Scottish schools have now closed for the summer (or if not, they close today) but schools in England and Wales carry on for another few weeks.
Which raises the question, is it worth mailing and emailing schools in these remaining weeks?
My experience is yes, it is worth it, simply because through July you really can get a good number of orders without having to make any special price offers or anything else. Indeed the all time record for the number of orders received by our publishing company First and Best, was on the last day of the summer term.
The point is that many teachers have a little extra time in July, what with some classes having stopped because they have done (or are doing) their GCSE and A levels while others have sports day, school trips, end of term production rehearsals and so forth. While primary teachers often get very tied up with doing reports, they too do wind down towards the end of term, with all sorts of special events.
Also there is the feeling among many teachers of getting materials ready for next term – place the order now and have them ready for September.
So overall, I’d say, keep advertising all through this end of term period – but I would also say it is worth planning next term’s campaigns – which is of course what we’ll be doing with our Velocity clients. It is easy to see the five week summer holiday as a time for doing nothing, but in my experience campaigns can take some weeks to get written, booked in, printed (for direct mail) and have associated web landing pages set up and checked (for email).
There’s details of our email lists at www.emails.gs
There’s details of our direct mail lists at http://www.hamilton-house.com/gateways/lists.html
Finally, you might like to note that Hamilton House also runs a Creative Direct news group that deals with ways of creating ever more responsive mail shots and emails. It sends out emails once or twice a week. You can join by sending an email to creativedirect-subscribe@yahoogroups.com – and just click on the reply when it comes back.