5 things your charity is getting wrong about marketing to schools
Who is this article for?
This blog post is written for charities marketing to schools, using real campaign data to explain what actually drives engagement, from campaign objective to targeting and design.
Charities have plenty of reasons to want to reach schools. You might be looking for schools to take part in a fundraising campaign, download a resource, support an awareness day, book a workshop or get involved with a wider programme.
The challenge is getting their attention.
Schools receive approaches from charities all the time, alongside everything else competing for attention in a busy inbox. Having a worthwhile cause doesn’t automatically mean someone will click through or sign their school up.
So, we went back through the campaigns delivered through Buzz Education and looked specifically at hundreds of charity campaigns with usable click-to-open data.
There were three findings I thought were particularly interesting.
Are charities asking schools to do too much, too soon?
This was probably the standout finding.
Charity campaigns focused on awareness averaged a 29.1% click-to-open rate, compared with 23.0% for campaigns focused on sign-ups. That’s around 26% higher average engagement for awareness campaigns.
There are some caveats. We had 21 awareness campaigns compared with 81 sign-up campaigns, and campaign objective clearly isn’t the only thing affecting performance. So this doesn’t mean charities should stop asking schools to sign up.
But it does raise a useful question:
“How much are you asking someone to do the first time they hear from you?”
Register for an event. Organise a fundraiser. Book a workshop. Get colleagues involved. Even when the cause is a good one, those things require time and commitment from somebody who’s probably already busy.
Sometimes a better first step might be to provide a useful resource, share some research, introduce the issue or show what another school has achieved.
We’ve seen something similar across our wider education campaign data, where non-sales campaigns generated 17% higher engagement than sales-led campaigns.
Sometimes the quickest route to the action isn’t to start by asking for the action.
Who in the school actually cares about your cause?
Targeting was interesting too.
Campaigns including Heads or Coordinators of Subject averaged 28.2% click-to-open engagement, while those including Heads of Year or Key Stage Leads averaged 26.1%. Campaigns including Deputy and Assistant Heads performed at a similar level.
We need to be careful with these figures because individual campaigns can target several job roles. They don’t tell us that one particular type of school employee will always be more likely to engage.
What they do reinforce is something we talk about a lot at Buzz: relevance matters.
If you’re a careers charity, the Head of Careers may be an obvious starting point. A literacy charity might want to reach English or literacy leads. A charity focused on pupil wellbeing may be more relevant to pastoral staff, SENCOs or particular members of SLT.
The Head Teacher may eventually be involved in the decision, but that doesn’t automatically make them the best person to receive your first email.
I’d start by asking two questions:
“Who has the authority to support this, and who is most likely to care about it?”
They won’t always be the same person.
Being able to make that distinction also depends on the quality of your data. Buzz’s education data allows campaigns to target specific school decision-makers and teaching roles rather than simply sending everything to the most senior person in the school.
Does good email design make a difference?
There was another noticeable difference in the data.
Charity campaigns recorded as designed by Buzz averaged 30.9% click-to-open engagement, compared with 24.1% for campaigns not designed by Buzz, a difference of around 28%.
Again, I wouldn’t claim that design alone caused that uplift. There are too many other factors involved in campaign performance to make that conclusion.
But presentation does matter.
Charities often have powerful stories, strong photography, interesting statistics and subjects people genuinely care about. The danger is trying to squeeze all of it into one email.
Good design isn’t about making something look pretty. It’s about helping someone understand the message quickly.
“What’s the issue? Why does it matter to my school? What do you want me to do next?”
If those things aren’t immediately obvious, there’s a good chance the message will get lost.
It’s something we focus on when creating email marketing campaigns to schools: design should make the message easier to understand and the next step easier to take.
Don’t assume your cause will do all the work
This is probably the biggest takeaway for me.
When you work for a charity, you know the cause inside out. You see the impact and understand exactly why the work matters.
The teacher receiving your email doesn’t have that context. They might think what you do is fantastic, but they’re also thinking about lessons, pupils, workload and everything else they need to do that day.
So, the same question we ask when writing any campaign to schools still applies:
“What’s in it for them?”
For a charity, that might be a useful classroom resource, an opportunity for pupils, support with something the school is already trying to achieve or simply making it incredibly easy to get involved.
Your cause gives you something powerful to talk about. Your marketing still needs to connect it to the priorities of the person receiving it.
If I were planning a charity campaign to schools, that’s where I’d start:
Find the people most likely to care, give them a reason to engage and don’t make the first ask bigger than it needs to be.
Our data suggests that’s a pretty good foundation.
FAQs
How should charities market to schools?+
Start by identifying the people within the school most closely connected to your cause. Make the benefit to pupils, staff or the school clear and consider whether you need to ask for a commitment immediately. Useful resources, research and practical support can help introduce your organisation before a stronger call to action.
What type of charity email campaigns work best with schools?+
In our analysis, charity awareness campaigns averaged 29.1% click-to-open engagement, compared with 23.0% for sign-up campaigns. That’s around 26% higher average engagement. It doesn’t prove awareness campaigns will always perform better, but it suggests charities should consider whether they’re asking schools to commit too early.
Who should charities contact in schools?+
It depends on your cause. Relevant contacts could include Subject Leaders, Heads of Year, SENCOs, careers staff, pastoral leaders, School Business Managers or members of SLT. The most senior person isn’t automatically the most relevant.
Does email design matter when charities market to schools?+
Our data found that charity campaigns designed by Buzz averaged 30.9% click-to-open engagement, compared with 24.1% for campaigns not designed by Buzz. We can’t say design caused the difference, but clear presentation can make the message and next step easier to understand.