50,000+ schools |
Head teacher names |
Accuracy guarantees |
12 month licence |
Highly responsive |
Full back-up support |
Sell your products and services to school decision makers by post with our school mailing list service
Connect direct with over 50,000 state-funded, academy, and private schools with More Than Words’ school mailing list service.
Despite generally declining mail volumes across the UK, postal marketing still remains popular with companies wanting to introduce their products and services to decision makers within the education sector.
Shared mailings remain popular more than 40 years after the first services to schools started.
The biggest return on investment in mailing schools however comes from solus mailings where you’re not in the same envelope with up to 10 other suppliers.
Work with More Than Words’ experienced copywriters, designers, and data professionals to make the most out of postal mail marketing to schools.
Our school mailing list service
Part of our UK schools database, our school mailing list contains the details of over 50,000 decision makers and head teachers within the British educational sector.
You don’t have to buy the entire database though.
You can select which schools’ mail contact data you purchase by the type of school, how they’re funded, their geographical location, and dozens of other criteria.
The key to generating the maximum return on your postal mail marketing campaigns is to reduce your upfront investment in it as much as possible.
It’s better to only send postal mail marketing to 5,000 schools with a genuine need for your products and services than it is to send to 20,000 where their need for what you sell is unclear.
When you speak with one of our account managers, let them know what it is you sell and the benefits it delivers to schools.
Together, we’ll build a list of the education prospects most likely to be very responsive to your marketing approaches.
Up-to-date, guaranteed, and accurate school mailing lists
More Than Words offers its school mailing list clients a guarantee of 98% postal address accuracy on our education database.
A significant reason behind successful direct mail campaigns to schools is how up-to-date and correct the details of the schools you wish to target are.
If we miss our accuracy target, we’ll either refund you pro-rata or we’ll offer you replacement records.
Back up service and support for 12 months
More Than Words is more than a database provider – we’re a full service direct and content marketing company.
Our staff have considerable experience in working with clients on their postal mail marketing campaigns to schools and that experience is available to you as our client.
Your account manager is responsible for making sure that all of your dealings with More Than Words are smooth and that everything you ask us to do is done quickly, efficiently, and correctly.
Backing them up is our technical team.
We supply our school mailing list to you as a Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, or comma-separated values file.
If you are unfamiliar with how to use them or you want help on a particular task like segmenting your database into smaller and more niche lists, give us a call and we’ll talk you through how to do it.
Our advertising and marketing support team are here to help too.
If you want us to provide you with feedback and suggestions on marketing material you’ve created for your mailing campaign, please email them over to us.
We’ll let you know what we think works and what we think needs attention with the goal of maximising the number of leads and sales you receive as a result of your campaign.
Want help with writing a sales letter or writing and designing a brochure to send to school decision makers? Please ask us about these services when you call.
Add a school email database to your postal mailing list
One way of increasing responses from your postal mail campaign is to follow up with a series of email communications to schools.
We can add school email data to your postal mailing list.
After you’ve sent your direct mail campaign out, we recommend sending an email one week after to remind head teachers and other decision makers of your company and its products and services.
To ask us about combining your school postal mailing list with a school email address list, please speak to one of our account managers.
Order a bespoke school mailing list for your business
Contact us and let us know more about your business, the products and services you sell, and the types of schools which benefit the most from your expertise.
Please call us on 0330 010 3495 or you can email our marketing databases team by clicking here.
Working with More Than Words’ school mailing lists
Choose the schools you wish to target by postal marketing
Introduce your company and promote your products and services to over 50,000 UK publicly-funded schools, private schools, MATs, and privately-owned daycare and nursery companies
- Full name of head teachers where available
- Preferred job title included where available
- Includes schools’ Unique Reference Numbers
- 98% postal mail address accuracy guarantee
Send your marketing materials direct to school head teachers
Address your envelopes to the head teacher or for the attention of the school business manager or heads of departments to make sure your message is seen by the correct budget holder.
- Select the schools you wish to mail to by:
- type of schools,
- LA-controlled or academy schools, and
- dozens of additional criteria.
Why postal mail marketing is still effective when targeting schools
Sales letters perform very well in the education marketplace – in fact, compared with B2B, B2C, and public sector marketing, the highest proportion of marketing approaches by mail is to schools. Take advantage of this highly responsive medium – ask us about working with one of our experienced sales letter writers on your campaign.
- Postal mail is particularly effective for cold selling
- Send your catalogues and spec sheets to schools
- Promote events you attend or host
- Effective for building company credibility
Mix postal marketing with highly effective email & telephone marketing
For companies looking to sell to the public sector, schools offer the quickest way to build a relevant client database. In addition, the education sector is a domino marketplace often leading to multiple orders through recommendation. Achieve maximum visibility for your company and its products & services by using different approaches.
- Email marketing – ask us about the benefits of combining email marketing for schools with postal mail marketing
- Telemarketing –two-way follow up marketing
Schools direct mail – generating more leads and sales from the sector
Direct mail is currently seeing a resurgence as an effective method of direct marketing to the education sector.
Despite expectations that it would become redundant as the use of email and social media increased, marketers continue to see excellent returns from their direct mail campaigns.
Studies have shown that recipients are more likely to open and respond to direct mail thanks to the overpopulation of their online inboxes.
In a sea of digital marketing, a physical message can help you to stand out from competitors.
If you have chosen to use direct mail to connect with schools, how best can you tailor your campaign to appeal to contacts within the education sector?
Target the right people
Before you begin a direct marketing campaign you should identify a campaign goal, so that you know what you are contacting your network about and the action you would like them to take.
From here you can define your target audience based on who this offer, product or service is the most useful to.
You should segment your school mailing list into target audiences, depending on their individual characteristics.
For example, there are four main types of contact to choose from within schools:
- Teachers – the people who are likely to use a classroom product or service,
- Support staff – who may be interested in products that help them to do their job,
- Heads of Department – the staff most likely to manage budgets, and
- Head Teachers – who make big purchase decisions.
You may want to target only the people that are going to use your product or service, or may find that you can connect with other personnel using a number of slightly different marketing messages.
The important thing is to make sure that the person that receives the message is the person that the message is relevant to, otherwise your direct mail is likely to just be thrown away.
To take this to the next level, you may want to craft detailed buying personas for each type of education personnel.
You can measure your content against these throughout the design stage.
Make your message valuable
Although direct mail is far more likely to be opened than an email, you must offer your audience something of value if you want them to respond.
This could be an offer, discount or voucher, downloadable resources or useful information, and should be tailored to the specific needs of the recipient.
Performing detailed market research is the best way to find what is happening in the education sector and identify pain points for your direct mail to provide a resolution to.
2020 was a difficult financial year for most organisations, so you might find that focusing on a higher value-to-cost ratio gives you the edge over your competition.
For teachers, free resources are always valuable and help you to simultaneously demonstrate your expertise, build brand awareness and make their job easier.
A free trial for a teaching resource, downloadable article or presentation or even a free sample of a physical product is guaranteed to attract the attention of teachers and heads of department.
Stand out from the crowd
Whilst the content of your message is key to the success of your campaign, you need to ensure that your recipients will open it in the first place.
Everything from the design of the copy to the look of the envelope will affect whether your direct mail generates interest or not.
For smaller print runs you could consider handwriting and individually stamping envelopes for a more personal touch.
If you have the time and budget, you could even get really creative.
This should at least intrigue the receiver enough to open the direct mail, after which the content of your mail can take over.
Harness your creativity
A creative, personalised letter is an effective way to capture the attention of teachers, who often receive too much junk mail to do more than scan their email accounts.
But once your direct mail is opened, you still need to harness your creativity to convince them to read on.
Make sure that your design is clear, simple and interesting, with a compelling headline and a conspicuous call to action.
Bright, high-quality images are an effective way to capture attention and, if you keep them on-brand colours and images, can serve to reinforce your message.
Create compelling copy
Your direct mail copy should be easy to read, relevant and compelling.
Keep it short and simple, and break it into smaller parts so that it is easy to skim-read. This is also a good way to strengthen your call to action.
Break up the text with pull quotes, bullet points, graphs and images designed to underline the specific benefits that you are offering them and their organisation.
Ideas to grab attention within your copy include:
- offers, discounts and rewards,
- interesting facts or statistics,
- a direction to receive valuable assets (“head to our website to download free teaching resources!”), or
- solve a problem (“use our Learning Management software to easily manage your virtual learners”).
Personalise your message
Segmentation allows you to add key details to your message to make it feel more personal, a marketing practice that makes a significant difference to open and response rates.
When writing your content, sprinkle a few details throughout that speak directly to the individual.
Something as simple as including their name in the subject line can make a considerable difference, as can mentioning something specific to their job or school that shows that you have done your research and know who you are contacting.
Include a clear CTA
Before you began constructing your campaign you decided on a specific objective that you wanted to achieve.
This should be the basis for your CTA, in which you tell your reader what action you would like them to take once they have finished reading the direct mail.
One relevant CTA is more than enough for a direct marketing campaign – you don’t want to confuse your reader by asking too much of them.
If you have included an offer, your CTA will simply be for the recipient to take you up on this offer.
If not, you could direct them to visit your website, call you or book a consultation.
People respond well to being told what to do (subconsciously), so make your CTA clear, simple and compelling.
Use multiple channels
HubSpot estimates that prospects require up to 8 ‘marketing touches’ before they become a sales lead, and each contact from a business often receives a higher response rate than the last.
Marketing touches are individual communications between the customer and business which, directed through just one channel, can cause marketing fatigue.
Using a variety of direct and indirect channels keeps your business top-of-mind with your intended customers without being overbearing.
Meanwhile, the sales cycle for schools can be very long, as these institutions prefer to build relationships with trusted suppliers before making a purchase, so it is important to vary your methods of communication.
Direct mail is an effective part of a multi-channel marketing strategy as it has the benefit of drawing the most attention, whilst easily segueing into other channels – directing recipients to your website or compelling them to book an appointment.
Monitor and measure your results
The foundation of any good marketing strategy is a solid analytics process.
Throughout your direct mail campaign you should measure and analyse the success of your campaign in order to refine it over time.
Creating personalised offer codes, landing pages and URLs helps you to measure the volume of interest your direct mail is generating.
A/B testing for different designs, headlines and offers can also offer some insight into how best to proceed in future campaigns.
School mailing lists - FAQ
How to buy school mailing lists from More Than Words
Sell your products and services to schools with a series of direct mail marketing campaigns – use our data and take advantage of our support to generate the sales and the leads you want for your business.
Please call us, email us, or fill out the contact form and let us know what you want to achieve with the school mailing lists you purchase from us.
We’re open during office hours between Monday and Friday.
We’re available on 0330 010 3495 or you can email our mailing lists team by clicking here.
We’re based in North Shields town centre if you want to come and visit us. There is plenty of free parking outside and we’re only three minutes’ walk from North Shields Metro station.
Contact us about our school mailing lists
To speak to an account manager, please call us on 0330 010 3495, click here to email us, or fill in the form below and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.