In a previous blog post, we provided a quick review of school district email marketing practices for several large districts in Ohio. The review quickly examined four areas of the districts' email marketing efforts:
- Content
- Personalization
- Design
- Images.
Over the course of the next several weeks, we're going to take a deeper look at each of the afforementioned areas. This post is all about personalization and includes recommendations for improving personalization in school district email marketing.
More than "Dear John"
Personalization isn't just about "Dear John". Personalization also includes interest areas, geographic location and demographic information. School districts, especially larger districts, can serve a huge geographic area with a wide range of demographics. All school districts have one thing in common. They have multiple opportunities to engage stakeholders because these individuals have different interests in school district operations. Parents, and young adults (25-45), want to know what the district is doing to enhance educational opportunities for students. Grandparents, and older adults (45 and up), want information about the decisions school boards are making that may have an affect on their financial well-being. Some district residents have a strong affinity for the district's athletic programs and want information about wins and losses. And, unfortunately, there are district residents that don't want any information about the district. The challenge for school districts involves three areas.
- Identifying potential stakeholder interests
- Capturing stakeholder data
- Managing stakeholder data and expectations
What Do People Want?
This is one of the biggest challenges for any organization, especially school districts because most work within a very restrictive budget. However, there are options for uncovering stakeholder interests in your school district. If you have a subscriber database for your current email marketing efforts, you can create a survey using Survey Monkey to determine current subscribers' areas of interest. We would recommend using your current email marketing efforts to drive traffic to your survey. Use the survey to help you develop different segments for your larger subscriber database.
Once you've developed these segments, send another message to your larger database asking them to update their information preferences. Use an incentive to drive subscribers to update their information. Partner with a local business to provide a product or service as the "carrot." Plan on sending multiple messages over a period of time. You should always "take the pulse" of your subscribers to make sure you're providing them the information THEY want to receive, and not the information YOU want to give them.
Now, go forth and email!
In a previous post, we reviewed school district email marketing practices for several large Ohio districts. These school districts should be applauded for deploying a solution that is a cost-effective and efficient form of communications. However, there were 4 areas where we think these districts, and others, can improve in their email marketing efforts. The next several posts will take a deeper look at each of those areas, with the first being content.
School District Email Marketing: The RIGHT Content is King
School districts, especially larger ones, have little difficulty developing great content. There are so many different aspects of a school district that provide opportunities for relevant, compelling content. Academics, athletics, administration and other areas are all relevant topics for school districts. While all of the content from a school district is important, one of the biggest challenges is deciding the right content that is going to resonate with email subscribers. One way to overcome this challenge is to let subscribers tell you what information they want to read about in your district's emails. Develop a robust signup form on your website that gives subscribers the ability to choose the types of content they want to receive in their inbox. And, don't overlook the smallest areas of your district's operations. You might be surprised by the performance of your emails that have a "micro" focus. Another way to overcome this challenge, especially if you're already deploying email marketing, is to conduct a survey of your current email subscribers. The most efficient way to do this is use an online solution, like Survey Monkey, to seek feedback from your subscribers about the content that is important to them. Some email service providers (ESPs) offer a survey application within your subscription. The content areas with the highest response rates should be where you focus your efforts.
School District Email Marketing: Send Them Home
One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is the channel's ability to drive traffic to a website. Two of three emails we reviewed used full content stories in their entire email. One of the biggest problems this presents is that your subscribers have to scroll through a ton of content to find the one piece of information they're seeking. Many school districts have spent, or will spend in the future, significant dollars to develop a top-notch, engaging website. Email should be designed as a "conduit" to more information on your website. Besides increased traffic to your website, you also present subscribers the opportunity to find more information about your district on your website.
Ultimately, using the right content in your emails and driving subscribers to your websites, you will increase the effective of your district's email marketing efforts!
Now, go forth and email!
We'll admit it. We're like everyone else that works in the world of public education. We look at what other districts are doing to see how we can enhance our clients' communications practices. Part of our research recently involved looking at other school districts' websites to get ideas for a new design for one of our clients. In the process, we found that a number of school districts, albeit larger districts, are utilizing
email marketing. Boy, were we happy to see that!
So, we signed up to receive updates from these districts and have been getting them in the inbox for a couple weeks! Three Cheers for these school districts and email marketing!
- Every district deserves a pat on the back for implementing email as a channel for communications. Studies show that email is a highly efficient and cost-effective channel for communications, which fits well for many school districts.
- These districts are infusing interactive components that drive subscribers to different areas of the district website. A-Plus! The more interaction you can provide with your emails and drive people to your website, the more likely subscribers will browse other areas of your website.
- Finally, these districts have embraced the concept that you need to communicate with people on their terms, not on yours. This is one of the most difficult concepts for public school districts to embrace because they expect everyone to come knocking at their door with questions and requests for information. In the "Internet-Era", school districts must realize that they have to meet their stakeholders where they live.
While we were excited to see districts embracing this channel of communication, we have some food for thought that we think can help improve the overall appearance and performance of their messages. Four pieces of constructive criticism, if you will.
- Content - The majority of the emails we've received have been jam-packed with information. In some cases, almost too much information. Pick the BIG headlines you want to highlight and make those the focus of your main content area. A word of caution. Even for the big headlines, don't use the whole story in the body of the email. Remember, the goal of using email as a communications channel is to drive subscribers back to your website to read the "rest of the story" (say it like Paul Harvey, it sounds better). For the "less" important stories, if there is such a thing, put those in the right or left margin as headlines linked to the stories on the website. The whole idea here is to keep the subscriber from having to scroll down the page forever.
Personalization - While this may seem like a minor detail, it's still one that should not be over looked. It all starts with data collection. If you're not asking for subscribers' first and last name, along with their email address, start immediately. Then, you can use the merge tags within your ESP's software to custom the greeting to each person that receives the email.- Design - If you're a large school district, our guess is that you've spent some cash to have a stellar website built for your district. Extend the branding of your website to your emails. While many of the ESPs offer "off-the-shelf" templates, you should have the ability to create custom designs around your current website's branding efforts. If your ESP doesn't offer this ability or it's too "bulky", find an ESP that offers simple code migration from a website to the application.
- Images - Many of the emails we've seen have been using images that expand across the width of the content. Not good. This causes subscribers to scroll even more than usual, and could lead to quick closes before reading the whole newsletter. Resize all of your content images to 150 pixels wide or 150 pixels tall. Then, right or left justify the images with your content. Then, link the images to a larger version on your Flickr page (if you have one) or use the image gallery on your website. The absolute best thing to do is link the image to the story it corresponds with on your website. Give the subscriber every possible chance to get to more content on your website.
To those school districts embracing email as a viable channel for communications, we salute you! Take the 4 points above and try to apply them to the next email you're creating!
Now, go forth and email!