MDR's Free Webinar Series
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Get Noticed: Back-to-School Tips & Strategies to Break Through
the Marketing Clutter
Top Trends and Tips for Your Fall Marketing Campaign

Q&A Summary:

Q: Can you please define what you mean by "supplemental materials"?
SM: Non-basal educational materials (everything other than textbooks) that support a comprehensive curriculum. They can be used by students at home or in school, created in any media, and developed for any age learner. Examples of supplemental materials include workbooks, manipulatives, software, Web-based learning applications.

Q: When you say "building," are you meaning individual school?
SM: Yes.

Q: Do you feel that if you put pricing on your Web site, you run the risk of advertising that to your competitors who could then slightly undercut you?
SM: We addressed this during the webinar…if you don’t put the price on your Web site, many potential customers may eliminate you automatically. If you are concerned about giving away specific pricing information, you can provide general ranges and ask that they contact you for a specific proposal/quotation designed to meet their needs.

KB: While you run that risk anytime you make your pricing publicly available, MDR’s research has shown that one of the primary reasons educators visit Web sites is to locate or confirm pricing. By not publishing your pricing, you are at a disadvantage and may even lose orders as a result. One alternative to providing exact pricing is to publish a range (e.g., price ranges from $100-$300 depending on features chosen) or an example (e.g., price varies but a typical installation for a school with 500 students is $1,000).

MM: It is likely you are looking at your prices in the context of many important factors, including how they align with competitors’ prices. If you are confident that the prices you are asking deliver products with the value you promise (better results, better service, and delivery, etc.) and you can demonstrate they are superior to your competitors’ offerings, putting your prices on your Web site should not be the sole deciding factor, though, as Kathleen said, seeing pricing is an important part of Web searches.

Q: You indicate an increase in online ordering, but most can't order without sending a purchase order. Wouldn't that indicate offline ordering?
SM: Many vendors’ Web sites are now accepting purchase orders on their Web site, which then activates an online order; purchase orders are often then sent to confirm the order.

Q: Regarding respondent estimates of purchasing increase/decrease in 2008-2009: 1) When was this data gathered, and 2) Those who responded with "increase" or "stay the same," do you know what states these responses were from?
SM: Data was gathered in April and May 2008; states that projected an increase were Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Michigan.

Q: Premium item offerings would be best suited to building level, correct? What would entice at the district level?
SM: District-level buyers are often looking for discounts and special offers based on larger orders. Free training or professional development are often good additions to bundle with a purchase.

KB: Premiums are often geared toward schools, but they can also be effective at the district level. Look for premiums that would be of interest to a district administrator, such as a report or other publication with valuable information about what other districts are doing that’s working or statistics related to education metrics that they measure on. Part of an administrator’s job is to be well-informed in their field.

CR: Remember that a primary goal of a premium is to get your mail or message noticed. Using premiums is a great tool to increase readership of your marketing messages and help you to get through the clutter.

Q: Is there a good way to get educators to participate in webinars?
SM: Provide information that is of great value in and of itself (not just a product demonstration). Make the webinar content entertaining as well as informative—featuring a great author or well-known thought-leader in the field of specialization often attracts participants. You do need to use integrated marketing to recruit—mail, phone, email.

KB: While this may seem obvious, the most important component is to offer valuable content that is of interest to educators. Ask yourself, “What would an educator learn from my webinar that would make his/her job easier, would make he/she more effective, would directly or indirectly benefit their students”? Incentives also work, such as offering a $25 Amazon gift card to the first 50 participants. An incentive that could be used by the educator for their professional benefit or the benefit of their classrooms or students tends to work well.

Q: How much lead time is needed for advertising to precede presentations?
MM: You can expect that you will need at minimum one week to get a representative group for your webinar session if your content is relevant and your invitation creates some urgency to attend (see responses to questions above). Giving yourself two to three weeks leaves time to resend invites and send reminders or test an incentive if your sign-ups were low after the first invite. You can also follow-up with people who have opened your email message or clicked through to a content page on your Web site with a phone call to invite them.

Q: As a software company, do you think a free trial of our program for teachers to use is a good enough incentive since it depends on whether a teacher uses it or not?
SM: Depends on the content and how long the free trial will last. A free trial isn’t really an incentive; it is a way to showcase your product.

KB: A trial offer, while not a hard-core “incentive,” is a very good thing. You want to let the educator get familiar with the program so they can see first-hand the power of it. A free trial helps remove any barrier to purchase stemming from uncertainty about a teacher’s ability to use the solution.

MM: Free trials are very important for software sales, and in particular, subscription products. The more value you can demonstrate your product offers, the better satisfied the customer will be when the purchase is made. MDR actually gives a fully functional free trial for our Education MarketView product, which allows customers to see exactly what they will get when they make the purchase. This helps with retention and customer effectiveness in using the product.

Q: Did you mention when the best time is to do a direct mail for back-to-school professional development materials?
SM: Depends on the schedule for your PD courses. If you are trying to sell courses that start in the fall, you want them to get your mail as soon as possible. In that case, I would schedule my mail based on school opening dates so that my drop dates would range from late July to mid-September.

MM: We indicated that there were so many questions related to timing that we would direct participants to some other content available. Here is a good place to start: Timing Your School Promotion to Optimize Success.

Q: What's the best way to supplement limited email targets with direct mailing lists? How current is MDR's mailing list database?
CR: The MDR database is continuality updated throughout the school year. In the summer, we contact every public school district to identify the new schools, closing schools, consolidations, re-districting; update key demographics, and update district and school administrators. We have a robust teacher roster campaign that starts in August. In a recent audit conducted by an outside third party, our accuracy ratings were 97%+ for addresses, 99% for institution names, 95% for leadership names, and an overall name accuracy rating of 91%.

Q: Regarding tip #4 (Send Promotion to Right Person at Right Time), when is the right time to market or advertise to these decision makers? Did you ask schools what is the best month(s) to send them direct mail pieces? Compare fall versus spring (September versus March, for example). What is the best time of year for campaigns (email or mail)? When is the best time to approach districts? What month/time of year?
MM: Here are some guidelines about the best time to mail: Timing Your School Promotion to Optimize Success. You should also keep in mind open/close dates for specific schools, and MDR recently released some research on that. Your MDR Representative can also help you plan your campaign for the best times of year.

CR: This really depends on what you are marketing, the level of decision required to buy your product, and the sales process. Generally, the vast majority of purchasing decisions for the school year beginning in July are made in the March-July time frames. However, your marketing touches need to occur prior to this time frame to influence the decision process. The very end of December through March is the heaviest marketing period for many products. If your product requires a committee or district decision, the earlier you need to start. Of course, multiple touches are needed to influence purchasing decisions. Many marketers have a least three major marketing cycles—August, end of December, and February/early March.

If the sales process includes sampling, then August and September is an important window. This window is also important for classroom materials, test prep, school supplies, and library materials.

A smaller but important window is April and May. Schools must spend their school budgets by the end of the school year or lose the funding. It is great time to email customers and key prospects to take advantage of the end-of-school-year purchasing and to influence the purchasing decisions for the upcoming school year.

Q: What about replacing a catalog with a CD of a catalog? Did you get feedback on that?
SM: We did not ask about that specifically.

Q: Would there be any specific differences in marketing to K-12 and university levels? My focus being at the university level, is it better to contact the professor or the director of the school?
SM: There are many differences in terms of marketing to K-12 versus higher ed—the correct audience for your product depends on the product you are marketing (need more information to answer this question).

MM: Susan is right—there are many differences in marketing strategies for K-12 and higher ed. If you aren’t already working directly with someone on the MDR sales team, give us a call at 800-333-8802, and we can help you build a higher ed plan.

Q: When is the best time to clean my lists?
CR: Typically, education marketers do most of their hygiene once a year over the summer months. This provides them with a solid customer database with the greatest number of mail addresses and the most recent address changes for the start of the school year. If that window is missed, the next most popular time is November or December prior in preparation of the spring campaigns. If it has been more than 12 months, then now is the time.

The important point is to be consistent with customer file hygiene. According to the DOE, teacher turnover rate is approximately 20% and rising. There are hundreds of school closings and consolidations annually. So hygiene is not only a good idea, it can improve your results and have a positive ROI in the first email or direct mail campaign.

Q: Questions around spam: Can I email teachers that aren’t my customers? Isn’t that spam? And how do you get around spam?
CZ: You can absolutely send prospecting emails to educators that are not your customers or who you do not have an existing relationship as long as you follow the provisions of CAN-SPAM. All of MDR’s E-Marketing products are 100% CAN-SPAM compliant.

Q: My products are geared toward professional development. How can I make use of this information?
KB: Much of the information shared today, especially about direct mail and email best practices, apply to companies offering professional development products. Also, as far as the funding to purchase those products, there are many federal funding programs as well as state funding programs that specficially set aside funds for this purpose. In addition, based on research MDR has done, teachers invest $303 annually of their own money on professional development materials and programs.

Our expert lineup included:

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