October 21, 2024  |  Peter Long

Boost K-12 Email Marketing ROI with Segmentation and Personalization

Maximizing ROI in your Educational Email Marketing: Quality Over Quantity

Email marketing continues to be a critical tool for businesses aiming to connect with their target educator audience. But while many educational marketers focus on increasing the number of emails sent, the truth is that a more refined approach often yields better results. In today’s saturated school email inbox environment, sending fewer, more relevant emails can lead to stronger engagement and higher ROI.

Avoiding the “Naughty List”:
Best Practices for a more Responsive Email Marketing Result

School and district ESPs (Email Service Providers) and 3rd party security / spam filtering solutions are becoming increasingly sophisticated in filtering out unwanted or low engagement emails. To avoid having your emails land in the spam folder - or worse, get your domain blacklisted - it’s crucial to grow your email marketing programs out step by step. If you have low engagement scores or other issues it is easy to get into trouble with receiving ESPs. Begin your process of repair by focusing future sends on educators that have some history of interaction with a previous message. These are the educator prospects that are email responsive, and they can be your golden ticket to significantly improved ROI and engagement scores for your campaigns. Once you have things back on track then start working to get the non-responders re-engaged in other ways (more on that next week!)

Here are some best practices to follow:

• Segment Your Audience: Send different messages to different segments based on past interactions, demographics, and preferences. Dig deep into your Email Service Provider or Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) and tighten up your list by dropping those previous recipients who have zero opens or clicks. You can slowly begin to add some back in later once your reputation scores improve.
• Monitor Bounce Rates: High bounce rates signal to email providers that your list isn’t clean, which can affect deliverability. If you have a customer file and an internal prospecting list combined with an external prospecting database make sure you work with a reputable data compilation provider like MCH that can help you identify educators no longer at a school, provide you with corrected emails, and assist with cleaning up your old prospecting lists.
• Maintain Engagement: If subscribers aren’t engaging with your emails, it’s time to consider retargeting or removing them from your list. There are other effective ways to stay in front of these educators if they aren’t engaging with your emails. It would be unwise to assume the prospect is not interested or not a valuable potential prospect. The school and district ESPs frequently filter promotional messages going to educators, so other marketing channels like programmatic ads, social network ads, or direct mail may be a prime avenue for targeting.

Why Less is More in Email Marketing

For years, the prevailing wisdom was simple: send more emails to reach more prospects. However, this approach often leads to lower open rates and higher unsubscribe rates. Today’s savvy educational marketers recognize that the key to success is targeted, personalized content that speaks directly to the recipient’s needs.

By narrowing your focus and sending highly relevant emails, you can:

• Improve open rates by ensuring the message is more aligned with the recipient’s interests.
• Increase engagement by delivering content that offers real value.
• Strengthen brand trust by respecting your audience’s inbox with thoughtful, curated messages.

Staying true to these tactics will keep your domains clean and give you a better shot at getting through those tough school and district ESPs.

The ROI of Targeted Email Campaigns

Marketers who segment their email campaigns experience 14.31% higher open rates and 100.95% higher click-through rates, leading to significantly improved engagement and revenue. MCH has proven this to be true with some big educational marketing players. District and school automatic filtering and blacklisting kills many plans for educational marketers who choose to ignore the rules of the new game. You can catch up with MCH’s recent whitepaper dedicated to some of these important rules, or feel free to contact us and discuss your issue with us. We have seen it all.

Modern Tools to Improve Your Email Strategy

With the rise of AI-driven tools and automation, modern email marketing is more sophisticated than ever. Marketers can now use real-time data to personalize messages, trigger automated sequences, and even A/B test subject lines or content to see what resonates best with their audience.
 

Leverage tools like:

• Email automation platforms that trigger personalized emails based on user behavior.
• AI-driven personalization to deliver content that aligns with the recipient's preferences and past actions.
• A/B testing software to determine the most effective subject lines, email designs, and content layouts.

By embracing these modern tools, marketers can deliver the right message at the right time, further improving ROI.
 

The key to long-term success in educational email marketing lies in respecting your educator audience, delivering valuable content, and recognizing that receiving ESPs are applying rules to evaluate your email message whether you like it or not. Smart marketers follow the rules and win delivery to the inbox. By embracing these tactics, you’ll be well-positioned to stand out in today’s competitive email environment.
 

Next week, we’ll explore other effective methods for reaching your target audience beyond email - from postal mail to emerging digital channels. Sign up here to be notified when the next blog is available via our Monday Marketing Moment, and discover how combining these strategies can help you further maximize your marketing efforts.
 

More Insight from MCH

• Check out our series on Selling to Schools and Districts here!
• Download our School Calendar Reference Guide for the 2024/2025 school year and get key insights from over 80,000 school calendars across the U.S.
• Download our Email Marketing to Educators 2024 whitepaper.

About MCH

For nearly a century, MCH has empowered educational marketers with the data, tools, and solutions needed to thrive. Our cutting-edge technology continuously updates and verifies millions of educator records, ensuring you have the most accurate information for your campaigns.

Use our free ListBuilder tool to explore our education data, or Contact Us to strategize as a team.