I've been collating stats from our clients' email campaigns for just over a year now. This has produced some pretty useful information - and even a few surprises! This month however, I've unearthed a couple of stats that I think are really going to rock your world!

Hold onto your hats folks, my first graph is an absolute humdinger!

1) July gets the most opens, August the 2nd most clicks!

As I mentioned briefly, I’ve been collating stats for a year or so now, and this has allowed me to show you the open and click-through rates across a whole academic year. Incredibly, I can now reveal that July (when schools are supposedly winding down) actually produces the best open rates, while January yields an amazing average click-through rate of 13.52%. Even more shocking though, August (which spans the Summer Holidays of course) actually generates the second best click-through rate for our clients and a pretty solid open rate. Another myth smashed!

2) Open rates soar when sending to smaller lists!

We work with a huge range of clients; from education start-ups looking to connect with schools in their local area, right through to established businesses looking to recruit schools. With this in mind, I have looked at the size of our clients' sending lists and compared them with the average open and click-through rates in order to see if there's a correlation. The resulting graph shows conclusively that there is a direct relationship between the size of your marketing list and the open rate you can expect to achieve, even though click-through rates remain largely unaffected.

3) Segmenting by school type works!

Last month I published a graph which showed the open and click-through rates for different school types. However, it struck me that I hadn’t produced any figures for those campaigns targeting multiple school types, so I have remedied that this month. The graph below certainly suggests that sending targetted content to specific schools is a sure-fire way to improve engagement rates.

We end this month's edition with a summary of the most important education news stories that I think you may find useful as we approach the end of the school year.

The Change in ICT

Coding is something we know all about here at Sprint Education; and with a £1.3m investment in computer coding clubs, pupils in Welsh schools will be getting to know all about it too.

In England, ICT in schools is changing too. The old ICT course, which was the main way school students learned about computing, is being scrapped, with the last GCSE entrants taking the exam next year. The subject, which was described by critics as teaching little more than how to use Microsoft Office, is being replaced by the more rigorous Computer Science GCSE.

Education in the Summer Break

The Daily Telegraph has reported that parents looking to get their children into university have increasingly been turning to holiday tutors. Rather than a couple of extra hours a week over the summer holidays, there has been a growing number of companies offering holiday tutors who will travel abroad with affluent families for one or two weeks. Tutor House, a London based company, has gone one step further and now offers the opportunity to have a live-in style tutor that will stay with a family for the whole 6-10 weeks of the summer holidays!

I’ve mentioned in some of my previous blogs that the school holidays are a real opportunity for you to make waves with your marketing to schools (just see my graph at the top of this blog for more evidence of this). This story shows once again that the summer holidays are about far more than just the occasional school trip and 6-10 weeks of unbroken relaxation.

Talking Tough in School

A school in North West London, known for its no-nonsense approach, has been judged as outstanding in an Ofsted inspection. Michaela Community School (a free school) was given top marks in its first inspection since opening in 2014, with the report praising teachers' attitudes to teaching and behaviour management.

Such tough approaches to discipline and behaviour appear to be in decline across the UK, so it's fascinating to see a school bucking the trend and achieving incredible results. Something to think about, perhaps?

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Database of Schools Emailing Teachers How to Sell to Schools Marketing to Schools

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