Education Marketing

A shared mailing to schools allows you to get a leaflet into the hands of individual teachers for about one sixth of the cost of a solo mailing (typically around 8p per school – less when mailing larger numbers of schools but slightly more for short run shared mailings).

Since not every school office forwards emails, and since personal email addresses don’t exist for every teacher, the shared mailing is an approach which can be exceptionally beneficial.

As for the response rate, a shared mailing is often reported to get a response rate of about one quarter of that which could be achieved with a solo mailing. However since the shared mailing has a cost of about one seventh of the solo mailing, pound for pound it is usually a very good deal.

So why do a solo at all? For three reasons in fact

a) As I mentioned yesterday, in order to test out an approach. It is perfectly viable to do a solo trial mailing of 300 schools in many cases, in order to see what one might get from such an approach.

b) To get big sales in quickly (nothing can be the 2% or 3% that you can get from some solo mailings, once the promotion is right).

c) To select exactly the schools you want – for example, by postcode, by age range, by size, by funding…

Hamilton House runs a series of shared mailings through the term, including

• 1000 Secondary schools known not to respond to emails
• 3800 Schools with sixth forms
• 5000 Secondary schools
• 5000 largest primary schools
• 10,000 largest primary schools
• 24000 Primary schools of all sizes.

In all cases you also get you advert on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk which should get you around another 700 views.

There’s details on www.shared.org.uk or call 01536 399 000 for more information, and ideas on how to use a shared mailing. If you wish we can also send you a sample shared mailing pack.

I’ve mentioned UK Education News a number of times, not least because it is free, but because I think it gives an excellent service, and I’m really pleased to have set it up and been part of it. It allows you, and all schools, to stay up to date with school news (local and national) at any time, day or night.

Indeed even if you are not a Hamilton House customer (and oh how it hurts my poor heart to acknowledge that there are some firms that are not customers of ours!) you can still use the site for free.

What’s more, as I have mentioned, if you do a shared mailing, solo mailing or email mailing with HHM you will get your story on the news service – something that tends to generate about 700 extra hits on their web site.

There is another approach that I haven’t been mentioning – and that is that if you want to have your story or news item or advert on the rolling news site, you can do this for as little as £25. You just send the text as a Word file, we’ll find you a headline that will bring in the crowds, and you’ll be there.

The site is at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk and the full rate card is at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk/ratecard.pdf If you would like to talk about this, do give me a call on 01536 399 013.

In an ideal world your marketing programme for schools should be all ready to roll. But just in case everything is not quite set, or if you are ready, but would like a quick check list, here’s four little thoughts which might just help get matters moving.

1. Engage in a conversation. The days of mechanical advertising in which “personalisation” meant having a machine slot in the recipient’s name and address are long gone. Teachers expect advertising to be directly relevant to them and their specific needs, and they expect to be addressed as individuals – not part of a crowd. The only way to do this is through conversational advertising in which you talk with them about you product or service, rather than give them a list of bullet points. In fact I would go so far as to say, bullets are the antithesis of good advertising.

2. Diversity the media you use. The old thought that all schools handle incoming information in the same way is very much an old thought not in keeping with today’s reality. Some schools have issued personal email addresses to teachers, some will pass on certain emails to teachers via the office, and some prefer postal promotions. There really is no point in emailing schools that either block incoming adverts at the LA or Grid level, or simply delete them all as they hit the school inbox.

3. Stay in touch with the news that teachers are reading, so that you understand what they are thinking, because if you don’t know what they are thinking, it is hard to write good copy.

4. And if nothing else, make sure that all adverts to teachers give the teachers the answer to these two simple questions…

Why should I buy this,

Why should I buy this from this company rather than someone else?

Whether you use HHM as your source of school marketing or anyone else, I would urge you to consider those four points this year – and my belief is that if you do, your advertising will reap greater rewards.

Of course HHM has its own solutions to all four points, and I will offer those tomorrow – but if you are desperately anxious to talk about any of these issues now, do give me a call on 01536 399 013.

Generic emails to schools (the ones that go to the school office to be forwarded to staff) have the particular benefit of being quite low price.

And because we’ve just managed to improve the way we collect and update these addresses, Hamilton House is now able to make them even lower price.

In fact we are offering three email campaigns to schools for the price of one.

In other words our prices for generic emails remain the same – but you can have your message sent out three times (on whatever dates you choose) for the price of one transmission.

The prices (with the number of schools reached in brackets) are

• Schools with sixth forms (3500) £229
• All secondary (5000) £280
• Largest primary (5000) £280
• Largest primary (10000) £530
• All primary (24000) £830

Now, when you book in for a mailing, you can have three transmissions without paying a penny more. Here’s how it works with an email to the 5000 secondary schools as an example…

1. You book in a mailing to 5000 secondary schools, and send us the copy you want to send out. You tell us the date you want it sent out, we set it up, and then send it out. We invoice you for £280, and send out the email.

2. You also tell us two further dates that you want the email sent out on, and we automatically send out the email on those dates as well. These dates can be a week or two after the first transmission, or they can be for next term and the term after – you decide.

3. There’s not a penny extra to pay.

The terms and conditions….

There’s no catch (HHM doesn’t do catches!) but there are a couple of conditions attached. First, we have to use the same copy each time. If you want to change the copy for a subsequent email, you will have to pay again. Second, you have to pay our invoice by the due date, and before the second mailing goes out. Otherwise its the normal procedures for emails (most particularly that the copy should either be supplied as straight text as a Word document, or as an HTML file).

Why we can offer this discount…

The key cost in sending out an email to schools is the setting up of the email itself, and the costs associated with setting up the transmission. So if we can set up everything in advance our costs come down, and we can pass that saving on to you.

Free listing on UK Education News

You will get a free listing on UK Education News after the first transmission, but not after the other two. If you have not seen UK Education News do take a look at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk For most of our customers this means you will get an extra 700 to 1000 people reading your add – that is 700 to 1000 in addition to the number who actually open the email and read it.

Help with your copy

As with all our services you will get help with writing your copy if you want it. Just send your copy to us in advance, and we’ll call you back with our thoughts on any changes that might give you a better response rate.

If you have any questions on this please do give us a call on 01536 399 000. Meanwhile, you can stay in touch with all the news in education each day on UK Education News on the link above.

Throughout the term you’ll be able to get all the news related to schools in the UK on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk (obviously at no cost) and indeed you can advertise there free of charge – we will put up your advert there if you do a shared mailing, solo mailing or emailing with us. For most firms this gets between 700 and 1000 more readings of your advert – above those gained from the actual mailing. (Incidentally you’ll also get listed in www.top5.org.uk free of charge – our directory of school services which we often promote to schools. If you just want to be on that site, and nothing else, there is a list of prices at http://www.top5.org.uk/Suppliers.html).

If you just want to be on UK Education News without joining in a mailing this can be done, for £25.00 plus VAT. Just send us your advert as a Word file.

Shared mailings are now up and running for the new term – including the new “1000 secondary schools that don’t reply to emails” and we’ve also made this list available as a solo mailing list.

Inclusion in the 1000 shared mailing, in UK Education News and indeed in our personal and subscription emails to teachers comes free of charge to clients of our Velocity service (www.velocity.ac) – but you can also opt in on a job by job basis – the email lists as always are on www.emails.gs

And there is the three emails for the price of one service that I mentioned yesterday (do give us a call if you missed that).

So that’s the summary of what we have been putting in place through the summer. I do hope you find UK Education News helpful and informative – as part of the Hamilton House programme – and of course I do hope you get really high levels of sales from your marketing this school term.

As always, if you have any questions, thoughts, or come to that anything else, please do call Laura, Sam, Stephen and myself on 01536 399 000, and we’ll be happy to talk through the options, do a review of your marketing leaflets (for free of course) or indeed, just pass the time of day. By and large we are quite nice people.