Marketing to schools via email

Welcome to Emails.gs - the website that deals with ways of increasing response rates when selling to schools through email, and how to obtain email mailing lists. On this page you can access the following information: …

• Who you can email
• Tracking and follow up
• Improving the effectiveness of your click through
• Improving response rates
• Illustrations and attachments
• Supplying your advert to Hamilton House
• Numbers of schools and teachers
• More information on who you can mail and prices

Who you can email

As you might expect, the most effective approach when emailing teachers is to email the teacher as directly as possible.

However the traditional approach has always been the opposite of this, involving emailing the school’s administrator with a note in the subject line saying “Attention Head of Maths” (or whatever subject is required.)

Although this can work, it does generate the lowest response rate of all the options.  Three alternative approaches will give higher response rates.

Below are details of all four approaches to reaching teachers by email.   Please do call 01536 399 000 if you would like to know more about any particular list.

In the information that follows, all prices include advice on the creation of your email to maximise its effectiveness, and the cost of transmitting the advert.

1. THE SUBSCRIBERS LIST.   

This is a list of named teachers at their personal email address who have subscribed to an edition of the weekly Education Management News service.  There are currently 15 editions of the service, each one serving a different area of interest in the school – full details can be found here

Because these teachers have asked to receive this information the response rates are higher than in any other list.  

Additionally all emails sent to the Subscribers List are published on www.schools.co.uk and this normally results in around 900 additional teachers reading the information.

You can select the edition you wish to appear in – the editions cover areas such as English, history, ICT, maths, discipline & behaviour, music, senior managers, school visits, etc etc. 

Full details of the lists are available here, with the totals and costs.

Because advertising is limited to one email a week in each edition, booking is essential.   The price is approx 20p per teacher. All advertisements must conform to the house style of the publication, and samples of past advertisements are made available to advertisers.  Where we feel that a change in the advertisement is necessary to maintain the house style we will undertake to rewrite the advertisement at no charge and forward it to you for your final approval.

Once your email has been sent out you will receive a report showing the click through and open rates, and a chart showing how this compares with other emails sent out using this service.

More information on open rates etc can be found in the Response Rates section below.

2. THE PERSONAL LIST

This list consists of named teachers at their personal email address in the school and, as such, go straight to the teacher and by-pass the school office. 

Only one advert is allowed on each list per week, and booking is essential.  In order to ensure that teachers read these emails the message must be in keeping with the general style requirements of Hamilton House.  We will give full guidance if we believe any change is needed to any advertisement.

The current totals are given here.   The price is 18p per teacher.

Add your logo to the top of the email: £15. Logos must be supplied at same time as copy, in jpg or gif.   Maximum size that can be accepted 250x120 pixels.  Please call if you would like a sample of how the logo is used. 

Once your email has been sent out you will receive a report showing the click through and open rates, and a chart showing how this compares with other emails sent out using this service.

More information on response rates in general can be found in the Response Rates section below.

To see a sample of the kind of advert that is sent out on this list please click here.

3. THE PREFERENCE LIST  

This list covers named teachers at their preferred work email address.  

Some schools ask for all emails to go to the school office first, with the mail then forwarded to the teacher by the admin staff.   For these schools we give the school address and then on the subject line put the individual teacher’s name and job (eg, Attn: A. Smith, Head of Maths). 

Only one advert is allowed on each list per week, and booking is essential. In order to ensure that teachers read these emails the message must be in keeping with the general style requirements of Hamilton House.  We will give full guidance if we believe any change is needed to any advertisement.

The current totals are given here.   The price is 10p per teacher.

Add your logo to the top of the email: £15. Logos must be supplied at same time as copy, in jpg or gif.   Maximum size 250x120 pixels.  Please call if you would like a sample of how the logo is used. 

Once your email has been sent out you will receive a report showing the click through and open rates, and a chart showing how this compares with other emails sent out using this service.

More information on Response Rates in general can be found in the Response Rates section below.

To see a sample of the kind of advert that is sent out on this list please click here.

4. THE SCHOOLS LIST (with title of teacher in the subject line) 

Here the mailing goes to the administrator with the job title (but no name) on the subject line (e.g. Attn: Head of Maths).  The list covers all schools, with selection by county, postcode, size of school and age range.

This list comes with a unique guarantee – please see below.

You can have any title of a member of staff in the subject line, and thus there are no restrictions.  Also, there is no limit on the number of emails that can be sent out, and so most mailings can be despatched within a day or two of booking.  

It is possible to select by age range, area, and size of school.  The price ranges from 5p per school up to 10p per school depending on the number purchased. If you have opted to pay for a report on the click through and open rate achieved with your mailing, then, once your email has been sent out you will receive a report showing the click through and open rates, and a chart showing how this compares with other emails sent out using this service. More information on prices and selections here.

The Guarantee:  If you send us a copy of your email in advance we will, at your request, review the leaflet and tell you what sort of open rate and click through rate we believe you will get. 

At that point you can accept our estimate, and we will then guarantee that you will get this level of activity.   Additionally (at your request) we can give you some thoughts on how this click through and open rate could be enhanced.  You can then either ask us to re-write the piece for you (for which a fee is payable) or you can re-write it yourself, re-submit it, and we will then give you a new estimate of the open rate and click through rate.

Please note that there is no extra charge for this service – but in order to validate the click through rate and open rate, you must pay for this service.   One final point of detail here, different technologies can report open and click through rates in different ways – and it is the programming that we use that will be taken as giving the final statement as to the rates achieved.  Our report on recent open and click through rates achieved are available here.

There is more information on this service including prices and selections available. Just click here.

Tracking and follow up

Tracking emails and providing landing pages:  We can track both the number of recipients of our emails that click on your website link and the open rate for your email. 

This is included in the price for the Subscribers list, the Personal List and the Preference List.   If you want to track more than one website link, there is a fee of £15 for each additional web link you wish to track.

On the Schools List there is an additional fee of £20 for tracking the open rate and a click through to one web address.

Improving the effectiveness of your click through

If you would like us to look at your landing page and report back on any improvements that could be made, we can undertake this for free.  The report is made by phone to you within a couple of days.

If you don’t have a landing page or would like one to be built for you, we can do this and install it with the address www.schools.co.uk/yourname The price for this (which is variable depending on what is required on that page) starts at £175.

Follow-up: When emailing the Schools List it is possible to re-mail just those schools that have opened the original email.  For more details please call 01536 399 000.

Improving response rates

Research over the past three years has shown that it is quite possible to raise the open rate, the click through rate, and the number of sales an email receives by changing the layout and the way the text is written.   On occasion we have increased the effectiveness of emails by over 3 fold simply by making a few changes to the layout and language.

Hamilton House probably has more information on the way in which text and layout affects these rates than any other company, and we are perfectly willing to share this with you, without cost.   All you have to do is forward us a copy of your proposed email, or an email that you have sent out, and we’ll review it, call you back, and tell you about any problems we see and ways in which you can enhance your sales rate.

The Subscribers List generates the most responses in terms of sales and enquiries, followed by the Personal List and then the Preference List, with the Schools List  generating the lowest response rates.

In all cases we can work with you to ensure that your email will get the highest response rates.   In terms of the Subscribers List the email must be in keeping with the general style of EMN.  With the Personal and Preference lists we will give full guidance if we believe any change is needed to any advertisement. With email to schools you are free to use any style that you wish, although we can advise on which approaches work.  Just email a copy of your proposed email to us, and we’ll call you back to discuss any changes we suggest.

The creative team at Hamilton House can also write your email for you.   Advice to you on how to write emails to maximise the response rate is completely free and given without obligation, and when emailing the Subscribers List we will also develop your original email to maximise the response rate.   For the other lists there is a charge of £300 for writing advertisements.   Please call 01536 399 000 to discuss this.

More information on Response Rates in general can be found at http://www.yesmail.org.uk/responserates.html

Illustrations and attachments

The use of illustrations, including logos, can reduce the response rate that you get because of the filtering systems used by schools. 

Emails to subscribers and directly to schools cannot incorporate embedded illustrations. If you do want to show illustrations we strongly suggest you incorporate a hyperlink to an illustration on a website, so that the teacher can click through to reveal the picture.

Neither of these two email services can be used with attachments - again because a high proportion of such emails will be either rejected as spam or deleted by school or personal spam filters/anti-virus software.

However all emails can include a link to a relevant website and a link to one or more email addresses.

Supplying your advert to Hamilton House

Advertisements should normally be provided in Word or RTF format.   Advertisements provided in other formats will be surcharged.  

Numbers of teachers and schools

The number of teachers and schools shown will inevitably vary from time to time and thus the number quoted must always be accepted as an approximate total.   The price quoted is fixed for one month at the time of quotation and will not be varied although the total number of email addresses to which the advert is despatched may increase or decrease by the time the advertisement is sent out.

More information on who you can email and prices

1. The Subscribers List
These emails are charged at 20p per email address, including tracking and with no additional charge for the coverage gained by your email being placed on the Schools blog (which normally generates around 900 additional readers).

2.  The Personal list.  
These emails are charged at 18p per email address.

3.  The Preference list.
These emails are charged at 10p per email address.

4.   The schools list
*All secondary schools - 5000.  £250 plus VAT
*Primary selection - 5000. £250 plus VAT
*Primary selection - 10000. £500 plus VAT
*All primary schools - 24000.  £800 plus VAT

*plus £10 set-up charge

For primary schools we can also supply a test run of schools at the rate of £50 for 1000.
It is also possible to select schools by area, age range, and size of school.  Prices depend on the number of addresses that you wish to reach.  As an example a mailing to 1001 to 2000 addresses will cost 8p each, while 2001 to 10000 addresses will cost 7p each.

For details please call 01536 399 000.