Table of Contents
The ratio of value emails to ask emails should be 3:1. Some EdTech companies have it backwards.
Educators receive more vendor email than almost any other professional audience. They have developed a fast, accurate filter for content that exists to serve the sender rather than the reader. Once your company lands in that category, getting out is hard.
The fix is not complicated. It requires discipline.
The rule that some companies violate
For every email that asks something of your audience -- register for this, take a demo, download that -- you should send at least three that ask nothing. Three emails that deliver something genuinely useful: a funding update that saves a curriculum director twenty minutes of research, a regulatory change they might have missed, a specific insight from a recent district conversation.
Companies that get this ratio wrong train their lists to stop opening. Companies that get it right earn the click when they eventually do make an ask.
Four things that actually improve open rates
- Drop the pleasantries. 'Hope this email finds you well' is a sentence every administrator has read ten thousand times. Start with the thing you want to say.
- Segment by role. A superintendent's email should read differently than a teacher's email. Same product, different frame. If your CRM does not support this, fix that before you run another campaign.
- Use preview text. It is a second subject line. Most companies leave it blank. Every blank preview text is a wasted opportunity.
- Test and act on results. Run A/B tests on subject lines. The companies that improve their email performance are the ones that test consistently and change their behavior based on what the data shows.
