Top 8 Direct Mail Marketing Strategies for Schools- With Examples
Australia- One of the top destinations for world-class education!
The country is known for providing high-quality education, scenic views, travel destinations, and cultural diversity. From crystal-clear waters to breathtaking landscapes and well-urbanised cities, there is no better place to enjoy nature and modernity, unwind and work, or enjoy an exciting lifestyle than in Australia.
Talking about school marketing strategies and related demographics…
College students in the country tend to cover massive demographics, with around 1,513,383 enrollees, including national and international students.
Most businesses favour online or social media advertising because of its popularity. However, students are more likely to prefer tangible marketing items- making direct mail strategies for schools or colleges more effective.
A general misconception is that conventional marketing techniques are a little expensive yet ineffective. But, it is not the case when it comes to edtech direct mail campaigns, especially when considering multi-channel marketing strategies for schools, colleges, and universities.
Let us discuss how to create a marketing plan for a school through direct mail.
Reason To Create A Marketing Plan For Private School And Universities
Amid a long-standing pandemic, there was high growth in terms of online learning.
With the transition to digital education, students are more involved online – learning, purchasing, and interacting virtually. Thus, this generation is increasingly becoming tech-savvy and more exposed to online advertisements.
But when it comes to conventional school marketing strategies, Millennials still rely on old-fashioned tangible items for recommendations from educational institutions to a great extent.
Therefore, you must understand the whats and hows of creating a school marketing plan. Create direct mail items that connect to what students are looking for in a tone they will listen to and connect with by using personalised content over social media.
Here’s how you can do that!
Make Sure Your Message Reaches your Target Audience
Social media marketing, followed by SEO and more, has its benefits but school marketing strategies come with complicated legislation. Therefore, curating content for your target audience can be difficult without considerable investment in resources, time, and finances.
With direct mail marketing for private schools, you can expand your database and reach students based on geo-demographics. The platform PostGrid can help you build audiences to handle unaddressed mail while not requiring extensive customer information. It uses variable data, including location, income, lifestyle, behaviours, interests, etc.
Try sending personalised direct mail to students and ensure your marketing piece lands directly in their mailboxes. Thus, you can make your message heard instead of losing it in a sea of others on digital marketing platforms.
Combine Online and Offline Words through Multi-Channel Marketing
In April 2020, only 40% of the Australian population was using Facebook, so businesses or organisations aren’t likely to find 100% of their audience on this platform. Direct mail lets you have a multi-channel approach combining online and offline marketing.
Let us share an example with you…
One of our clients, a renowned edtech leader, recently contacted our sales team to automate direct mail for an education fair. PostGrid helped them launch a personalised direct mail campaign to over 50,000 students while offering a 2-for-1 meal if they attended the fair.
Our client incorporated various digital elements as a part of their school marketing strategies to invite the recipients of the mailpiece, including pUrls for registration and QR Codes for the free drink with their mail.
The outcome? Well, the event was a blast, and our client received 10,000+ registrations and more than 5K applications only through direct mail marketing automation.
Boost The Effectiveness of Direct Mail Marketing Based on Activities
Today, marketers have a variety of media channels to choose from when thinking about marketing plans for private schools. Therefore, creating a well-structured multi-channel campaign with platforms like PostGrid is easier than ever. Using our Print & Mail API for a multi-channel campaign can help ramp up your outcomes while boosting your ROI.
You may schedule a TV commercial to promote your educational institution. A direct mail piece as a part of your multi-channel marketing strategies for schools can help offer program discounts if they visit your website.
Direct mail can help you schedule your mail items in advance. It can help encourage students to watch your advertisement to unlock special offers or register for courses. Aligning a direct mailpiece alongside other multi-channel marketing activities casts a wide array across targeted customers to diversify the probable outcomes.
Eliminating Hard Selling and Adding Personalised Content for Better Connection
Hard-selling tactics are helpful in certain situations, perhaps for an urgent recall. Still, cold selling is less likely to attract our attention these days. Our desire for understanding, help and appreciation as customers is on the rise.
You can build customer relationships by personalising experiences. Therefore, building personalised experiences for your customers is possible with direct mail, and school marketing strategies are a must-follow.
Adding the name of your audience on a Direct Mail piece or One-Piece Mailer would help your brand stand out from junk mail. It will also help you establish yourself as a brand that understands and appreciates its customers.
However, the unlimited capabilities in terms of personalisation don’t end here. You can include the below-mentioned aspects in your school marketing strategies:
- Operational Hours and Specified Locations: With PostGrid, you can add our variable data capabilities to your marketing plan for private schools. With our Rest API, you can print the details of your targeted customers based on their closest location in Sydney or Brisbane.
- Your Audience’s Preferences: Collect relevant data- like recently viewed programs or something your audience is interested in, and add it to your direct mail items. Perhaps a student is looking for an online diploma program but might be interested in an executive certification course.
- Relevant Courses, Products, & Services: Consider personalising a Direct Mail campaign using consumer demographic and geographic data. Let us say you’re an LMS provider planning a discount where you offer LMS to businesses or students. Relevant and personalised content here will help you build a better connection with them.
Prepare to Track Your Mailers to Record Responses and Improve Upcoming Campaigns
Imagine you create a well-thought school marketing plan and send appealing direct mailers to your audience. The recipient thinks the message is relevant to them and wants to contact you. Also, they want to know more about your school, its students, events, etc. Several recipients like such are interested in your organisation and would love to send their kids to your school.
However, you forgot to include trackable features as part of your school marketing strategies and have no way to record your audience’s feedback. How can you know which parents were interested in your school and which weren’t?
Thus, it is your responsibility to inform your prospects about what to do next if they are interested in learning more. Guide the readers further and help them connect with your organisation—that is the only way to get responses after a campaign. You cannot expect a parent or student to go out of their way to research your school and respond. So, what is the solution to drive responses to your marketing plan for private schools and improve ROI?
The answer is not a single aspect… You have multiple options to select from for your school marketing plan, like QR codes, PURLs, dedicated phone numbers, custom email addresses, etc. Ensure that these features are unique for every campaign, so you can compare the results and see what’s lacking.
Quick Responses codes are your best option for any school marketing plan because they take up very little space and intrigue the audience. You can print them on the outer envelope or in a small corner of your mail piece. Recipients only need to pull out their phones and scan the code to get all the information they need at their fingertips.
However, some schools like to work with personalised URLs, unique for every recipient. In this method, the parent or student enters a link on any browser that redirects them to a custom landing page. However, remember to shorten the link before you print it to help recipients save time and motivate them to visit the page.
Your school marketing strategies can also include dedicated phone numbers and email addresses. Hence, each time you get an email or call on these custom numbers and email IDs, you can be sure it is a campaign-generated enquiry.
Communicate With Parents Using an Interactive Copy and Design
We cannot deny that an eye-catching design can help you push up responses to your marketing strategies for schools drastically. You must put adequate effort into your artwork and make your audience feel special. Perhaps, you can use unique layouts or include high-quality graphics.
Some schools do a great job designing mail items while keeping the artwork minimal. Thus, try doing something that fits your message and depicts your school’s vision. Your school marketing plan can be successful only when you present your mailer as something that represents what you believe in!
Furthermore, focus on your copy, everything from the headline to the offer. You can add sentences, like:
- Visit the link below to get a tour of our school.
- Scan the code to see how easy our admissions process is and how your child can thrive at our school!
These offers spark interest among the audience, helping you make your school marketing plan a grand success. Thus, you can increase engagement and accelerate enrollments using your content. Here are some more tips to help you:
- Engage your audience with powerful words, like ‘you,’ ‘us,’ ‘success,’ etc.
- Add the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) factor to highlight your benefits. Your school marketing plan mailers must offer a solution to the recipient’s requirements instead of only promoting your organisation.
- Try using bullet points, tables, infographics, etc., to avoid confusion and segment the details accurately. Also, you can add statistics, like the number of new registrations last year, your ratings, etc. Give readers a solid reason to connect with you and take the conversation ahead.
- Discuss how you offer your students immense opportunities to improve their academic and overall performance.
- Add value to your school’s marketing strategies using similar headlines or taglines across all channels. Make sure that they resonate with the readers and push them to reply.
Experiment With Different Direct Mail Formats to Find Your Best Combinations
You don’t need to stick with only one format for your school marketing plan because it’s always good to experiment. Many direct mail types can help you communicate with parents, families, and students and onboard them effectively.
For example, our client believed that letters are the only professional-looking direct mail format. Though they used several advanced mechanisms, like QR codes and high-end graphics, they lacked diversity.
Thus, we convinced them to give other direct mail formats a go to improve their school marketing strategies and increase visibility. They agreed to send out postcards instead of letters for the first time and got equivalent results.
Postcards create a nostalgic effect on people and bring the mailers and recipients closer. Their small and compact characteristics make postcards easier to store, making postcard mailers one of the most long-lasting direct mail items. Furthermore, they help you reach out to more people under your school marketing strategies because people share postcards with their family and friends.
For their upcoming campaign- the institution decided to print and mail flyers for their school marketing plan to see if it worked. The size of this marketing plan for private schools is relatively larger because they want to send mail to already-enrolled and prospective families.
Flyers are much more colourful than letters and offer a versatile appearance to your message. You can also use half-fold, gate-fold, and tri-fold flyers to add multiple layers and segment your message. The benefit of using flyers for your school marketing plan is- you can save costs on envelopes and include more content. However, don’t forget to include your contact information, logo, etc., to create branding and increase recognition rates.
Some school marketing strategies also include mailing prospectuses and pamphlets to parents. It contains everything a person needs to know about the organisation to make an informed decision!
Ultimately, the choice is yours, but using different formats enables you to find the ideal combination that works best for your school. Also, it makes A/B direct mail testing possible to see which campaign is more profitable!
PostGrid’s direct mail API offers several customisation options to help you bring your vision to reality. You can automate your school marketing plan effectively and at all-inclusive pricing! Furthermore, PostGrid offers several API integrations, like Hubspot, Salesforce, etc. It makes the process flexible and helps you add direct mailing to your existing workflows instead of setting up everything from scratch.
Follow Up With Your Prospects Regularly to Remind Them Of Your Organisation
You can conduct a fantastic campaign and still see your recipients lose interest after a while. The secret is to launch recurring direct mailing campaigns focusing on the same groups of people to increase impact.
First, decide whether you want to prioritise reach or frequency for your school marketing plan, depending on your intended audience and advertising objectives.
Focusing on reach can help your school increase brand awareness and improve your reputation. It would enable you to target as many people as possible under every campaign, assuming you have the budget and resources to pull large-volume marketing programs.
Alternatively, you can stick to the same mailing list for a few weeks or months to garner attention from your prospects. For example, you can make newly-shifted parents the primary focus of your school marketing strategies and send them repetitive mailings. Thus, you can persuade them to contact you or meet the admissions head to discuss this further.
Additionally, sending repetitive mail items helps you follow up with your audience. Often, people forget about your school marketing plan because they are busy, not because they aren’t interested. Reaching out to these prospects again gives them another chance to respond, improving your chances of getting more enrollments.
However, set a specific limit to refrain from overdoing the school marketing plan and spamming your recipient’s mailboxes. It is advisable to mail a person only two to four times a month to balance your campaign and maintain your brand reputation.
Also, respect people’s preferences and stop mailing to prospects who don’t want to receive more mailers. Check the Australia Post’s “No Junk Mail” list to avoid sending unsolicited mailers and save money.
Use Mailers at Every Stage of the Marketing Funnel
Most institutions use direct mail marketing strategies for schools only on specific occasions or to get new enrollments. However, they can incorporate direct mailers at all marketing funnel phases. They don’t need to wait around for an event or only focus on new students; multiple direct mail campaigns help schools achieve several other objectives.
For instance, you can send your marketing postcards to every family in the neighbourhood using Australia Post Unaddressed Mail. You don’t need a mailing list or spend significant amounts on marketing materials. And yet, it can give a push to your school marketing plan and increase brand visibility at the top of the funnel.
You can also target people who already know about your school, like those who enquired a few weeks back but didn’t take the conversation ahead. Or those parents who showed interest in your social media pages. It is known as middle-of-the-funnel marketing and allows you to get the prospect talking to you and discussing how to move forward.
The bottom of the funnel includes converting a prospect into a customer. Educational organisations can use direct mail marketing strategies for schools to finally convince families to fill out the admissions form! You can also use these marketing tactics to retain students and build emotional relationships.
How Does PostGrid Help Educational Organisations With Their School Marketing Plan?
PostGrid offers turnkey direct mailing solutions to schools, colleges, universities, etc., to improve student enrollment and retention rates. Integrating our API into your CRMs is simple and speedy, allowing you to prepare and ship your items in no time.
Our direct mail API enables you to plan a school marketing plan whenever needed. Thus, you can conduct triggered, on-demand, or bulk campaigns. Here’s how it works:
- Triggered direct mail school marketing strategies: Imagine you want to send a thank-you email to every parent who fills out an enquiry form on your website. You wish to let them know that your representative will contact them shortly and that you appreciate their interest in your school. It is when automated emails are helpful! Similarly, you can use triggered marketing mailers for your school marketing plan based on specific events. They can include parents enquiring about the admissions process, a student signing up for a new club, someone searching about your school online or visiting your website, etc. You may also send direct mailers to every newly-enrolled student as a gesture of appreciation.
- On-demand marketing for schools: With PostGid, you can send as less as one direct mailer whenever needed. There is zero pressure to maintain the minimum volume requirements to print and mail something. You can select any pricing plan you want and get started immediately!
- Bulk direct mailing campaigns: You can develop flexible marketing strategies for schools using PostGrid’s automated direct mail services. Like on-demand mailing, we help you send bulk mail items with no maximum caps. Our scalable solutions allow you to process millions of API requests simultaneously without lags or other problems.
Final Thoughts
We hope this blog helps you understand how to create a marketing plan for a school to get maximum results. Direct mail remains one of the most effective marketing tools, but you must know how to do it right.
This guide explains different ways to use direct mail to its maximum potential and accomplish your marketing goals. These tips can help you save money, manual effort, and resources and execute successful campaigns. Also, remember that marketing automation can help you follow these techniques more efficiently and help you improve your ROI.
If you need assistance in launching your direct mail marketing strategies for schools, PostGrid can help you from start to finish. Sign up now to know more!
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