Are you and your school staff suffering from email and social media overload? Do you need to refine how you’re messaging to families and reduce staff time spent on crafting messaging? It’s important that schools keep communication flowing during the school year and employ messaging that resonates with parents and build community.
Parents receive multitudes of emails and it’s important to keep your messaging to a minimum, relevant to an action or benefit to the family, and engaging so parents don’t unsubscribe. The way schools communicate with their families is no different. While families are typically reluctant to unsubscribe from school emails for fear they will miss out on something important, schools can still be mindful that family inboxes and time are valuable.
In fact, a recent survey from Yahoo notes that parents are overwhelmed by emails with parents reporting receiving more than eighty emails a month related to their kids.
The start of a new school year is a perfect time to analyze your email sends and insure you establish and implement the latest best practice tactics. What follows are strategies private K-12 schools can use to gain higher email open rates, strengthen family and staff ties, and reduce unsubscribing!
Subject Line
Look at your school calendar and the events that your school most wants to highlight throughout the year. Build a document that holds subject lines for each week that correlate to a school event. This might include a sports event, academic event, art event, testing week notification, or celebration of academic achievements. The more directly you tie the subject line to what parents want to know about their student’s school, the more your open rate will rise. Switch your subject lines up, by using questions as well as phrases. For example, “Did you know our Science Fair has launched lifelong science learners? Come join us!” Use your subject line to grab the reader’s attention and encourage them to open the email by using strong call-to-actions and relevant messaging.
Message
How you position your point within an email could be the deciding factor when it comes to your emails being received and digested. Make sure your message is clear and to the point. If you force recipients to dig for information, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Make use of pre-built templates within your student information system (SIS) as a guide to help send the message you’re trying to convey. Your SIS should help you achieve consistent and efficient messaging no matter where you are.
Pro Tip: TADS makes it easy to:
- Leverage pre-built templates or customize your own templates to meet your school specific needs
- Utilize admin tools that allow you to track sent messages and open rates so you can better target future communications
- Brand your school within the emails for congruency in messaging
- Create emails that focus on significant dates and actions, for instance during financial aid season, schools can easily pull all financial aid recipients and email those families separately.
Segmentation
Use segmentation to control who your target audience is and how often you are sending to them. Create segmented lists using unique criteria so you can ensure you’re emailing your target audience on an as–needed basis. Keep in mind as well that for families who have been at the school a longer time, using segmented lists you can make sure they aren’t receiving information about the school they’ve received each year previously.
Social Media
Combining your email communication efforts with social media can help you to avoid over-communicating with your families—too much communication can lead to unsubscribes. Work to continually increase your following by promoting your social media pages to your families via other means of communication.
Encourage your students, families and staff to use their social platforms to speak up and help spread the word. Provide content they can easily share to highlight all the things your school is doing to help foster and grow lifelong learners.
For private Catholic schools, maintaining an active and engaging website builds strong connections with your community, attracts new students, and fosters a valuable sense of belonging. One effective way to achieve this is by regularly updating your website with ready-made social media posts that your families, alumni, and supporters can easily share.
Providing ready-made social media content offers several benefits. It saves time and effort for your staff and encourages community engagement by creating a sense of belonging while also increasing your school’s visibility. Social media also helps support your school’s mission and values by ensuring that school events, scholastic achievements, staff accomplishments are consistently communicated. Social media also helps drive website traffic, increasing your school’s online visibility and attract new students.
To create effective ready-made social media content, consider the following tips:
Know your audience: Understand the interests and needs of your families and prospective families. Tailor your content accordingly.
Use high-quality visuals: Images and videos can help to capture attention and make your posts more engaging.
Keep it short and compelling: Keep your posts concise and to the point.
Use relevant hashtags: Hashtags can help your posts reach a wider audience. Use relevant hashtags that are related to your school, your community, and special school events.
Encourage sharing: Make it easy for people to share your content by adding social sharing buttons to your website and posts.
Create a social media student/parent volunteer group that regularly meets and generates posts that can be shared on your school’s website, and social media platforms. If your school does not yet have a LinkedIn page think about creating one there as well for parents to share your school information.
By regularly updating your social media content, you can strengthen your connection with your community, promote your school’s mission and values, and drive website traffic. Social media is valuable tool for any private Catholic school looking to enhance its online presence and engage with its stakeholders.
To learn more about how TADS can help your school connect and engage with all your families, request a demo today!