Education Marketing

In addition to the money already given for this year’s education budget an extra £250 million has been given in the budget – equating to 54,000 places for students.   The money more than makes up for the shortfall caused by calculations by the Learning and Skills Council.

Also there’s £400m for schools and colleges, to fund sixth form places for 2010/11 which is also intended to cover any increased demand for places.

What’s more there’s an additional £300m of capital funding for investment in further education colleges.  This will enable the LSC to fund a limited number of further projects through the Building Colleges for the Future programme starting in 2009/10.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “I am very pleased that the chancellor made the decision to allocate additional funding for post-16 places. This more than covers the projected shortfall for next year. Schools and colleges will be able to give places to all the students they have recruited and allocate some additional places for this September.”

Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, described Alistair Darling’s Budget as “excellent news”.

He said: “This is a positive move too in terms of tackling youth unemployment. We are pleased that government has recognised the critical importance of funding 16-18 education adequately, particularly in such economically troubled times and as government prepares to extend the leaving age.”

Tony

Hamilton House Mailings plc reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.

There are now five ways of emailing teachers.  Unfortunately different names are being used by different companies for these, and it is getting confusing.  So I have written a brief and hopefully simple guide to emailing schools including the options, the benefits and rough prices.

 

Cost vs Response Rate

 

The general rule is the more the list costs, the higher the response rate - which is at least reassuring.  However this doesn’t always seem to be the case (as with shared email mailings which seem to cost a lot but deliver modest response rates).

 

Also it should be noted that not all lists are complete – some reach every school, others don’t.  However reaching every school is not necessarily good.   Some schools simply never pass emails addressed to the school generally on to the teacher – and so the fact that you reach all these schools might seem to be good (you are mailing more people) but might make no difference to your response rate.

 

How schools treat email

 

There are three types of school when it comes to email -

 

a) Those that ask for all email to go to the administrator, so it can be forwarded (about 40% of schools)

 

b) Those that much prefer it if the email is sent directly to the teacher (about 55%) and who may not pass on email to the teacher if it is sent to the general address.  (It is the existence of these schools that causes general email response rates to be low – your mail simply isn’t getting through).

 

c) Those that won’t pass any emails on, and state that they prefer advertisements to be sent by post (about 5%)

 

Here are the options…

 

1.  Generic Mail.    This goes straight to the school’s general address and is normally seen by the administrator.  In the subject line is written “Attn: Head of Maths” or whatever.

 

Generic email is also often known as “Email schools” in that the email goes to the school’s general address.  But some suppliers now call this “Email teachers” and even “Email teachers direct”.  Their logic is that you are going to the teacher eventually.  The “direct” bit is then justified by the fact that some firms have the names of headteachers and can slip this into the subject line (as in Attn: A J Bliss, Headteacher).

 

The specific problem with emailing the headteacher is that he/she gets mountains of mail and email, and very little of it ever gets to the head – the administrator will have the job of sorting it out.  Thus the claim that this is somehow “direct” is a bit far fetched, and if anyone says “direct” it is always worth asking exactly what this means.

 

It is also a good idea not to email the head unless you really have no choice – and normally you do have a choice.  The Deputy Head is often a better bet.

 

Generic email lists are available from many sources at many prices.  Two companies sell them on disk at prices around a quarter of a penny each, but I have yet to find someone who has found these lists to be of much use.  It is also worth considering the background of such companies – one of the suppliers seems to have a link to the sex industry, which you may (or may not) want to be associated with.   Another has been reported to have disks that can give virus alerts.

 

The problem with the generic lists on disk is that they can be out of date, can be badly researched and because you send out your own emails, they can get your system blocked from all schools. 

 

Thus suddenly you might find that you simply can’t email any school in Surrey, or Bolton or other places.   Companies that are seriously involved in this type of work, liaise closely with the authorities to ensure they are not blocked in this way.   Some counties (NE Somerset is one) openly state that if there is a single complaint from one teacher they will block the sender for good.

 

Companies that send out your emails for you charge anything from 2p to 10p an address, and obviously you have to judge the quality of the list and the firm you are working with.   You should be able to select by school age range, postcode, county, and other normal selections.

 

As noted above, the other problem with the generic lists is that they include not only those schools that want emails to go to the administrator (type a above) they also include those who prefer email to go to the teacher direct (type b).  Many type b schools do not pass the mail on when it is for another teacher, so their inclusion can be wasted.

 

Selling a £20 report to deputy heads the highest sale rate we have got on a generic list is around 1.6%.  (Note that is actual sale rate, not click through or open).

 

2.  Preference lists

 

These lists are just like the generic lists except that they have the name and title of the teacher slipped into the subject line – so instead of saying “Attn Head of Maths” they say “Attn A J Smith Head of Maths.”

 

Additionally they exclude all the schools that state that they want emails to go straight to the teacher, not via the administrator, and all the schools that say they don’t want any emails.   So the success rate tends to be higher.   They cost around 10p an address to mail.  Because these lists are researched it is possible to mail only schools that do specific subjects such as “Business Studies” or to get to specific people in certain departments (such as the Head of Physics, as well as The Head of Science).  Selection can be by subject, age range, area, size of school etc.

 

3.  Named lists

 

These lists can be more responsive than preference lists since the emails go straight to the teacher’s in box, and don’t go via the administrator at all.  

 

Any company owning such a list is likely to be restrictive in its use and limit the number of mailings that can go out to one a week per teacher.   Rates are around 18p per teacher to mail – and the option of knowing which school has which teacher as with the Preference List also exists.   Selection can be by subject, age range, area, size of school etc.

 

4.  Subscription lists

 

These are the top of the range lists – lists of teachers who have opted into a news service in order to get the news each week.  Adverts are written in advertorial style, are strictly limited to one a week, and tend to get a very high response rate. 

 

About 15 subscription lists exist at present – including not only the major subject areas (English, maths etc) but also some specialist areas such as school trips, school marketing and fundraising, and behaviour & discipline.  The price is around 20p per address, but regional selections are not available because every subscriber has to get every email.   The highest response rate we have had in selling a £20 report is 3.5%.

 

5.  Shared mailings

 

You might expect shared mailings to be a lot cheaper than others, but until now this has not been the case.  In the shared mailing the teacher is sent four or five headlines and can then click on a any of the headlines to get to the advert – which is often offered as something free to the teacher. 

 

The current price from the one company offering shared mailings is around 15p, and the response rates reported tend to be as low as those from generic mailings.   However it is expected that at least one new company will enter this field shortly, and will be quoting much lower prices.

 

6.  Reports

 

Prior to any mailing with HHM you can send in a copy of your proposed email and we will then comment on it free of charge.  You’ll then have the choice of changing the text, as we suggest, or staying with your original – as you wish.

 

You’ll have noticed above that we have quoted a couple of percentage sales rates for mailings – in both cases we had to experiment considerably to find out how to write the email – and we found a slight change in style and approach could make a huge difference.   In fact the text is often more important than the product in convincing the reader that this is a genuine offer.

 

With all mailings you should be able to get two other reports if you are using an outside company: how many people opened the email, and how many people clicked through to your web site.   You should also be able to get reports on how the figures you get compare with the figures others have received of late, so that you know how well you have done.

 

Obvioulsy if you do the mailing yourself, you won’t have access to these reports, and you will need to buy the software in yourself to undertake the analyses.

 

Hope you find this helpful.    There’s more about the Hamilton House email to schools services on http://www.yesmail.org.uk/Schools.html   If you have any questions do give me a call on 01536 399 013.

 

Tony

 

Hamilton House Mailings plc reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.

 

Is it…

the envelope
the mailing list
the sales letter
the brochure or catalogue
or the offer

I strongly believe that the answer is the sales letter – because simple changes to a sales letter can make a huge different to the effectiveness of the overall mailing.

While all the other factors can add or take away part of the response rate, the sales letter can have much more effect, taking us perhaps from a 2% response rate to a 3% response rate or more.

It does this by focusing the reader.  While a bad sales letter does nothing at all (it just says, “I have great pleasure in enclosing a catalogue”) a good sales letter really can grab the reader, hold the reader by the throat, and shake the reader around a lot until the sale happens.

You can read a simple, straight forward report on How to Write the Perfect Sales letter (that is one that will really make a difference to your response rate) by visiting the How to section of the Hamilton House site.    If you want a direct link to the article  click here 

If you would like to know more, call me on 01536 399 000 during office ours or email Tony at Hamilton-House.com

Here’s a bit of fun to end the week – unless of course you publish guides on passing SATS in which case it is time for a very stiff drink.

Teachers at a union conference threatened to strike today if ministers end national tests for 11-year-olds, days after a rival teachers’ union voted for a boycott to force their abolition.One teachers union (NUT) has demanded the end of SATS and the government says teachers will be in breach of their contract if they carry out threats not to put the kids through the exams.   But the NASUWT says it will take action if the government drops the SATS.   While the majority of teachers seem anti-SATS the SATS that have now become optional (but for which the government produces the papers) are being taken up by most schools (at least according to the number of papers ordered by schools from the Dept of Cushions and Soft Furnishings.

NASUWT argue that teachers can’t mark internal tests instead of sending papers away to be marked by external markers, and so they would strike if SATS go.
The secondary SATS have been dropped, but it seems NASUWT is encouring secondary school members to keep doing them, so that they have less internal marking.

The Secretary of State has now asked for pilots of an alternative system of testing, carried out when teachers consider children are ready.   But the NUT has voted to ballot members to boycott the tests next year and members demonstrated outside the annual conference in Cardiff, chanting “no more useless tests”, which personally I think is against school rules and should result in detention.  I mean, you wouldn’t get us football fans doing that.

There’s more on education marketing at www.educationmarketing.org.uk

Tony

I’ve been very struck of late by the fact that, while my company gets a fair number of calls from clients who tell us that they are doing particularly well, we also get a number from companies that are having a bit of a hard time.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at this with my colleagues in the office and my conclusion is that while teachers, administrators and managers in schools are not being affected by the recession (in the sense that school budgets are not touched and neither are their salaries) they do seem to be looking at advertisements in different ways.  

When one writes advertising in a way that was perhaps the best way to advertise a few years ago, that advertising, which has worked for a long time, now has a reduced impact. The sales may still be there – but not as much as before.

However, when one writes the advertising in a new style, the response rates can go up.

If I can give one example, I was recently asked by one of our Velocity clients (I’ll explain Velocity in a moment) to take an email advertisement he had done and re-write it.  I did so, taking it out of the style of a couple of years back and putting it more in the modern style, and we got the highest ever “click through” rate (the number of people who read the email and then clicked onto the link to the website) that we have ever had.  Previously the advert really didn’t work too well.  This experience has been replicated many times over.

I’ve written a short paper on this topic called How to Sell to Schools.  It is one of a small number of articles in a new How To series we are producing which relate to this area of work  - and there will be more in due course.  It is available free of charge on the internet at http://www.hamilton-house.com/howto.html 

But before you go there – a word about Velocity.  This is a service through which our clients get the Hamilton House team very much on board to give them help, guidance and information day by day, solving the problem of how to get adverts to work better and how to make use of the whole array of solo mailing, shared mailing, emailing, and the new low cost research strategies which reveal what teachers think about products (and thus inform us how to write the adverts better).   If you would like to know more, please do give my colleagues and me a call on 01536 399 000, or take a look at www.velocity.ac

If anyone is ever interested in seeking my advice on where to start with email and direct mail advertising, I always give the same thought: start with the most expensive list and work down.

 

This can seem counter-intuitive – but there is a logic in the thought.

 

To explain: in direct mail there are two main options for reaching teachers – solo mail and shared mail.   Solo mail costs around 45p per school, while shared mail costs around 7p per school.  (Prices do depend on a variety of factors so please don’t take any prices here as a statement of the exact price.)

 

My view is very clearly that one should start with a small mailing (maybe 300 schools) using the solo mailing.  I appreciate that shared is cheaper, but solo gets the better response rate.   The simple fact is that if you can’t get a decent level of sales out of a solo mailing, you are unlikely to do so with a shared mailing.

 

The same applies with regards to email.   The most responsive list is the Subscribers list – teachers who have asked to have mailings sent to them.  Sales rates on these email lists can reach towards the same level as solo mailings, and so they should be tried first.  Again, if you are not getting a decent response rate with a mailing to a subscribers list, you are not going to get a good response to a mailing using a general school list.

 

True, a subscriber list is incomplete (not every teacher in a subject will subscribe) and is around four times the cost of a general school list.

 

But this is still a perfect way of finding out if you mailing can work.  A modest investment using a subscriber list will tell you if the advert works.  If it does you can move down the chain to the cheaper but less responsive lists.  If not, then the best investment is to spend time rewriting the advert and then trying again.

 

Here’s the order of activity that I would always recommend.

 

Direct mail: use a trial solo mailing first, then if that works mail all schools in your sector (ie all secondary schools, or whatever is appropriate) with a solo mailing.   After that experiment with shared mailings.  (There is more on shared mailings at www.shared.org.uk )

 

Email: Start with a subscription list.  If that works (or if there is no subscription list available for your subject) move on to a Personal List (that is teachers at their own email address), then the Preference List (the school address with the name of the teacher stripped into the subject line) and then finally the general school list.    Each list gets bigger, but the unit cost goes down.   There are details of the various types of email list at http://www.yesmail.org.uk/Schools.html

 

The contrary view

 

Approaching mailing the other way round – by starting with the cheapest option first – is a much more common approach.  It springs from the notion that one will just spend a little money to begin with, and then if that works invest a bit more.

 

What this approach ignores is the fact that with the more expensive (but also more responsive) lists such as subscriber emails and solo direct mail, it is possible to do quite small sized mailings as a test run.  Thus the risk of loss from an advert that doesn’t work is kept small, at the same time as giving the advert every chance to work.

 

Consider this – first for direct mail

 

a) A trial solo mailing to 300 schools might cost around £130

b) A shared mailing to 5000 schools might cost around £400

 

And then for email

 

a)  An email using a subscriber list 900 heads of sixth form might cost around £140

b)  An email to 3500 heads of sixth form on a general school list might cost around £200

 

In each case the first option has a higher unit price, and gains a higher response rate – but it can be run as a trial mailing to see if the advert works.   If advert a) works one can move on to other options, but if it does not it is much better to work out why, rather than just jump to another, less responsive list.

 

Of course I would never hide from the fact that there can be exceptions and special cases, and I can’t cover them all here.  But if you would like to discuss this with myself, or my colleagues, please do give me a call on 01536 399 000.

 

Tony Attwood

We’ve now produced another free report in the How To series – this on one how to sell continuous professional development courses to teachers.

To read the report (no charge, and you can print it out if you wish) please visit www.hamilton-house.com and click on the “How To” link – you’ll find the full list of How To articles there.

Email is changing rapidly.  As I recently noted there are now four different types of email lists available – and now there is an extra feature – guaranteed emails.

The four lists are

Subscription lists – teachers at their own address who subscribe to regular educational news services into which are placed occasional advertisements

Personal email lists – teachers own email addresses in school

Preference email lists – some schools have a policy of asking for all email addresses to come to a specific email address.  These emails go to that address, with the name of the teacher and his/her title [as in Attn A Smith, Head of Maths] in the subject line

School lists – emailed to the school’s general address.

The guarantee affects the school lists.   If you are using our school list service we will, on your request, give an estimate of what sort of open rate and click through rate you will get.   If you feel happy with that, you can accept it, and that becomes your guaranteed rate.   If you think the figures are too low, we’ll undertake a review of the leaflet, and let you know what changes we think are needed.  You can make them and we’ll then review the promotion again and give you a new guaranteed figure.

There’s more details on all these services at www.yesmail.org.uk/schools.html – or call 01536 399 000.

The second in our series of free “How To” guides has been posted on the Hamilton House web site – “How to sell to schools via catalogues.”

If you use catalogues as a way of reaching teachers and you have found your sales stagnant or worse, you might well be interested in this.  Our research in preparing this booklet showed that while some firms were doing very well indeed, others in this market were suffering.

We set out to find out why and this report gives our answers.

To read the report just click.

Tony Attwood