There may be peak times of the year for school recruitment, but there are still positions to fill and supply teachers to help, and the retainment crisis to battle on a daily basis. There’s no rest for businesses like you – but that means there’s a goldmine of sales opportunities available to you 24/7!

Having designed and completed hundreds of recruitment campaigns to the education sector, we know what will work for you.

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 and teachers benefitting from your top-notch recruitment services.

Insight #1: Who should you contact?

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 Heads, Deputies, Governors, and Trustees, but you’ve also got a whole host of other teacher types that will have an interest in your recruitment services 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. Many of these will be involved with teacher recruitment and retainment one way or another, and we can contact them for you.

Insight #2: The four key priorities

The Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy was introduced in 2019 by the Department for Education to assist state-funded schools. This sets out the government’s vision to make sure careers in teaching are attractive, rewarding, and sustainable, and focuses around four key priorities:

1. Creating more supportive school cultures and reducing workload, including working with Ofsted to reduce the pressure placed on teachers.

2. Transforming support for early career teachers to build a successful career with funded two-year support packages, dedicated mentorship, and reduced timetables.

3. Making sure teaching remains an attractive career as lifestyles and aspirations change. Steps include flexible working patterns and career journeys, job sharing, and specialist qualifications.

4. Making it easier for people to become teachers, with a one-stop application system for initial teacher training, and new ‘discover teaching’ initiatives for potential applicants to try teaching out before they apply.

With these four points being such high priorities within school recruitment and retainment strategies, it’s vital your marketing conveys exactly how your service can address as many of these as possible.

Insight #3: Get ahead of your competitors

The Department for Education have launched their brand-new Institute for Teaching to support English teachers and school leaders with prestigious training and development throughout their career. With a share of £22 million allocated to improving teacher quality at the last spending review, the organisation will also train up to 1,000 new teachers every year.

With more new teachers needing their first school placement, and current teachers wanting to take their new training into a new position, recruitment providers will have plenty of opportunities on their hands to help.

Insight #4: Recruitment is on the rise

Back in 2020, the brakes were put on school recruitment. Teachers wanted job security, hesitant to set out for pastures new, and travel limitations meant international school openings were less certain, and far more difficult to organise.

But with the reopening of schools in March 2021 came an instant boost in teacher recruitment. According to The Global Recruiter, job openings in the education industry had increased by 36.8% compared to the usual weekly average.

And during the 2020 school closures, the overall number of postgraduate teacher training applications increased by one third compared to 2019, and resulted in a 65% rise from the five-year average. It’s vital recruitment companies capitalise on both the surge in applicants and job postings to keep as many talented teachers in the profession as possible.

Insight #5: Monitor regulation changes

In the vast majority of schools, the chameleon-like Senior Management Team have to double up as an array of different people – Recruitment Officers, Human Resource Managers, Health and Safety Inspectors, Legal Experts... the list goes on.

The SMT have to react constantly to new and changing guidelines and regulations; the aforementioned Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy, for example. The implications for the SMT can be massive, and anything you can offer to help facilitate the change and reduce the headache is going to be received with open arms.

Insight #6: Quantify time and money savings

If your recruitment service is going to help the SMT reduce staff workload, solve the retention crisis, or save money compared with other methods of recruitment, then it’s really important to quantify why teachers should buy from you. Likewise, if you can help find teachers find supply or full-time teaching or tutoring jobs, and save them paperwork or access higher-paid roles, don’t keep that precious information to your- self.

Instead of making vague assertions about the benefits you can offer, give an example of a school that has adopted your recruitment service, and illustrate in an eye-catching way the time and money savings that they were able to make.

And don’t just express the cost savings or earnings as a percentage. Make sure you show teachers the value in £££ so that they can visualize where they could spend this extra money!

Insight #7: A direct route to teachers’ inboxes

Not only does our database hold 400,000 named staff/teachers in the UK, but we also invest 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/IP’s in-house. This means we’re in complete control of our clients’ email paths and can ensure a far superior deliverability rate.

Insight #8: Segmentation is key

Our Education Database makes it easy for you to create segmented marketing lists that comprise just the teacher types, school types, and areas of the country that your business wants to target. It also includes extremely powerful context and insight data that enables you to create extraordinarily relevant marketing.

From a breakdown of each school’s budget, to exam results, inspection ratings, and pupil/staff data, your marketing can be personalised to a remarkable degree. Our team of talented in-house data cleansers and managers make 80,000 updates every single month, and we have the only known GDPR-compliant method in practise for gaining consent within the edu-sector. So, you can be confident that your database is not only incredibly insightful, but also extremely accurate.

Insight #9: 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 #10: Nurture relationships with Campus

10 Insights for Promoting Recruitment Services to Schools 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 recruitment companies who are trying to build better relationships with the country’s most talented teachers. It brings all your company’s marketing functions together in one super-cool application.

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.

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Education Marketing How to Sell to Schools How to Sell to Teachers Marketing to Education Marketing to Schools Marketing to Teachers

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