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.

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 do school mailing lists work?

When we’ve supplied you with your school mailing list, you’ll have a database of schools which you’ve identified to us as having the greatest need for your products and services.

You have a licence to contact the schools you want to sell to for 12 months following the purchase of your mailing list.

For companies new to postal mail marketing, there are two approaches you can take to using the database.

If you want to do fairly small mailing campaigns, you may wish to ask your staff to carry out the campaign for you using your printer and franking machine.

In these circumstances, it’s better to use mailing address labels onto which you print schools’ address details. Your staff will then remove the labels from paper to which they’re attached and then affix them onto the envelopes.

If you want to send out more than 200 at a time though, it may be worth considering using outside companies to help you. That’s because the time needed for staff to carry out larger campaigns will be considerable and this will take them away from their other duties.

If you were to use outside companies for a larger mailing campaign, you’ll probably need to source one or more of the following:

• copywriter – a copywriter is responsible for creating the text which is used on your sales letter and any accompanying material like brochures
• designer – responsible for creating the design of your sales letter, brochure, and other accompanying materials onto which the copywriter’s words are transposed
• printing company – responsible for printing the contents of your envelope (they’ll use the designer’s raw graphic files to do this)
• mailing house – responsible for inserting the printed material into the envelopes and then organising the send in such a way to take advantage of volume-based carrier discounts offered by the Royal Mail and their competitors.

If you’ve never run a mailing campaign before and you’d like advice on how to do so, please contact us.

When you get in touch, please also ask your account manager about our sales letter copywriting and brochure writing and design services.

Do you offer public school mailing lists?

Yes.

We either include a public school mailing list as part of the entire database or as a separate bespoke database according to the brief you give to your account manager.

You can further specify which public schools you wish to get in touch with by letting us know any additional criteria we need to work to in order to find the most suitable decision makers for you to contact.

Can I add email data onto my school mailing lists?

We can append a list of UK school email addresses to your education postal marketing database for a nominal fee.

Email marketing to schools in the UK is an established sales channel used by thousands of companies which delivers very high returns on investment for clients.

Please ask your account manager about:

• adding a school email list into your overall schools database when you contact us and
• our managed school email campaign service.

Can I append school telemarketing data onto my mailing lists?

Yes – you can add telemarketing data onto your school postal marketing lists.

Please ask your account manager when you contact us for more information.

Are your school mailing lists GDPR-compliant?

Yes. Postal marketing conducted to schools falls within the scope of the “legitimate interest” ground of the GPDR regulations.

However please be aware that, when mailing schools, the products and services you offer are of benefit to the teaching aims of the organisation only and not the individuals.

How does GDPR affect our ability to use our existing school mailing lists?

The only current constraint you may face with your existing school mailing lists is the licence you agreed of you purchased it from a third party supplier.

If you purchased it more than 12 months ago, please check you with your supplier that you still have the right to use it within the terms and conditions of the contract you signed.

Self-generated school mailing lists you possess or 3^rd party data you hold under licence will not be affected by GDPR as long as you’re marketing products and services of benefit to the school and not of benefit to the individuals personally.

Can I continue to use the school mailing list data after my licence has expired?

Following the expiry of your 12 month licence, you’ll need to purchase another 12 month licence to continue to use the data.

You may, however, contact school decision makers after the 12 months if, as a result of a direct mail campaign:

• a school has bought something from you,
• you are in ongoing dialogue with a school although a sale has not yet taken place, or
• you have asked them if they wish to continue receiving postal marketing to you and they have written back to you permitting this.

Do you offer an international schools mailing list service?

Unfortunately, we don’t currently offer international schools mailing lists to clients.

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.