SEN, safeguarding, and wellbeing products and services are some of the most popular of everything 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 rest of the crowd.

Having designed and completed hundreds of SEN, safeguarding, and wellbeing 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 products and 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 Head Teachers, SENCOs, and Designated Safeguarding Lead, but you’ve also got a whole host of other teacher types that will have an interest in your services depending on your specific offering.

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 SEND provision and wellbeing one way or another, and we can contact them for you.

Insight #2: Pupil premium funding

Introduced in 2011, the pupil premium is designed to help schools close the attainment gap between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds. This funding is received by the large majority of schools, including state schools, academies, free schools, and special schools.

The current per-pupil lump sum depends on the type of school, as follows:

Early Years: £302 per eligible pupil Primary Schools: £1,345 per eligible pupil Secondary Schools: £955

Looked-after children and previously looked-after children are eligible for the higher amount of £2,345, regardless of the type of school.

The funding can be used for any product or service that measurably and positively impacts disadvantaged pupils, but schools must publish details of how the funding is spent, and this is being increasingly monitored.

Make sure your marketing gives teachers all the information they need to justify and document their spends, and they’ll be grateful of the time and hassle you’ll save them down the line!

Insight #3: The number-one school priority

As part of our ‘The State of Selling to Schools Survey’, a huge research opportunity within the education industry, we asked schools what their top priority was going forwards.

Almost three-quarters (67.9%) of all teachers gave their answer as supporting emotional and mental wellbeing, above all else.

Staff workloads and responsibilities have been on the rise for many years, as has the focus on young people’s mental health. Coupled with the effects of the 2020 pandemic and school closures, teachers and students need more support than ever.

Make sure your marketing showcases what your product or service can do for both staff and students’ mental health, and how you can help them make it a priority going forwards. Without forgetting ongoing concerns such as budgets and workloads, of course!

Insight #4: The COVID catch-up premium

New for 2020 was the Coronavirus catch-up premium. This one-off sum entitled schools to a share of £1 billion to support students to catch up on lost time after the school closures – especially important for those who are most vulnerable or from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The large majority of schools were eligible, as per the pupil premium, and worked out at between £80 and £240 per pupil, delivered in three payments across the 2020/2021 year.

The funding, which schools must take accountability for, can be used in any way the school chooses, but must help pupils catch up on missed education.

Many schools added this to their Pupil Premium pots to have a bigger budget for targeted interventions, SEND programmes, and other services to improve academic outcomes.

While this funding may not apply in subsequent years, the requirement for schools to work with suppliers who can help them recover those months of lost learning absolutely does.

Insight #5: Invite teachers to try before they buy

65% of teachers are visual learners, meaning they would much rather see how your product works than be told.

It’s also much more likely that they will buy your product if you give them the chance to experience it first-hand. Why don’t you ask them to request a demo? You’re likely to get a really good response which will mean that you get an influx of interested teachers into your sales funnel.

Try to use this opportunity to capture some basic information about these teachers and their needs. Not only will it allow you to make the demo super-useful to each teacher, but it will also give you some really useful ‘persona data’ for your future marketing!

Insight #6: Quantify time and money savings

If your service is going to help staff maximise pupil premium funding, solve the staff wellbeing crisis, reduce SEN admin time, or save money compared with other programmes and products, then it’s really important to quantify why teachers should buy from you.

Instead of making vague assertions about the benefits you can offer, give an example of a school that has adopted your SEN, safeguarding, or wellbeing 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 visualise 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/IPs 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

sing 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 SEN, safeguarding, and wellbeing 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.

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 Marketing to Schools Marketing to Teachers

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