Education Marketing

The Personal email addresses of teachers are special, not least because the response rate one gets from them is often 10 times or more the response rates that one can get from using generic email lists (that go to the school administrator).

Discounts on using these lists are rare – but there is one case where we will run an email for you at half price. Here are the details.

To protect these lists we restrict the number of advertisements that can be sent out on them to a maximum of 3 adverts every two weeks. This stops teachers being bombarded with emails, and keeps the response rates up.

But on occasion we find we have a gap which has not been filled – quite often because someone has dropped out at the last minute.

Because of this we offer our stand by email service which allows you to book email campaigns on the Subscription lists or the Personal lists at 50% discount.

To gain the discount you need to book in your mailing, sending us your copy and your payment for the mailing. We will then send out your mailing in the first available mailing in the following five teaching weeks. (“Teaching weeks” means we won’t send your advert our during school holiday weeks). We guarantee it will go out during these five weeks – even if it means we have to refuse full payment bookings to get you in.

Not every list is available in this way, as some lists are fully booked throughout the school term – but if you book into a list that is unlikely to be available for a stand by mailing, we will let you know at the time of booking, or when you call.

If you wish to check the details of the exact price etc simply call 01536 399 000, and say that you are interested in a stand by mailing.

To see all the list options please click on these links:

· Secondary and FE personal email lists http://www.emails.gs/Secondarynamedlist.html

· Primary personal email lists http://www.emails.gs/Primarynamedlist.html

· LA Adviser lists http://www.emails.gs/LAadvisers.html

· Subscription lists http://www.emails.gs/emailteachersdirect.html (please note special rules apply to the way subscription list emails are written – please call for details)

Tony Attwood

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

If you supply careers products or services to schools you will certainly know about the new regulations. But just in case you missed it, here is a complete run down of the statutory guidance.

Section 29 of the Education Act 2011 places schools under a duty to secure access to independent careers guidance for their pupils in school years 9-11. Careers guidance secured under the new duty must:
be presented in an impartial manner
include information on the full range of post-16 education or training options, including Apprenticeships
promote the best interests of the pupils to whom it is given.
Headteachers, school staff and governing bodies must have regard to this statutory guidance issued by the Secretary of State in exercising their functions under this section.

Schools will be expected to work in partnership with external and expert careers guidance providers, as appropriate, to ensure pupils get good advice on the full range of post-16 options. The statutory guidance makes it clear that face-to-face careers guidance can benefit pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to make informed choices and successful transitions.

In more detail…

1. This is statutory guidance from the Department for Education. This means that recipients must have regard to it when carrying out duties relating to the provision of careers guidance for young people. This guidance replaces ‘The Education Bill – changes to the delivery of careers guidance’, a document made available to schools in April 2011.

2. The purpose of this guidance is to identify the key responsibilities of schools in relation to careers guidance for young people. Schools have a role to play in supporting their pupils to make well informed and realistic decisions by providing access to impartial and independent information and guidance about the range of education and training options that are most likely to help young people achieve their ambitions. This information will become increasingly important as young people will be required to participate in education or training until the end of the academic year in which they turn 17 from 2013, and to their 18th birthday from 2015.

3. Apart from the elements identified in this statutory guidance, it is for schools to decide the careers guidance provision to be made available based on the needs of pupils and the opportunities available. Schools should meet the costs of provision from their overall budgets, including the pupil premium.

4. This guidance will be reviewed by 03/2013 following a consultation on extending the age range to which the new legislation relating to young people’s careers guidance will apply.

5. This guidance is being issued under section 45A of Part VII of the Education Act 1997 and schools must have regard to it.

6. This guidance is for:

Headteachers, school staff and governing bodies in all community, foundation or voluntary schools and community or foundation special schools (other than one established in a special school) that provide secondary education
Local authorities that maintain pupil referral units
7. Academies and Free Schools will be subject to the same requirements through their Funding Agreements.

The background

8. The Education Act 2011 places schools under a duty to secure access to independent and impartial careers guidance for their pupils from September 2012. While complying with the requirement to secure careers guidance from an external source, schools will be free to make arrangements for careers guidance that fit the needs and circumstances of their pupils, and will be expected to work, as appropriate, in partnership with external and expert providers.

9. Once the duty on schools has been commenced, there will be no expectation that local authorities will provide a universal careers service. The statutory responsibility under section 68 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 requiring local authorities to encourage, enable and assist the participation of young people in education or training, remains unchanged.

10. The National Careers Service will be fully operational from April 2012. It will comprise a single website (from April) and telephone helpline number (0800 100 900) to which schools may wish to direct pupils.

11. The Education Act 2011 inserts a new duty, section 42A, into Part VII of the Education Act 1997, requiring schools to secure access to independent1 careers guidance2 for pupils in years 9-11. Careers guidance must be presented in an impartial3 manner and promote the best interests of the pupils to whom it is given. Careers guidance must also include information on all options available in respect of 16-18 education or training, including apprenticeships and other work-based education and training options.

12. The Government’s general approach is to give schools greater freedom and flexibility to decide how to fulfil their statutory duties in accordance with the needs of their pupils. However, there is an expectation that schools will have regard to the following statutory guidance when deciding on the most appropriate forms of independent careers guidance.

13. In fulfilling their new duty, schools should secure access to independent face-to-face careers guidance where it is the most suitable support for young people to make successful transitions, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds or those who have special educational needs, learning difficulties or disabilities.

14. Schools may work individually or in consortia/partnerships to secure careers guidance services. Schools can commission independent careers guidance from providers engaged in delivering the National Careers Service or from other providers or individual careers guidance practitioners, as they see fit. Where schools deem face-to-face careers guidance to be appropriate for their pupils, it can be provided by qualified careers professionals. The Skills Funding Agency will require providers of the National Careers Service to be accredited to the revised version of the matrix Standard by April 2013. The existence of this national quality standard will assist schools in making well informed decisions about which providers to work with. The organisation responsible for administering the matrix Standard on behalf of government, emqc Ltd, will provide schools with access to information about which organisations hold the Standard and are suitably accredited to provide independent careers guidance services.

15. Schools should consider a range of wider careers activities such as engagement with local employers and work-based education and training providers to offer all young people insights into the world of work, and with local colleges and universities for first-hand experience of further and higher education. Schools are free to determine the most appropriate forms of engagement but might consider mentoring, workplace visits, work experience, work shadowing, enterprise clubs, employer talks and links with local higher education institutions.

16. Pupils should receive independent and impartial advice about all of the mainstream education, training and employment opportunities on offer, regardless of their individual circumstances. For those with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, this advice should also include information on the full range of specialist provision that is available. Schools should work closely with local authorities who have an important role to play, in particular through the provision of SEN support services and section 139A assessments.

17. Local authorities will retain their duty to encourage, enable or assist young people’s participation in education or training. They will be required to assist the most vulnerable young people and those at risk of disengaging with education or work. Local authorities are also expected to have arrangements in place to ensure that 16 and 17 year olds have received an offer of a suitable place in post-16 education or training, and that they are assisted to take up a place. This will become increasingly important as the participation age is raised.

18. To enable local authorities to fulfil these duties, they will continue to track all young people’s participation through the local Client Caseload Information System (CCIS) in order to identify those who are at risk of not participating post-16, or are in need of targeted support. Schools should work with local authorities to support them in recording young people’s post-16 plans and the offers they receive along with their current circumstances and activities.

19. Section 72 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 requires all schools to provide relevant information about pupils to local authority support services. Schools should also work in partnership with local authorities to ensure they know what services are available, and how young people can be referred for support. From 2013 schools will be under a duty to notify local authorities whenever a 16 or 17 year old leaves education.

20. Schools have a responsibility to act impartially and recognise where it may be in the best interests of some pupils to pursue their education in a further education college or a university technical college, for example. This may include A levels, apprenticeships and vocational options. This will require schools to establish and maintain links with local post-16 education and training providers, including further education colleges and work-based education and training providers, to ensure that young people are aware of the full range of academic and vocational options.

21. Schools are also encouraged to arrange visits for 14-16 year olds to local colleges, work-based education and training providers and universities and, where appropriate, to supplement these with local college and work-based education and training provider prospectuses being made available to pupils to assist informed decision making.

Participation Division
Department for Education
March 2012

1 Independent is defined as external to the school

2 Careers guidance refers to services and activities, intended to assist individuals of any age and at any point throughout their lives, to make education, training and occupational choices and to manage their careers. The activities may take place on an individual or group basis and may be face-to-face or at a distance (including help lines and web based services). They include careers information provision, assessment and self-assessment tools, counselling interviews, careers education programmes, taster programmes, work search programmes and transition services.

3 Impartial is defined as showing no bias or favouritism towards a particular education or work option.

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

Academy and free school numbers are growing, as is their revenue. And with this term being the end of their financial year, it is worth considering how to reach them.

HHM has a service through which you can obtain a full list of Academies and Free Schools and then have the list updated every month for a year, free of charge.

The list includes all the key information required, including the school name and address, school email address, age range, phone number, and name of the head.

Then every month we will send you, free of charge, the same details for all the new academies and free schools that have been opened that month.

The list currently includes 1834 Academies, and is included as an Excel spread sheet, attached to an email. The data comes with a licence allow you to use it for your own company as often as you like for one year.

The list, updates and the licence for re-use for one year is priced at £349 plus VAT. If you would like to order please send an email to Chris@hamilton-house.com

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

I wrote a piece this week for our weekly news service to companies that are involved in B2B marketing about five things to do to get more sales, and had an email this morning asking if I could write a similar piece for selling to schools.

So, your wish is my command…

If you don’t have one, build a list of teachers who have bought from you, or at least expressed and interest.
Then check the list. Does it actually have the name (and hopefully personal email address) of the actual teacher who placed the order, or does it just have the school and an office address? If the latter, change your order form so that it specifically asks for the name of the teacher placing the order, as well as the delivery address (you might want to put a note to the effect that you need that teacher’s details in case there is any difficulty with the order and you need to check or advise of delay…)

Start mailing these teachers each week through the term.
Yes every week. Not always with heavy adverts, but with helpful information, thoughts, background – obviously always things that relate to what you do, but still things that will look good to the teacher. Give them some free on-line downloads, or other free resources. If the list is postal only and has not been used for a while, put maybe 200 addresses in the post for the first trial mailing giving a special offer just for past customers, and check how many come back marked “gone away” (to see if the list is out of date).

With emails try the list and see how many bounce back. In both cases take urgent remedial action if the numbers of dead addresses or names are high.

Look at your web site, make sure it is teacher orientated.
A lot of the web sites of companies that sell to schools also try and sell to other people. Teachers are specific and want specific promotions for them, and for schools. That’s what you have to generate. That does not mean that the site has to appeal to children – remember you are writing to people with degrees who are quite serious about their work. Treat them like intelligent beings, and talk about their wishes and needs.

Start a weekly blog
If nothing else take the emails and sales letters you send to customers and past customers each week and put them on the blog. If you don’t know what a blog is take a look at www.blog.educationmarketing.org.uk

Keep promoting.
You will not get lots of new customers by just doing one big mailing a term. You need to ensure that people know about you and understand what you do – and recognise your name. That is why, in addition to our mainstream personal email lists and postal mailing lists, we also have low-cost marketing programmes. These includes shared emails (1p per teacher), generic email addresses, £50 for the complete list, and listings on UK Education News from £25

If you would like to know more, please do call 01536 399 000 and we’ll be pleased to talk this through. For many of our customers points 1 to 5 above are the opening areas of work we take on as we move into a Velocity programme. There’s more on that course of action on www.velocity.ac

Tony Attwood

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

There are many firms around that have pulled out of marketing to schools at late, and there are others who are new to education marketing, and want to try the market.

So where should one start?

It is a vital question because it one gets it wrong first time around it is easy to believe that “schools are not buying” and that’s that.

But the fact is that if you do some advertising and get poor response it might be for any one of these reasons

a) The language or style of the promotion is wrong
b) The medium that you have used is wrong for your product or service
c) The advertising approach is wrong – perhaps in that you do not differentiate yourself from the competition well enough, or perhaps because the benefits of the product are not made clear enough
d) The wrong person in the school is targeted.

In fact there is now more choice in education marketing than ever before – from free magazines sent to teachers to email, postal direct mail to conferences and exhibitions, and every approach has its own advantages and disadvantages.

But if anyone wanted to start out and dip the toe in the water for the first time – or for the first time in a long time, and assuming all other things are equal, I think I would suggest using a solo mail promotion of a leaflet and a letter. A mailing to say 400 schools selected at random would cost £200 or less. If you got nothing back then it is true you would have lost the money – but most such trial mailings get something back (if well prepared) and so the loss might be less, or nothing. Quite often a change to the letter can then beef up the promotion enough to make a profit.

Not everything sells through a postal campaign, but most things can be sold that way. There is a lot of information on http://www.educationmarketing.org.uk/Services.html#1 – or of course do call 01536 399 000.

Tony Attwood

I watched a Citroen car advert last weekend and really noticed it and remembered it because it was amusing, and it had the most wonderful twist in the tail. It was so good I have told everyone I meet about how good it was.

Without that final twist, it would have been good – but I wouldn’t have told all my friends to watch it. In short the advert had the ability to be noticed.

And in fact you can’t make a sale unless you are noticed.

Now normally being noticed means grabbing attention, and when I write adverts that grab attention people sometimes object that I have been a little skimpy on the detail. And that is often true. But by being noticed, I have allowed them to put in the detail later.

As with Citroen. The advert told me very little about the car, but I noticed – and I might even go and have a test drive, even though I have never bought a Citroen in my life.

Sometime details are important – but they can never be more important than being noticed. Getting noticed means grabbing attention and make people think of the company and its products. OK sometimes it is a good idea to focus on the detail of the product too as a prime issue – but always within the context of grabbing attention.

It is very simple: if people don’t notice you, you can’t sell your product. If people don’t remember you it is hard to sell your product.

Twice last week I received emails from non-customers telling me how much they liked the adverts I had written. That meant they noticed. It didn’t mean that they had bought yet – but they are on the way. Just as I am with the Citroen.

(And if you are at all interested – this issue in the ad I saw was who was playing the piano.)

If you would like to discuss how your adverts can be really noticed, please do call, or email Tony@hamilton-house.com

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

Having a product to sell to schools, but no budget with which to promote it, is, to say the least frustrating.

So what can be done?

With absolutely no budget at all it is hard to do much (unless you already have a web site up with a blog attached, as you can write your blog each day, and that will over time attract readers).

But leaving that special case aside, you will need some money – although it doesn’t have to be a lot.

To help, I have put together a document called “Marketing to schools without a budget” and appropriately enough it is available for free.

It is at http://www.hamilton-house.com/free%20reports/Marketing%20to%20schools%20without%20a%20budget.pdf

Hope you find it helps

Tony

The summer term one year ago was difficult, as schools were in shock at the government’s sudden reversal of its proclaimed programme of “no cuts” in education.

But hidden among the detail was the fact that the ringfencing of certain budgets had gone. It took many schools a while to get the hang of this, but eventually it happened, and money is moving more freely once again – helped by the reversal of some of the cuts and the release of money to support new areas.

The summer term is quite different. For LA schools it is the start of the new financial year and the new budget. For Academies and many private and “free” schools” it is the end of the financial year.

Certainly we would expect postal mailings to continue to grow in effectiveness because of the change of attitude that we saw last term. Whereas postal direct mail was once seen as “junk” and led to schools trying to stop the mail arriving, now email is seen as the threat. The post is once again welcomed and a leaflet through the post is seen as a sign that the company is real, solid and reliable.

That doesn’t mean that email is a failure – and if you didn’t pick up on it before Easter we can still send you a free copy of “How to make an email campaign to schools work for you”. Just email Chris@hamilton-house.com and she’ll email it back to you.

Meanwhile there is still time to book into our latest shared postal mailing with a free email campaign on 25 April: http://www.shared.org.uk/FreeEmail.html

Tony Attwood

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

Local authorities block emails from government departments into schools

There is a notice on the Department for Education web site advising Local Authority schools to check that their LA is allowing the Department’s emails to them through to the school. This reminder follows comments from numerous schools that they simply don’t receive the government’s newsletters.

It is tempting to have a little laugh about the government not being able to send emails to the schools that it helps finance, but the fact is that although email is a decent method of communication it is not foolproof.

Emails are always being blocked and we watch and counter the process all the time. I certainly know that if you just send out emails and don’t check what is happening to them, you are liable to find a significant number not getting through after a short space of time. If you are sending out your own emails, and you are not getting the response rates you expect, it is certainly worth checking.

Emailing is worthwhile, and Hamilton House uses emails to sell books and courses, as we constantly experiment with ways of promoting products. (This is how we are able to offer our free Advert Review service, through which you can send in any advert and we’ll do a confidential review on the phone with you, pointing out exactly where and why we would make any changes. We measure the results of our own adverts, and pass on that knowledge to our clients).

But email will never reach everyone – not by a long way. Which is why I have always encouraged our customers to use the post as well.

Of course some will say that the post is too expensive – but that’s not quite true. A shared postal mailing costs between 5p and 8p per teacher, plus a little more for printing. (There are details of our next shared mailings – with the usual offer of free emailings – on http://www.shared.org.uk/FreeEmail.html )

Solo postal mail is more expensive – 45p to 50p a school – but that should never be taken to mean that you should go out and mail 5000 schools straight off. We always advise on doing a couple of trial mailings for starters. When it works, solo mailing can produce results of five or ten times the level of emails.

The great thing about solo mailings is that you can pick the schools you want. For example, if you are pitching at the end of the financial year market, you can just mail the Academies, whose financial year finishes at the end of this term. If you have expensive sports equipment for sale you can try the specialist sports schools. And so on.

As always there is a lot of information about mailing schools on www.educationmarketing.org.uk and there is a regular stream of thoughts and ideas about selling to schools on our blog http://www.blog.educationmarketing.org.uk/

If you want to know more, please do call 01536 399 000.

www.ukeducationnews.co.uk is a 24 hours a day education news site, which allows you to keep up with all the latest stories concerning education in the UK. Better still it is free – just click on the link.

The site is widely used by schools, and you could have your story included in among the news stories if you do a mailing with Hamilton House. Your headline will come up among the news, allowing teachers to click on it and read your advertisement, which we’ll put on our web site.

We estimate that each advert listed in this way gets around 700 hits – that is 700 extra hits beyond the number of people who read your advert when it is sent out through the post or on email.

And this whole process is free – you just have to do a mailing with us.

For more information please call 01536 399 000

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