Schools, colleges, universities, trade schools, and training programs depend on one thing to succeed, students. But how do you reach those students? Direct mail marketing can help you connect with parents and alumni, increase enrollment, and gain new sponsors. Education marketing is critical for boosting your school profile and staying in contact with the right people. Get the word out about your educational institution, promote your latest fundraiser, or share the latest events on your campus. It’s easy to target your message to your intended audience while increasing responses with direct mail marketing.

How can you use direct mail marketing to connect with students, parents, and teachers?

Using direct mail marketing helps your school get noticed, makes it easier to connect, and gets results.   

Direct Mail Marketing Gets Noticed

Regular contact with students, parents, and teachers is essential across a variety of situations. Schools may be trying to recruit prospective students, inform current families of campus events, let teachers know about upcoming training opportunities, or stay in touch with alumni. Effective communication is important for many goals, and direct mail demands attention and elicits an emotional response from its audience.

Parents, students, and teachers are overwhelmed with emails, all vying for attention in their inboxes. As recipients try to clear out their cluttered inboxes, emails can become quickly deleted, wiping out any hope of imparting your message. With fewer schools sending direct mail, your message has a much easier time getting noticed. Students and parents can be targeted where they live, and teachers can easily be reached through the mailbox at their school.  

Direct mail is tangible, which means it demands physical interaction. If a parent or teacher doesn’t have the time to review a direct mailing right away, they can set it down and return to it later. Students can share fundraising catalogs with grandparents, teachers can share brochure information with co-workers, and parents can share campus event flyers with neighbors. Direct mail can be filed away for future reference or hung on the refrigerator as a reminder. Parents, students, and teachers are likely to spend more time with the direct mail pieces they receive.

It Makes It Easy To Connect

Sending direct mail isn’t the end of how you connect; it’s the beginning. The physical nature of direct mail allows you to connect and engage your customers in more ways than you can with purely digital marketing. As schools continue using virtual formats moving forward, direct mail is a great way to build tangible connections, and stay in contact with distanced learners who may never step foot on campus. There are endless ways that you can continue the conversation through appropriate calls-to-action (CTAs) on your direct mail materials.

Direct mail pieces can be personalized based on the various recipients and geared to areas such as:

• extra-curricular activities
• academic interests
• sports

After receiving a brochure or postcard, you can direct recipients to visit your website, follow the school on social media, or sign up for targeted follow-up emails.

Schools might use direct mail to:

• have prospective students register for a campus tour
• invite parents to send emails with follow-up questions
• invite teachers to a webinar
• invite the community to purchase tickets or make donations for a school carnival

Online and direct mail efforts can work in tandem to create the greatest level of communication. For example, after completing an interest form online, a school often sends out a campus brochure with application or registration information. After receiving the direct mail brochure, students or their parents can be directed back online to schedule a visit in-person. Adding direct mail to your other efforts expands your reach, drives greater response, and improves communication.

It Gets Results

People enjoy getting mail. They really enjoy getting mail that is personalized for them. Getting a postcard in the mail, rather than an email, makes recipients feel more valued and creates a more authentic relationship.

Direct mail is tangible, making a longer-lasting impression than other forms of marketing. This deeper impression is important because it makes it easier for recipients to recall those details later on. And, maybe best of all, direct mail achieves a better response rate than digital channels.

Staying in touch with students, parents, and teachers is so important for educational institutions and crucial for long-term growth. Schools are often faced with budget cuts, asked to do more without spending more money. Direct mail marketing can play a vital role in helping your school.

At Letter Jacket, we help schools solve problems and save money using our envelopes. We know that first impressions matter, and we want to help you make sure your envelopes represent your school in the most positive way possible. See how our envelope selection and customization tools make it easy to control how you are presented and make what’s on the outside of your envelope just as impressive as what’s on the inside.

Key Takeaways

• Direct mail marketing can help you connect with parents and alumni, increase enrollment, and gain new sponsors.
• It’s easy to target your message to your intended audience while increasing responses with direct mail marketing.
• Using direct mail marketing helps your school get noticed, makes it easier to connect, and gets results.
• At Letter Jacket, we help schools solve problems and save money using our envelopes.