There are a lot of factors to consider when you’re trying to market to prospective parents or keep your enrolled families engaged with your centre. Coming up with new strategies for childcare marketing isn’t always easy but we’ve compiled 6 tips for developing better email campaigns to help you grow your marketing impact and receive a higher ROI (return on investment).
When you're creating a new campaign, establish a schedule in advance and determine how often you want to send emails. Look ahead in your centre’s calendar and make note of upcoming holidays to plan your content around special dates and events. If you send too many emails too often, your messages may be diverted to spam or parents may simply unsubscribe.
The subject line is often the determining factor in whether a reader will open your email. In fact, 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. In contrast, 68% of email recipients will report an email as spam based solely on the subject line. To ensure your emails are being well-received and read, your subject should be on-topic with your email but catchy enough to capture attention and boost your email open rates.
Here are some tips when designing an email subject line:
Branding and logos are essential when you're thinking about how to advertise a childcare centre. Your brand elements should be the graphic signature of your centre’s communications and should provide a basis for the fonts, colours, and design choices in all of your marketing materials. In particular, when designing your email signature, use fonts that are easily readable and break up important contact information into different lines so parents can find how to reach you at a quick glance.
If you want your communications to stand out from the rest, it's important to connect with your reader. Make recipients feel special when they receive an email from you by adding their name at the beginning of the email. It immediately gives parents a feeling of belonging to your centre before they even enrol.
A call to action (CTA) is a big part of what encourages prospects to move to the next step in your marketing funnel or enrolment journey. CTAs are used in both traditional and digital advertising. A huge benefit of digital advertising is that your CTA can be more than simply saying “Call us to schedule a tour”. Instead, your CTA can be a clickable link that says, “Click here to schedule a tour”. This makes the process much faster and more convenient for the parent and reducing the number of steps to enquire for care leads to higher enrolment rates.
ChildcareCRM offers several reports that can show you how many people have read your email, responded to you, and whether they clicked any of the links within the email.
Download the free guide to email marketing for childcare for more tips and tricks.