October 28, 2024  |  Peter Long

Engage Non-Responsive Educators with Multi-Channel Marketing

Expand Your Reach Beyond the Inbox

In our last installment, we discussed how to boost your email marketing ROI by refining your targeting strategies and removing educators who never engage with your emails. (Click here if you missed it.) This week, we're diving into what to do with those non-responsive segments. Just because an educator doesn’t respond to your emails doesn't mean they aren't a valuable prospect.

Often, non-responsive educators might not be receiving your emails at all due to auto-filters or other email filtering mechanisms. Simply removing them from your email lists can improve engagement rates and reduce costs, but you shouldn't completely give up on these potential prospects. Instead, it's time to re-engage them using different methods.

The Power of Profiling and Segmentation in Education Marketing

You’ve likely heard of the Pareto Principle, which states that 20% of your customer base generates 80% of your total sales. After nearly 100 years of experience in the education market, we’ve seen this principle apply for countless educational marketing customers we have worked with. If you can identify your high-potential educator customers, you’ll be able to target focus your efforts where they matter most.

Start by profiling your non-responsive educators and segmenting them into categories such as great prospects, good prospects, average prospects, and low potential. At MCH Strategic Data, we typically recommend dividing your list into quarters, focusing your resources on the top three segments. This allows you to optimize your strategy and spend more on the educators who are most likely to convert.

Investing in High-Value Educators

For your top-tier education customers, you’ll want to allocate more budget to targeted outreach efforts. These might include:

• Sending physical catalogs or other mail pieces that highlight key resources or services.
• Offer special invites to educational webinars or sessions.
• Leveraging third-party email domains to bypass filters and reach these prospects through new channels.

The key is that these educators are worth the investment. Let’s look at a hypothetical example - If your business generates $10 million in sales, and the top 20% of your customers contribute $8 million of that (say with an average sale of $8,000 in this top 20% group), then a set of prospect records that looks like the typical best customer segment deserves extra attention. For example, if you were to spend $10 per prospect record on your top prospect group of say 5,000 schools ($50,000 investment) and those records demographically line up with similar characteristics to your best customers, even a modest conversion rate of 0.2% could justify the expense.

Maximizing the Value of Mid-Level Prospects

For your middle-tier prospects, cost-efficiency is essential. Re-engaging non-responsive educators can still pay off, but the approach must be more measured. Consider launching a social media ad campaign or using programmatic advertising (digital ad buying) to display banner ads to these educators. By showing your brand and message to these prospects 20 times per month, you’ll gain visibility and, over time, potentially convert them into engaged customers.

This approach can be highly effective, with an annual investment of around $12,000 to $24,000, depending on placement costs. You only need a small conversion rate to cover these costs, but even if conversions don’t hit the target, you’ll be building brand awareness among a valuable segment of educators and if you can factor in Lifetime value of a typical customer that might easily put into the green quickly.

Consistency is Key in the Education Buying Cycle

Re-engaging educators who don’t respond to emails requires consistency. You may not see immediate results, but by regularly targeting high-potential educators with branding messages and strategic marketing offers, you can warm them up over time. The education buying cycle is often long, and patience is essential for driving long-term success.

When executed correctly, this consistent messaging will ensure that when these educators are ready to make a decision, your brand is at the forefront of their minds.

Conclusion: Don’t Give Up on Non-Responsive Educators

The reality is, non-responsive educators still have potential. While email may not be the best way to reach them, other avenues such as social media, programmatic ads, and physical mailers can help you stay visible. By dividing your prospects based on potential ROI and re-engaging with a balanced strategy, you can maximize your impact in the education market.
 

More Insight from MCH:

• Click here to read up on boosting your email marketing ROI!
• Download the Top 25 EDU Events for 2025 
• Sign Up for MCH's Monday Marketing Moment, and keep up to date on all things K-12 marketing!

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.