As a school marketer, deciding where to invest your marketing budget isn’t a decision you take lightly.
You know you need to attract new families and retain your existing families, but at the same time, you don’t want to invest time or resources into something that isn’t going to deliver the results you expect. That’s why email marketing is essential when it comes to school marketing.
In order to make a decision on whether email marketing is right for your school, it’s important to know the benefits of email marketing.
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High return on investment
Email marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI) of all forms of marketing. According to research conducted by Litmus, email marketing has a ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. And you can increase your email ROI even more by following these tactics:
- Run A/B tests on your emails often
- Use dynamic content
- Utilize animated GIFs
- Include live content
- Leverage external email analytics tools
- Utilize a checklist for pre-send testing
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Cost-effective communication channel
Email marketing is remarkably inexpensive. Convertkit, an email marketing service I use and recommend, is priced at $25 per month (for up to 1,000 subscribers) if purchased as an annual subscription.
That’s a small budget for the opportunities and benefits email marketing provides to a school. Email marketing can:
- Nurture relationships with prospective families
- Increase inquiry submissions
- Retain students
- Inform and engage families
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Increase student enrollment and retention
Promoting your school through email marketing gives your subscribers the opportunity to submit an inquiry form right from their phone, tablet or laptop.
School email marketing can be used to:
- Share information about what makes your school special
- Share details about academics, arts, athletics, field trips, independent projects, extracurricular activities, and more
- Showcase your educational institutional benefits
- Offer one-on-one meetings
- Offer virtual tours
- Answer frequently asked questions
- Spotlight faculty and administrators
- Discuss your school’s mission
- Discuss your school’s ideals of diversity and inclusion
- Share your financial programs and scholarships
- Make sure parents understand the enrollment process
- And so much more!
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Build stronger relationships with families
Email marketing can help build relationships with parents by providing them with the information they want – directly into their inbox on a consistent basis. When you help make families’ lives better, they will trust you and appreciate your school.
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Strengthen your school’s credibility
Email is a key form of school marketing, but there’s more to it than just sending endless emails. Parents are more informed than ever, and only want to engage with organizations they deem credible. If you want to avoid your emails ending up in the spam folder you will need to build credibility through your email marketing strategy. Here are some ways to do this:
- Focus on authenticity
- Set expectations you can deliver, such as sticking to a delivery schedule you’ve promised
- Create ways for parents to engage with your emails, such as calls-to-action to explore aspects of your programs so they can learn more about what makes your school special
- Don’t push parents to submit inquiries. Sure, invite them occasionally, but not continually
- Be transparent
- Don’t overhype your school
- Send your emails with permission
- Add testimonials, case studies, reviews and user-generated content to your emails
- Credibility is easier to lose than gain. Be consistent in your email marketing activities.
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Increase traffic to your website
Emails are a great way to get parents to visit your website. You can include relevant links to pages on your website in your email content. You can also use your email campaigns to get parents to engage with content available on your website or blog. For example, you can embed a link to a registration form on a webpage for a campus tour in an email.
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Establish authority
It’s important that your school be seen as experts in the field of education. Your email subscribers have signed up for your newsletters because they want to hear from you. They appreciate the content you send and keeping them engaged is important. Your content is one of your most valuable marketing tools and you can use it demonstrate your expertise as educators and give them reasons to enroll or re-enroll in your school.
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Build excitement
Email marketing is an opportunity to build anticipation and excitement for your school events. Whatever the event, you can use a series of emails to build up excitement and increase participation.
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Create personalized content
Email marketing allows you to keep in touch with your subscribers on a consistent basis. Email can be a way to let your subscribers know you value them. Parents love it when a school treats them as an individual.
Email marketing is setting up email strategies and delivering targeted and personalized emails to your segmented subscriber lists, such as parents of enrolled students, prospective parents, alumni and partners. You can personalize emails based on preferences, data, and interaction with your admissions team.
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Promote your school
Email marketing helps you promote your institution. What makes this powerful is that these communications can all be automated. It includes promotional content that covers:
- General details about your school
- Admission details and process
- Alumni relationship and community
- Athletic and extracurricular activities
Final Thoughts
School marketers and schools can achieve a lot by following the tips above. Email marketing helps develop relationships with families and communicate with them effectively. Now it’s time for you to refine your email marketing strategy to benefit your school.
Has email marketing benefitted your school? What is working well for you? Please comment below…
