Prospect email benchmarks

200 schools. Eight months. One inbox.

Benchmarking the emails US colleges send to prospective students.

Nearly 7,000 emails from 200 schools, all landing in one inbox — classified, counted, and compared to show what the prospective student experience actually looks like.

Download the PDF See the findings ↓

2025–26 Prospect Email Benchmark. Across 200 U.S. colleges between August 2025 and March 2026: 190 of 200 schools sent at least one email; 6,904 emails received in total; 772 flagged as spam (11%); 76% of schools sent emails in six or more months. Consistency: 41% sent in all eight months, 19% in seven months, 16% in six months. Cadence: six days was the most common gap between emails, with most schools waiting 3–7 days. Volume: most schools landed between 10 and 50 emails; one school sent 266. Spam rate by month: 8–11% from August to December, rising to 15% in January, 18% in February and March. Burstiness: 147 of 190 schools sent a burst — more than one email in a 24-hour span — at some point; 38 sent more than ten bursts. Customization: 6,439 of 6,904 emails (93%) included the prospect's first name.

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Methodology

How the data was collected

Prospect inquiries were submitted to 200 US colleges in July 2025 using the same high school senior persona (all demographic info — geography, GPA, intended major, etc. — held constant). All resulting emails were collected, segmented, and classified.

The benchmarks reflect emails sent between August 2025 and March 2026. "Flagged as spam" reflects messages filtered by Gmail as spam.

Curious where your school sits in all this?

The benchmarks make up one view. Your school is another. Reading your own prospect communications through the same lens is the work behind the Prospect Communication Intelligence framework — the narrative, the sequencing, and the market context, read together.

If that's a conversation worth having, I'd love to start it.

darron@textisdata.co