EDUCATION DATA / DATA ACCURACY
School Data Accuracy
We have a rigorous process for keeping our data up to date – it’s how we maintain our 99% postal address accuracy guarantee, 97% general email address accuracy guarantee and our 95% direct email address accuracy guarantee.
Why accuracy matters
To run successful education marketing campaigns, you need quality data you can trust. Up-to-date teacher email addresses, correct contact names, accurate school postal addresses and contact information, hard-bounces removed – it all matters.
The challenge is finding data that’s reliable and accurate.
Why education data changes so often
Schools are busy settings with lots of moving parts. Here are some of the many reasons why education data is continuously changing:
Staff movement
Like with all professions, teachers come and go. There are always newly-qualified teachers starting out in the profession and others leaving or retiring. Some may move within the same school to a different department, others may move to new schools altogether. This natural cycle of teacher turnover means education data and teacher email addresses are forever evolving, sometimes in line with the academic year e.g. teachers starting new positions in September, but at other points in the year too.
School adjustments
School-wide changes can impact education data e.g. when schools become an academy school or join a multi-academy trust. These organisational changes often impact teacher email addresses, for example a teacher’s email address may change from joebloggs@schoolname.com to joebloggs@schooltrust.com. We often find there’s a transition period between this switchover where the original email address will stay live until a certain date.
Role changes
Teachers’ job roles often change or expand to include other duties. In recent years due to staffing shortages, many teachers have taken on additional responsibilities or subjects, e.g. from English Teacher to English Teacher & Wellbeing Lead. What’s more, with continuously evolving priorities in education, new job roles pop up too. Teachers also regularly complete training as part of their continued professional development, taking on more responsibility and growing their skillset to include other subjects. As teachers’ roles change, school data needs to reflect this too.
With these changes happening in the background, it’s essential that you’re accessing fresh school email data for your campaigns, otherwise your marketing efforts may be wasted.
What “accurate” really means
As education data is constantly changing and refreshing, achieving 100% school data accuracy is pretty much impossible.
Now that’s not to say you can’t access trusted, quality and accurate data. Accurate school data is just data that’s updated regularly and comprehensively (e.g. where hard bounces are removed, email addresses are updated, unsubscribes are removed etc.) so it’s as fresh as it possibly can be when you’re using it and of course, GDPR-compliant.
How Buzz keeps data fresh
We’re continuously reviewing and verifying our school and contacts data.
We’ve got a dedicated data team
We invest over £300,000 and over 25,000 hours each each year into updating our education database to make sure it’s up-to-date and accurate.
Our team of 14 education data experts are continuously refreshing our school and teacher contact details to ensure our clients are always accessing accurate data.
We carry out comprehensive data reviews
- We remove hard bounces from our database
A hard bounce is where an email campaign fails to deliver, for example if an email address is no longer in use.
- We action auto-replies
We update or remove any email addresses where we receive auto-replies from schools, for example notifying us the teacher no longer works at the school.
- We complete thorough data refreshes
We carry out a full database refresh to update our core data including school postal addresses, telephone numbers, teacher email addresses and headteacher information.
We also check our supplementary data fields including the numbers of pupils on roll, the percentage of pupils on free school meals, the type and phase of school, and more.
We add any schools that have opened to our database, and remove any that have closed.
What education suppliers should realistically expect
Education data is constantly changing but as long as your database is updated regularly and thoroughly, your education marketing campaigns will deliver as scheduled. You need to create new mailing lists for every campaign you send to ensure you’re accessing the most accurate, real-time data available.
At Buzz Education, we supply live education data meaning the data we provide for education suppliers is always the latest most up-to-date data available. For clients accessing our email marketing service, we ensure all our campaign mailing lists are pulled directly from our live database too.
Smarter School Data.
Stronger Results.
Though school data accuracy can feel like a minefield to navigate, with the right expertise, you can continuously access education data that’s reliable, trusted and GDPR-compliant. To ensure you’re using the most up-to-date data for your education marketing, get in touch with our experts.
Our extensive database is trusted and used by thousands of education suppliers each year to generate qualified leads.
Education data accuracy FAQs
What does “school data accuracy” really mean?
School data accuracy refers to how reliable and up-to-date the information in your education database is. Accurate data includes correct school names, postal addresses, teacher contact details, and email addresses. While 100% accuracy is impossible due to constant changes in schools and staff, trusted education data is refreshed regularly to minimise errors and remove outdated or invalid contacts.
What checks do you carry out to keep your education data up-to-date?
We have a rigorous process for checking our education data. We regularly review and verify education contacts, remove hard bounces and outdated email addresses, carry out a full database refresh to ensure all postal addresses, phone numbers, teacher emails, and headteacher information is correct. And we also delete any unverified data.
Why does school data change so frequently?
Education data changes constantly because of staff movement, role changes, and school-wide adjustments. Teachers join or leave schools, take on new responsibilities, or change email addresses. Schools may become academies, join trusts, or open/close entirely. To run successful campaigns, suppliers need access to the most current data to avoid wasting resources on outdated contacts.
How accurate are school email lists in practice?
The accuracy of school email lists depends on how regularly the data is refreshed and verified. At Buzz Education, we guarantee:
• 99% postal address accuracy
• 97% general school email accuracy
• 95% direct teacher email accuracy
By pulling mailing lists directly from a live, continuously updated database, education suppliers can trust that their campaigns reach the right people.