School and educational facility program managers who use email as part of their marketing strategy see tremendous gains in their overall revenue, enrollment, and student satisfaction.
Considering that 99% of consumers check their email daily, it’s no wonder that email is an excellent medium for communicating with current and potential customers.
Plus, it’s extremely cost-effective and boasts one of the highest ROIs in all of marketing.
In this article, we’ll go over six ways schools and educational facilities can benefit from email marketing.
- Better Promotion for the School
- Increased Return on Investment
- Higher Interest With Personalized Content
- Increased School Website Traffic
- Boosted Student Enrollment
- Higher Enrollment in After-School Activities
- Conclusion
Better Promotion for the School
Email marketing is a great way to promote your school by showing parents and students what you can offer them, from a new after-school program to an updated sports stadium.
Consistently informing parents about these instances of added value increases the chances of them enrolling their students in your programs.
Plus, as parents become more familiar with your school and its offerings, they’ll start to view it as more credible and trustworthy.
This boost in credibility will attract not only the interest of the students and parents on your email list, but also the people within their network who they talk to about your offerings.
That said, here are some ideas for school events or offerings you can promote via email marketing:
| A description of your new summer learning program |
| A list of after-school clubs and programs |
| Upcoming school events or fundraisers |
| Details about your enrollment process and dates |
| Student success stories |
Many schools are even using promotional videos in their emails to speak to their potential customers:
Source: Higher Education Marketing
Including a video allows your prospective students and parents to get information about your school in whichever way they most prefer.
In sum, running email marketing campaigns is a fabulous way to promote your school and its programs and events to your prospective students.
Increased Return on Investment
59% of marketers say that email marketing is their largest source of ROI. Even better, marketers who use segmented campaigns cite increases in revenue of up to 760%.
Email marketing continues to reign supreme in the world of targeted marketing, and it’s not abdicating its throne anytime soon.
People keep on using email as the main form of communication:
Source: Blogging Wizard
If you’re on a tight budget and receiving low ROIs on other forms of marketing, it might be time to switch some spending to email marketing, especially given how cost-effective it is.
Litmus ran a survey of thousands of marketing professionals and found that the average ROI for email marketing is 36:1.
Source: Litmus
When compared to the ROIs of other top marketing channels like social media, online advertising, and direct mail, email marketing comes out on top:
Source: Smart Insights
If you’re already using email marketing, there’s still plenty you can do to improve your current approach to improve your ROI.
With the implementation of a few email marketing best practices like frequent A/B testing and the use of dynamic content, you can quickly improve your email marketing campaign’s ROI:
Source: Litmus
Even just beginning to add animated Gifs to your emails or using dynamic content can more than double your email’s ROI.
By adjusting your strategy to prioritize email marketing, you might be able to save money and attract a greater number of students to your school.
Higher Interest With Personalized Content
Schools that use personalized emails that speak to the needs of the recipient will receive a greater boost in enrollment than those who just send out generic email blasts.
For example, parents with a student in the 11th grade will get more value from your email about a college admission seminar or SAT tutoring services than parents whose child is in the 9th grade.
Registration software with built-in communication tools, like Regpack, allows you to easily filter and separate your email list into multiple buckets based on various criteria like the student’s age or other data you’ve collected so that recipients only get automated emails that are relevant to their interests.
Also, these tools allow you to automatically personalize each email on a smaller scale as well.
When an email is sent, the software will automatically include the recipient’s name, the student’s name, or other important details in the email.
For an illustration, all the purple text in the email below will be filled in with relevant and accurate data about the recipient:
Source: Regpack
Regpack will draw the purple information from your database and fill it in correctly upon sending the email, so the customer feels like they’re dealing with a school that knows them intimately.
According to HubSpot, this micro-level personalization can make a huge difference to an email’s ROI.
Even just including the first name in the subject line of an email will give the email a higher clickthrough rate than those that don’t.
When you use software to personalize your email campaigns and individual emails, you save a lot of time while enjoying impressive open rates and positive reactions to your emails.
Increased School Website Traffic
In your marketing emails you can link out to your website and encourage people to click those links, which will lead to increased traffic on your school website.
For example, if you sent a marketing email promoting your after-school theater program, you could include a link to the associated page on your website and tell people to click on it to learn more about the program.
Below, Harvard links out to three web pages students can click to learn more about their Master’s degree:
Source: Higher Education Marketing
Not only does this strategy ensure that your recipients can easily get the information they need, it also makes your website more discoverable on search engines like Google.
When you drive traffic to your website, search engines notice and take it as a sign of your website’s credibility, which is a factor in their ranking algorithms.
So, when someone in your area who is looking for an after-school theater program looks up “after-school theater club” on Google, your website’s theater page will have a better chance of appearing high in the search results.
Additionally, when you send people to your website to look at one thing, there’s a decent chance they’ll do some browsing and find something else they like, especially when you interlink your other pages within one page.
For example, on a page discussing your school’s chess club, you could hyperlink the phrase “our other after-school programs” which takes visitors to the main page listing all the other programs parents can sign their kids up for.
Or, as Norwell Schools has done below, you could include a link to a more in-depth write-up of the topic the browser is reading about:
Source: Norwell Schools
The website uses a clear CTA of “Click HERE” to encourage parents and students to click the link and continue interacting with the website.
Plus, their website design and sidebar menu help users discover other helpful information:
Source: Norwell Schools
The strategy is sort of like how Walmart might attract customers to their store with a deal on headphones and then anticipate that people will stick around and buy more than just the headphones because other items will catch their eye.
Your email can be the gateway onto your website, and interlinking can be the passages between your various web pages.
As long as you use language that highlights the value of clicking on your links and visiting the related pages, you should be able to increase traffic and the average amount of time that the users spend on your site.
Boosted Student Enrollment
Effective email marketing can educate prospective students and their parents about your school’s value, thereby increasing new student enrollment.
Creating an email newsletter is one of the best email marketing strategies for nurturing student interest in your program to the tipping point where they decide to enroll at your school.
That’s because you consistently send promotional and educational content to your subscribers, who’ve already expressed interest in your school,
A promotional email might focus on getting them to register for a certain program, while educational content will help them learn about something they’re interested in, whether that’s a certain degree track or a special scholarship program.
For example, educational content might be an email answering some common questions about the enrollment process by outlining the exact steps the student will have to take.
By educating them on this topic and showing them it’s not that hard, you’ll easily assuage any hesitations to enroll caused by a misconception or imagined reality.
You can also use your emails to educate people about upcoming events that will help them learn more about your school.
Here’s a great example from Syracuse University telling potential students about an opportunity to interact with current students:
Source: Instapage
It’s usually best to make the majority of your newsletter emails focused on educational content and use every fourth or fifth email to persuade the recipient and sell your program.
That way, you’re establishing trust with the prospective student and building excitement around your program without coming off as pushy.
After receiving a couple of months’ worth of emails, perhaps one or two every week, the recipient will have a good understanding of whether or not your school is right for them, and they’ll make their decision accordingly.
In sum, email marketing campaigns are a great way to nurture your leads, introduce you to your brand and your offerings, and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
Higher Enrollment in After-School Activities
Offering after-school activities is an effective way to offer value to your students while simultaneously earning extra revenue for your school.
After-school program directors should take advantage of email marketing to inform current students and parents about these after-school activities and their numerous benefits:
Source: Mass After School
Email is a cost-effective method for increasing enrollment in various after-school activities, from soccer to chess club to math team.
A targeted campaign can also help you re-engage students who stopped showing up to their chosen activity by reminding them and their parents of its value.
In a marketing email you can do the following:
| Share a list of all your after-school programs |
| Highlight the benefits of joining one specific club |
| Describe one student’s experience in the program |
| Outline the costs, time commitment, and other specifics of a program |
| Share a video of the students doing the activity |
| Write persuasively about the value of learning after school |
A best practice is to create a segmented email campaign that consistently delivers emails to parents or students based on several factors like their age, grades, interests, and other data that indicates their level of fit for the after-school programs you’re promoting.
Within each of your emails, it’s important to include a strong call to action to get the recipient to either learn more on your website or enroll in the program.
When you want them to register, it’s best to include a link they can click to easily begin and complete the registration process right from their phone or computer.
That seamless experience reduces the friction and enables them to sign themselves or their kids up for the activity before the excitement you’ve built with your email wears off.
Online registration software such as Regpack enables your prospective customers to easily enroll and register online via online registration forms in a matter of minutes.
On your end, creating these forms is simple thanks to the drag-and-drop editor in the tool’s online form builder:
Source: Regpack
Just select which details you want to collect (email address, name, etc.,) and then move that field into the online registration form.
When you regularly educate potential customers about your after-school activities through email marketing and streamline the registration process with technology, you’re sure to see a steep hike in your after-school program enrollment numbers.
Conclusion
Running targeted and automated email campaigns is the most effective way to promote your school, increase enrollment, and drive potential customers to your website.
It’s affordable and offers the highest average return on investment out of all the other marketing options you can choose from.
Plus, when each email is personalized and speaks to the interest of the recipient, the email will make them feel a stronger and deeper connection with your school.
They’ll feel like you’re writing to them with their best interests at heart.
