School management services are one of the most popular services promoted to the UK education sector, so being straight-up honest with you, you’ve got a battle on your hands to make sure your company stands out head and shoulders above the school management crowd.

Having designed and completed hundreds of marketing campaigns promoting school management services to the education sector we know what will work.

That is what this report is all about, helping you to delve into the belly of the beast of marketing to schools, so you can make a huge difference to the number of schools, teachers, and students benefitting from your top-notch school management services.

Insight #1: Quantities of decision-makers

You lucky devils! When it comes to a target audience, you guys are pretty spoilt for choice. Not only will you want to target the more obvious decision makers like the Head Teachers, Marketing Coordinators, and Governors, but you’ve also got a whole host of other teacher types that will have an interest in you depending on your own specific service.

There are over 450,000 teachers within UK educational establishments, of which we have over 400,000 named teachers across 31,000 establishments within our Education Database. Plenty of these will be involved one way or another with their school’s marketing plans, and we can contact them for you.

Insight #2: Education-specific landing pages

For some providers, particularly designers and website developers, the education sector may not be your sole focus. There’s obviously nothing wrong with that.

However, the companies that strike gold are those that can show they are experts in the education sector.

There is no better way of showing this than by creating an education-specific landing page on your website, showcasing the range of services that you have provided to existing school clients. Ensuring teachers click from an education-focused email to a matching landing page will ensure the smoothest journey possible. There’ll be no confusion, teachers can read the information relevant to them in as few clicks as possible, and you’ll reassure them that you know your stuff when it comes to their industry.

Insight #3: Become a thought leader

When promoting a service that is going to change how schools present themselves to new intake, it’s crucial that you position yourself as a thought leader and go that extra mile to demonstrate your expertise, and show you can protect their reputation.

Send them an industry whitepaper to provide them with some real value and showcase your knowledge before you start selling to them.

By doing so, you’ll take a huge leap in front of your competitors. In our edu-business survey, only 15.1% of companies had integrated free eBooks, whitepapers, and reports into their 2020 marketing strategy. Yet, in our accompanying teacher survey, 61.6% of schools wanted businesses to share free resources to better support and serve schools.

Don your creative caps, put together an insightful, high-quality free whitepaper, and await your stream of fresh-hot leads who now see you as one of the top dogs in your industry!

Insight #4: Your audience is (very) mobile

Our last email analytics study revealed that 59% of emails are now opened on mobile. That’s a 10% growth since our last study, and it’s likely that percentage is growing on a daily basis.

Creating mobile-compatible emails is particularly important for you guys. Your email send lists might include some of the more tech-savvy members of staff, who’ll be the audience most likely to be reading emails on their mobile devices. They’re also the most likely to have a negative reaction to emails that render poorly; up to 80% delete emails instantly if they do not render correctly.

If you’re wanting to convince teachers your websites and other digital products and services are high-quality, bullet-proof, and compatible with a wide range ofdevices, you’ll need to make sure your emails not only look visually stunning, but work correctly.

Insight #5: A direct route to teachers’ inboxes

Not only does our database hold 400,000 named staff/teachers in the UK, but we also nvest over £750k every single year in the continual development and management of our technical infrastructure to ensure our clients get the best results possible.

Our technical infrastructure is the most advanced in the sector, and we’re the only education agency to own, host, and manage our servers/IPs in-house. This means we’re in complete control of our clients’ email paths and can ensure a far superior deliverability rate.

Insight #6: Grow your in-house database

When we broadcast an email direct to teachers’ inboxes on your behalf, we capture the details of every teacher that clicks on links or downloads images within the email. We can then report the contact data of these interested teachers back to you. We call this a Database of Qualified Leads.

Including this database of leads in your campaign will provide you with red-hot leads to follow up in-house, and also help you to add valuable contact data to your CRM (including the teacher’s direct email, name, position, school name, and phone number).

Insight #7: Give your emails the personal touch

Teachers don’t need marketing, they need relationships with people that can help them overcome their daily obstacles and add value to their teaching.

While it’s probably your brand that is the crucial factor in getting teachers opening your email, it’s your personality that needs to shine through if your content is going to engage them. Ensure your email is written in a personal style and positions a member of your team as the key contact that they can go to with any requirements their school or students may have.

Insight #8: Nurture relationships with Campus

Using Campus (marketing software we’ve spent two years developing in-house) we’ve transformed the way we interact with our target market; enabling us to increase referrals of our service by 88%, rocket sales by 24%, and scoop the prestigious ‘Marketing Campaign of the Year’ award.

Campus is now being used by many of the UK’s most forward-thinking education businesses, and it’s absolutely ideal for design, website, and school marketing companies who are trying to build better relationships with the country’s teachers. It brings all your company’s marketing functions together in one super-cool application.

Insight #9: Combine email with postal

Be it your brochure or a bumper pack of sample school marketing materials showing off your talents, I’m sure your business has a wealth of superb printed materials at its disposal. The trick is to find a way to get these under teachers’ noses without blowing your marketing budget in one fell swoop.

That’s why we create cross-channel strategies for several businesses that enable them to eliminate waste and minimise costs, while also dramatically improving responses.

It’s a tried and tested approach that helps you achieve maximum impact with your marketing:

1. Email all schools generating awareness and creating a buzz.
2. Post your brochure to just the schools/teachers that engaged with your email.
3. Email these teachers a few days later to prompt responses.

Insight #10: Face-to-face meetings work

Many school marketing providers are not willing to offer a face-to-face meeting as part of their marketing strategy; and that’s great news for the rest of you! Not only is the meeting invitation the best way of generating a high number of leads, but the meeting itself offers you the best possible conversion rate.

Your people are your company’s greatest marketing asset. No matter how good your product or service is, it’s the relationships that they are able to build that will encourage interested teachers to take that final step and the best way to start forming those relationships is to meet in person.

What next?

Get in touch and ask us about what we can do for you!

Our number is 01684 297374, or you can email info@sprint-education.co.uk.

That way, we can talk specifically about your offer and see how we can boost your marketing effort to schools quickly and effectively.

Tags
Education Marketing How to Sell to Schools How to Sell to Teachers Marketing to Education Selling to Schools Selling to Teachers

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