As a yearbook coordinator, you already know that the best way to reach out to the parents at your school is by sending them a quick email. And this is also true for your yearbook marketing! But driving sales with email is a little different than sending out a minor classroom update. In fact, there are very specific ways you can optimize this particular tactic for maximum impact. To help you take the right steps towards success, I’ve developed a short guide below that outlines the best ways to use email within your yearbook marketing to drive sales this year.
Be Authentic
While being professional is important, the content you send out needs to be authentic to both your school and the yearbook sales you’re working to build. The best way to sabotage your campaign before it even starts is by creating a generic email that looks like it’s coming from a no-reply sender. Not only can this cause your email to get flagged as spam, but it’s a lot easier for parents to get a little delete-happy when they get too many emails from unknown senders – which can lead to your message never being seen in the first place. Use my list of authenticity tips below to avoid being missed:
- Use Your Name: Using your real name in the “sender” section makes your email look more personalized to parents. And that leads to more engagement: emails that use a real sender name are opened 30% more frequently by recipients.
- Use Your School: A great email subject is where you can entice parents to read what’s inside. And when you use your actual school name, you’ll see your emails being opened 24% more frequently, because parents know that your message has something to do with their child.
- Get Personal: To take your email campaign to the next level, you need to create a message that shows you care about each and every student getting their hands on their own yearbook. And don’t forget to use the tools within your email software to insert each parent’s first name at the beginning of your message. This can add a personal touch that works directly in your favor.
Show the Value
Within the content of your email, you want to make sure to show parents exactly how the yearbook adds value to their child’s school life. Talk about how you’ll commemorate all of the awesome experiences they had throughout the year, and how for years to come they’ll look back on this publication to remember some of their formative experiences. Share a few teaser pages on your school’s social channels and in email too. Remember to highlight the custom pages that can help every student add a little of their own personality to the book! The more you focus on how the publication can be beneficial for each student, the more successful your yearbook marketing campaign will be.
Drive Sales with Your Calls-to-Action
No matter what, you need to work a few calls-to-action into the content of your email. This doesn’t have to be anything fancy – in fact, my favorite (and most effective) call-to-action uses simple language to explain exactly how parents can take the next step. “Click here to secure your child’s yearbook now!” can be the perfect way to drive sales for your book this year.
Keep Your Yearbook Marketing Emails Simple
Finally, there’s one tip I like to give all yearbook coordinators as they’re building a yearbook marketing campaign: stay simple. Keep your content short and sweet; don’t repeat yourself. And always have someone else proofread your copy before you push the “send” button. This will help you ensure that your message is clear and concise, and that it’s easy for parents to understand how they can take the next step to place their order.
The goal of any yearbook marketing campaign is to drive sales. And since email is the best way to engage students and their parents, you want to make sure your campaign is optimized from start to finish. Following my top tips will do more than help you reach out to the parents at your school–it can help you easily show them how to get their child’s yearbook order in. And that can definitely drive the kind of marketing success you’re striving for!
