Across the UK, public service budgets have been drastically cut, and the education system is among those most affected. Schools are striving to stretch their limited resources, and as a result, parents are becoming more selective about their children’s education.
Unlike a decade ago, there are now more choices available, including online and hybrid environments. This societal shift has created an urgent need for schools in the UK to maximise their budgets and forge long-term, trustworthy relationships with suppliers, and this presents a prime opportunity for SMEs aiming to enter the education sector.
But how can SMEs effectively connect with school decision-makers?
Email marketing to schools is a powerful tool, allowing marketers to connect with decision-makers wherever they are, in a valuable format that facilitates the most useful content.
Segmenting your audience enables you to deliver tailored content, with engaging visuals and a strong call-to-action, that can significantly boost engagement.
Additionally, a robust email strategy allows you to measure key success metrics, such as open rates and conversions. Analysing this data is crucial for refining your approach and achieving better results.
When selling products or services to schools, SMEs might consider several strategic objectives:
- Building Brand Awareness: Establishing a strong presence in the education sector by showcasing the unique value and benefits of their products or services.
- Cultivating Trust: Developing credibility and reliability through consistent communication and proven results, fostering long-term relationships with schools.
- Providing Value: Offering tailored solutions that meet the specific needs and challenges faced by schools, demonstrating a deep understanding of the education environment.
- Enhancing Engagement: Creating interactive and engaging content that resonates with educators and decision-makers, making their offerings stand out.
- Facilitating Decision-Making: Providing clear, concise information and resources that aid schools in making informed purchasing decisions.
- Leveraging Testimonials and Case Studies: Using success stories and endorsements from other educational institutions to build confidence and demonstrate the effectiveness of their products or services.
- Offering Competitive Pricing: Ensuring their pricing models are attractive and feasible within the tight budgets schools often have to manage.
- Supporting Professional Development: Offering training and support to help educators effectively use their products or services, adding further value to their offerings.
- Sustainability Initiatives: Highlighting eco-friendly practices and products that align with the growing emphasis on sustainability in education.
- Flexible Solutions: Providing customisable and scalable options that can adapt to the changing needs of schools over time.
Marketing for Education: Setting Up a Successful Email Marketing Strategy
Make a Plan
Before diving into the details of your email campaigns, it’s crucial to understand the purpose of your marketing efforts and what you aim to achieve.
Here’s how to get started:
- Define Your Purpose: Clearly articulate what you’re selling and how it benefits schools. Understand the specific needs of your target audience within the education sector.
- Set Clear Objectives: Establish what you want to accomplish with your marketing. For example, are you aiming to increase sales, enhance brand awareness, or boost engagement with educational institutions?
Once you have your primary objective, it’s time to create specific, targeted, and measurable goals. It is important to avoid vague, all-encompassing goals when setting these objectives, as it can be difficult to meet these. This is where SMART goals come into play.
SMART stands for:
- Specific,
- Measurable,
- Achievable,
- Relevant, and
- Time-Bound
It is a term used by marketers to describe the type of specific, achievable goals that help to benchmark your performance throughout a marketing campaign. With smaller, achievable goals, it is easier to spot where campaigns are strong and where they are failing, so that you can remedy any issues early.
Turn Vague Goals into SMART Goals
Vague Goal: Increase sales to schools.
- SMART Goal: Increase sales to schools by 15% within the next six months by launching a targeted email campaign that highlights the benefits of our educational software.
Vague Goal: Get more schools to sign up for our newsletter.
- SMART Goal: Achieve a 20% increase in newsletter sign-ups from school administrators over the next three months by offering a free e-book on effective teaching strategies in our email promotions.
Vague Goal: Improve email open rates.
- SMART Goal: Improve email open rates by 10% over the next quarter by A/B testing subject lines and sending emails at optimised times.
By setting SMART goals, you can ensure your email marketing strategy is focused, actionable, and measurable, ultimately leading to better outcomes for your SME in the education sector.
Unlock the Power of Firmographic Segmentation in Education Marketing
Firmographic segmentation involves categorising target schools based on specific characteristics such as size, location, and type (public/private/special schools).
This helps SMEs by allowing them to tailor and personalise their marketing emails more effectively. Using a purchased schools mailing list, SMEs can segment schools by criteria like enrolment numbers, geographical region, and budgets.
By doing this, they can create personalised email campaigns that address the specific needs and challenges of each segment. For example, a marketing email to a large city-based public school might highlight different benefits than one sent to a small rural private school, ensuring the message resonates better with each audience.
Identify your target audience
Get to Know Your Leads
Understanding the various types of marketing leads is essential for guiding prospects efficiently through the buyer’s journey. Use the categories below to strategise your actions for each lead type:
- Cold Leads
Decision-makers who are unfamiliar with your business, products and services. - Pre-qualified Leads
Prospects who know of your business but have not yet offered their contact details - Qualified Leads (Marketing)
Prospects who have shared their contact information, perhaps responding to an email or downloading a free resource. - Qualified Leads (Sales)
Prospects who have sent an enquiry or contacted you for a quote. - Conversion
Highlight the benefits of your products and services
When email marketing to schools, there are a few rules it is important to follow:
- Focus on Benefits: Educators are busy and want to know how your products can help them achieve their goals and improve student outcomes.
- Be Concise: Ensure that your emails are brief, targeted and focused to avoid overloading your recipients.
- Include a Clear Call-to-Action: Motivate prospects to take the next step by inviting them to set up an appointment or arrange a product demonstration.
Clearly communicate how your products support educators and students alike by including testimonials and case studies from previous happy customers.
Create engaging and valuable content
Creating engaging content is essential for converting any prospect, and schools are no different. Focus on showcasing the advantages and unique selling points of your product/service, while also providing value in the content itself.
Write content that will engage and appeal to prospects, prompting them to take action, and use clear, concise copy and visually appealing email designs.
The following ideas can help you create engaging and valuable email campaigns that resonate with school staff and decision-makers:
- Blog Posts: Share insights, tips, and best practices relevant to educators.
- Case Studies: Highlight success stories from other schools using your products.
- Testimonials: Include quotes and endorsements from satisfied school clients.
- Infographics: Provide visual representations of data or educational trends.
- White Papers: Present detailed reports on educational research or new methodologies.
- Webinars: Invite teachers to join online seminars for professional development.
- Product Demos: Showcase how your products work through video demonstrations.
- Newsletters: Keep schools updated with the latest news, product updates, and educational content.
- Promotional Offers: Provide special discounts or limited-time offers to incentivise purchases.
- How-to Guides: Create step-by-step guides on using your products effectively in the classroom.
- Checklists: Provide handy checklists for teachers to use in their daily routines or lesson planning.
- Resource Lists: Compile lists of valuable resources, such as educational websites, apps, and tools.
- Student Success Stories: Share stories of students who have benefited from your products.
- Expert Interviews: Feature interviews with educational experts or thought leaders.
Plan your marketing schedule
Timing is often pivotal when it comes to successful email marketing campaigns. When you send emails can affect engagement rates, how many leads you are able to get and, ultimately, how many prospects you persuade to convert.
At More Than Words, they usually recommend running a number of marketing campaigns at various points in the academic year, rather than funnelling your budget into one large campaign.
This helps you to stay top of mind with educators and has the added benefit of nurturing your customer relationships as well as pitching products/services/offers.
Top Tips for Your Campaigns
- Put in some market research to find the best day and time to send your campaigns for higher engagement.
- Align your campaign sends with term times and events such as graduations to take advantage of new budget allocations and openness to change.
- Design your marketing topics around key business dates like events, awareness weeks, and course start dates.
Remember, the best marketing schedule depends on what you’re offering, the time of year, the investment required by schools, and their decision-making timelines.
