Email continues to be one of the strongest venues for communicating with prospective families. Here are the 5 best reasons why this is true:
PERSONAL: People still check their inbox for personalized messages. Parents are likely getting emails from their teacher in public school, from their church, and from other news items they have subscribed to. Not to mention emails from their friends. Admittedly, Facebook or other social platforms allow direct messages, but for anything of length, email is where people turn to.
INTIMATE: Social media reaches people with a mass message but people’s inboxes are private and intimate. People “feel” like the message is sent to them (even if it is a message sent to a larger audience).
HIGHER VISIBILITY: Facebook’s revenue generating emphasis keeps people from seeing your posts. There is a much higher chance of someone seeing your message in their email in their inbox. Plus, (more…)
In a previous post, we suggested that email marketing may be the most effective marketing tool your school is NOT using to talk to prospective families. Rather than communicating ONLY with internal current families in your school, you need to have an intentional email marketing system to talk to prospective families. While you want to chronicle the events of your school, this is not the most important thing to a prospective family – and worse, you could make them feel excluded. In this podcast episode, we discuss the rationale for even having two different email marketing systems – one for current families and another for prospective families. Learn how to capture new email addresses (without spamming your prospective families):
You probably already have a folder of email addresses that have been filled out on open house/campus tour cards.
Look into your computer’s mail program (Outlook, MacMail).
With a service like Constant Contact, embed an “opt-in” code on your site so people can subscribe to a newsletter (only ask for name and email address).
Have people sign up for your newsletter into a computer or tablet set up at a marketing event (Open House)
Offer premium content that people will give you their email address in exchange for something of great value (useful tips for parenting, helping Seniors find college scholarships, etc.)
Ask people on Twitter and Facebook to subscribe to your email list.
Put a call-to-action at the end of each blog post or page.
The point of great content is to make your case inside somewhat neutral content (heavily slanted toward your school’s greatness, but not overly promotional) while capturing the prospective’s email address in the process. This ensures you grow your email list which allows you to reach a greater number of people.
Below I categorize the headlines to give you different ways to think about this kind of content. In this article, I offer some ideas for magnetic opt-in content that your prospective families will crave and click on: (more…)
Most schools I consult with tell me that they are using email to communicate with families. At which point I ask, “which ones?”
If you are using Constant Contact or some other email marketing provider to communicate only with your internal families, that’s OK, but that is more about communication and less about marketing. Yes, good communication is vital for retention efforts (one of the reasons families often give for leaving a school is poor communication). But I’m talking about reaching out regularly with prospective families.
Here are 5 tips you want to consider with your email marketing:
THINK LIKE A PUBLISHER: just like anything having to do with marketing, it is best to make sure it operates like a system. The “hit-or-miss” strategies you have used are no longer effective. Make your email marketing work on a calendar. Work with your creative team (staff and/or volunteers) to look at your school calendar and create email marketing messages around attractional events (sports, theater, etc), marketing events (open houses, preview nights, etc.) as well as community events that showcase your involvement in the town at large (Christmas shoe drive, Spring Break food pantry assistance, etc.) Holiday themed messages are appropriate as well. Think more like a magazine publisher and start capturing and creating high value content for these monthly or bi-weekly messages. For your December email marketing newsletter to prospectives, for example, you need to be gathering the content in October.
Email marketing can and should be a critical tool in your enrollment marketing strategy. But for many schools, email marketing is ineffective leading many to say “email marketing is dead.” Let me suggest that email marketing as a tool for nurturing leads, informing and educating audiences, and driving traffic to a website is alive and well. In this series about email marketing for schools, let me suggest 7 reasons your email marketing is not working: (more…)
