Back-to-school newsletters tips and best practices
How can you make sure your back-to-school newsletter is effective? Here are some tips and best practices:
Timing is everything
The timing of your back-to-school newsletters is key. You want to hit your audience right when they’re starting to think about the upcoming school year.
Ideally, you should send your newsletters out in late June or early July. That’s when parents are starting to do their research and figure out what kind of supplies they need and what kind of clothes their kids will need.
If you wait too long, chances are they’ll have already made their purchases or they’ll be so overwhelmed with everything that’s going on that they won’t even notice your newsletter. So start planning your campaign beforehand and hit your target audience right when they’re ready to buy.
Pay attention to your subject lines
When it comes to your newsletters, you want to make sure that you’re getting as many people as possible to open them up. One way to do this is to pay attention to your subject lines.
You want your back-to-school subject lines to be catchy, interesting, and relevant to your readers. And you also want to make sure that they’re not too long — people are more likely to open a shorter subject line than one that’s 50 words long. Back-to-school subject line best practice is to use no more than 7 words or 41 characters.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you should always test different subject lines to see which ones get the best results. What works for a parent might not work for a teacher or a student, so it’s important to tailor your content accordingly.
Subject lines examples for students:
- Back to school again? Get ready with us
- Ready to prepare for a new year of school?
- Back-to-school styles that will make you stand out
Subject lines examples for teachers:
- Need classroom supplies? Giving 30% off to teachers
- New school year, new deals for teachers with 50% off
- Up to 70% off on items for teachers. Hurry up!
Subject lines examples for parents:
- Tips to make your kid smartest in class
- 50% off on back-to-school essentials ends now
- Give your kid the best back-to-school experience
Segment your audience
It’s important to remember that you’re not writing for everyone. You need to segment your audience and target the right people with the right information.
For example, if you are targeting high school students’ parents you need to provide them with information about schedules, homework assignments, and important dates as a teacher. If you are targeting only students, send an email with information about lockers, dress codes, and after-school activities.
As a business that sells gadgets, if you are targeting parents or college students, you need to provide a newsletter that shows visible benefits of the item that will increase their kids’ grades. If you are targeting educators, then you need to pop up features that will make their teaching process more efficient.
It can be a lot of work, but when you target the right people with the right information, you’ll see a big improvement in your response rate.
Take advantage of the urgency
One of the best ways to make your back-to-school email campaign work is to play on the sense of urgency. Many parents are busy during the back-to-school season, and they may not have time to read every newsletter that comes their way.
So make sure your headline and opening paragraph capture their attention, and let them know that there’s information inside that they don’t want to miss. You can also highlight a specific event or deadline that’s coming up in your newsletter, and remind parents that it’s time to start thinking about school supplies, uniforms, and other items. You can see how Animal store handled this technique of appealing to urgency: