Education Marketing

The shared email campaigns (in which you reach 10,000 teacher email addresses for £99 plus VAT) have proved popular and we’ve filled up a few dates between now and December.

So there’s a revised schedule out – details below.  Additionally we’ve extended the amount that you can say about yourselves on the email.

This follows some research into what works and what doesn’t, in the shared emails.  In simple terms, the more specific you are the better it is.  If you want to know more, do call 01536 399 000

There’s an example of how a shared email looks at http://www.emails.gs/sample_shared.html

Here’s the dates – each entry is £99.

October

18th Bursar

31st Primary

31st ICT

November

3rd ICT

7th Maths

7th English

14th SENCO

15th Careers/sixth form

21st Mod Lang

22nd PSHE

28th Site Manager

December

1st Librarians

5th RE

Please call 01536 399 000 for more info.

Tony Attwood

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

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There once was a time long long ago when PR for firms working in the world of education meant writing a press release and sending it a range of educational publications.

One might also send these out to the Guardian and a few other national dailies, plus some local and national BBC radio and TV stations, and basically that was it.

It can still work of course, if you have a big enough story, but for most of us with interesting, but not world shattering stories about our products or services, it no longer works like this.

Many of the smaller educational publishers have gone, and most of those that are left now charge to carry your press release.  Coverage elsewhere has become much more intermittent, and it is not unknown for companies to get virtually no coverage for a press release that has been sent out.

Likewise many paid local papers have vanished, or have become free papers with a much smaller news content than was the case the before.

So what can be done?

Actually, several things.   First there’s UK Education News.  This is a free rolling news service that thousands of teachers use every day, at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk If you are a customer of Hamilton House you can have your news story on the service for free.  If you are not using us, the cost is £25 plus VAT.   The databank of stories gets around 30,000 hits a month.

You can still send stories to local newspapers and local radio stations – and the larger stories can go to the national press too.  However it is a good idea to know exactly who you are sending to within each organisation, and to get the format right, since these days the media are often looking for stories that they can just reproduce.

The other main area in which you have to work is blogs and web sites.  You need a web site with all your information on, so that any journalist who sees the press release can then look and get some extra data.   Then you need to be publishing more news on a regular basis.  You have the press release, but there always needs to be more – and a blog is an ideal way of doing this.

In fact the blog becomes your own PR campaign.  If you have not seen one take a look at www.blog.educationmarketing.org.uk as an example.  It is not the only way to do a blog, but it is one way.   All the stories stay on line, and you can find them on the site through Google.

You also need to be looking at other people’s blogs, because if they mention the product or service area you are in, or anything to do with it, you might well be able to write back to them and leave a message on their blog.  If they let you post a reference to your site, that might help you get a few more readers – and it will help you get up the rankings (the more links you have the better).

So PR is still possible, it is just different these days.

To accommodate the latest changes Hamilton House normally runs PR campaigns through its Velocity service (www.velocity.ac) but we can run them individually as one-off campaigns as well.  If you are interested do give us a call on 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

Twitter is free, and sending a tweet takes about 30 seconds.

But most firms involved in educational marketing don’t use Twitter.

I think the main reason why is that most firms who are not using Twitter simply don’t know what it is, and how to use it, so they back off.

(This is not me being critical – there’s loads of new tech I can’t do, but Twitter is a fairly easy bit of tech to grasp, and it can do you quite a bit of good).

So, if that is the case, may I invite you to go to http://twitter.com/ and sign in.  Then add @HHMailings as one of the tweets to follow (you can stop doing it at any time, and you won’t get any emails as a result).

You might want to add a few other tweeting sources as well, but basically just come back to the site from time to time, and you’ll see the tweets that have come in.

I follow 19 sources of tweets, and tend to look once or twice a day, scrolling up and down to see what’s new – it is a handy way of seeing what is going on.

Next you need to find some followers – so on all your marketing, and on your web site, just tell people to follow you @ whatever you Tweeting address is.

Finally you need to send out a message from time to time – usually something that you want to advertise.

For example, supposing you are doing a shared email with Hamilton House.  On that email you can add your Twitter address.  And you can then say on Twitter that you are in the shared email on that day – it will get a few more people to look out for it.

And that’s it.  All free, all simple.

If you want to know more about Twitter email me or give me a call.  If you want to know more about shared emails, (those are the ones that cost 1p a teacher reached) they are described on http://www.emails.gs/Email10000.html

Here’s some forthcoming dates…

Supposing you have decided to go for the lowest cost marketing to schools: what exactly would that mean?

I discovered recently in a discussion that there was a certain amount of misunderstanding of the way pricing in marketing to schools works.

So here’s a brief summary of approaches where I have details on the number of teachers reached.

Generic email where you have your own transmission program: About 0.2p per school* http://goo.gl/ay47R

Shared email: 1p each email: www.emails.gs/Email10000.html

Shared postal mailing where you mail two teachers in one pack: About 5p each** www.shared.org.uk

Shared postal mailing where you mail one teacher in a pack: About 8p each** www.shared.org.uk

Of course prices do vary but these are a guide.  If you would like to know more about each approach, please do call 01536 399 000.

* This is the cost of buying the list for the first time.  If you use it more than once obviously the cost goes down.

** Includes an element for printing, but obviously the price varies depending on the printing you are doing.

You can also follow us on Twitter @HHMailings

Tony Attwood

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