for:
The training is relevant for staff members who send emails to:
At UniTasterDays, our primary expertise is student recruitment, marketing, widening participation, school liaison, and outreach. However, our training activities and insights can be applied to other areas too, such as students’ unions, alumni relations, and internal communications. Therefore, if the sessions below sound valuable to you, please do join us!
We pride ourselves on delivering inspiring, interactive, and insightful training days. If you join us, you will experience a fun, feel-good training event, with hands-on activities and plenty of opportunity for participation.
We’ll grow your knowledge and network in equal measure. This is aided by group exercises, breakout discussions, and multiple refreshment breaks. You’ll depart with a community from across the sector who’ll continue to support you long after the training day has ended.
The early-bird cost is £275+VAT. The cost will increase to £300+VAT after Friday 16 October 2026. There are discounts for multiple bookings, as highlighted on the booking form below.
Firstly, we’ll introduce the two types of emails (there isn’t a third) which will serve as a foundation for everything that follows. We’ll warm up by sharing our email origin stories, the role email plays in your remit, and the role it plays in your university. Also, why this training? Why you? Why now?
Next, we’ll consider the challenge of standing out in a noisy inbox, and a world where the digital deluge is more incessant than ever. You’ll learn the three assets which you can use to get your email noticed, of which the subject line is critical.
We’ll then consider the art of an engaging subject line by deconstructing some examples, finessing them one step at a time. We’ll look at length, wording, order, grammar, and the pros-cons offered by a humble emoji.
Good news: they’ve opened your email. Now, we just need them to read the thing. But with overwhelm rising and attention spans dwindling, there has never been a greater need to maximise readability. We must engineer every paragraph, every sentence, every word to reduce the cognitive burden of our email recipient.
This session will offer 26 ways to increase the readability of your emails in 2026. You’ll discover how (and why) you should use short words, simple words, simply structure, bullet-points, and headings. We’ll discuss acronyms and alt text. We’ll talk colour and capitals. We’ll tackle hashtags and hyperbole.
Ultimately, you’ll learn that readability is critical to inclusive content. This accessibility leads to inclusivity, sustainability, memorability, and shareability. In doing so, a carefully-word email will gain a wider readership, support widening participant, and achieve your student recruitment marketing goals.
Reading is brilliant… but engagement is better. How do we inspire our email recipients to push our buttons, visit a webpage, and do a thing?
Firstly, we’ll look at the most important line in the email: the first line. We need to adopt a "first line, only line" mindset because you only have one shot at a first impression. You need to hook your email recipient immediately to encourage them to scroll down. As such, we’ll look at how to embed an unmissable CTA from the get-go.
Secondly, we’ll talk button best practice, the magic of a UTM link, and why your button should never be called "Click here" or "Learn more." You’ll also discover how your approach should vary depending on which of the two email categories you’re writing.
Finally, we’ll end by talking about newsletters. It can be tricky to find exciting stories to populate a lengthy email newsletter, especially with limited resources. Rest assured, this final session will explain the five Cs of compelling content. These quick and efficient strategies will help you find must-read articles during busy periods.
Simon has almost 20 years of experience in the higher education sector. This includes student recruitment, marketing, and events roles at four different universities in the UK: Nottingham, Birmingham, Warwick, and Coventry. Simon has also worked as a content strategy consultant for the international education sector.
Throughout his career, Simon has led email communications on both the marketing and student recruitment sides of the external relations coin. He led CRM campaigns for a wide range of prospective students as a marketing manager at the University of Birmingham. He later oversaw event communications as head of student recruitment events at the University of Nottingham.
Simon has spoken about email best practice at education sector conferences, including the CRM HE Network, HELOA, and the SU Marketing Conference. He has also delivered email training sessions at various UK universities. He currently writes the UniTasterDays community newsletter, introduced earlier this year, and has managed his own personal author mailing list in the past.
Simon has a particular flair for designing engaging training sessions, developed through his previous consulting and volunteering roles. Currently, he leads the training portfolio for UniTasterDays, including their quarterly training days in Birmingham, on-campus training for staff, on-campus training for ambassadors, and 6-week professional development courses.
Past recipients of Simon’s training include Bath Spa University, LiNCHigher, Liverpool Hope University, Queen Mary University of London, Study Higher, St Mary’s University London, University College Birmingham, University of Aberdeen, University of Bristol, University of Essex, University of Salford, University of Sunderland, University of Winchester, and various HELOA regional groups.
Finally, Simon is an international speaker. He has spoken at a variety of conferences, including CASE, ContentEd, EFMD, IDPE, FindAUniversity, HELOA, HighEdWeb, PSEWeb, SU Digital, SU Marketing Conference, and Utterly Content. He was Chair of the Newcomers Track at CASE Europe Annual Conference from 2020 to 2023.
You have your own expertise and experience to share as the managers, officers, coordinators, and administrators responsible for sending email communications.
This training will invite you to share your valuable knowledge, practices, and stories with your fellow attendees. We’d love to hear everything – your success and messes, your wins and wobbles – through group exercises and full-room discussion.
Rest assured, there’ll be no pressure to share. But if you do have wisdom to offer, and tactics to champion, then the floor is yours. There’s no ‘i’ in team. And there’s no ‘i’ in CRM.
If Birmingham is too far, then we’d love to come to you instead. We can deliver this training day (and many others) on your very own campus. This option is perfect for large teams or departments who would benefit from the same learning, perhaps at a future away day.
We also offer a selection of training days for student ambassadors. These training days are energising sessions designed to complement your own training, delivered in partnership with yourselves. You can learn more at the links below.