"Negative recruiting" is nothing new, but now it's more efficient and effective thanks to technology, especially e-mail.  In a recent interview with GoVolXtra.com, a recruiting website that follows the Tennessee Volunteers, assistant football coach Trooper Taylor, says the explosion of new technology is making it easier to make messages (both positive and negative) stick.

"People believe what they read," Taylor said in the article. "It doesn't matter who puts it in the air. They're not limited to the region they're in. They can get information."

"Some refer to it as negative recruiting. Bottom line is you don't finish second in recruiting. It's so competitive; coaches are doing what they have to win."

That competition for top recruits is driving me many college coaches towards technology that can give their e-mail messages maximum impact with the prospects they are trying to reach.  And, with prospects they are trying to steal away from the competition.

"At the end of the day a coach is selling their 'product'or program," says Brad Downs, Director of Client Relations for recruiting technology leader Front Rush, a company that produces a popular recruiting management system for college coaches.

"Being able to send mass branded emails to a large amount of prospects helps get their 'brand' out to more recruits in less time. It give visual evidence of how well the program is doing or has done in the past, and gives a recruit a place where he can access other sites about the program and school. Essentially, it helps each coaches 'product' stick out in a recruits mind."

In addition to the impact more visual, interactive e-mails that college coaches are creating with a tool like the one Front Rush provides, its also streamlining the way they are sent.  What used to take hours for college coaches to complete now takes less time, with greater results.

"Sending emails through Front Rush is very easy whether it be 1 recruit or 10,000 recruits", says Sean Devlin, Director of Product Development for Front Rush. "If a coach wants to send an email to their entire recruit list, Front Rush will automatically merge information personal to each recruit and then send out each email individually. Therefore every recruit will receive their own email (no bcc's) with their own name in the header."

And, adds Devlin, the e-mails that get sent will look more like a graphic-rich website than a regular plain-text e-mail. 

"Having images and action shots in a branded email increases the impact of the message and the response by the recruit. These images make the email more visually appealing so recruits are more attracted to it. They also formalize the email because of their professional appeal so recruits are more likely to consider the text within it as more credible."

The bottom line for coaches?  Recruiters who aren't using technology for more effective prospecting and communication are losing out to their competition in the battle for positive (or negative) messages that they want recruits to hear, and remember.