What are schools doing in response to new government lock-down orders and how should suppliers respond?
This week an email arrived from a school kindly reporting that a member of staff had left, and supplying the email address of the new teacher.
It is something that happens all the time of course, but what made this email different was that the administrator writing to us, added, “This is not a good time to be emailing schools.”
One can understand this – the instruction to close schools in England had only just been issued after weeks of saying that this would not happen.
Schools responded at first through the traditional manner by attempting to bring in supply teachers, but in many parts of the country this quickly became unsustainable and hence new approaches have had to be considered.
So while it is true that schools that find themselves suddenly moving from the “children in the classroom” approach to “learning from home” may well be having a difficult time, others have established procedures and are responding to new reality in their own way.
As a result, some products and services that support learning from home are selling well, and advertising such products can be worth undertaking, as long as one doesn’t mind the occasional “this is not how schools are doing it” response from a teacher who feels that all schools are responding doing the same thing.
Discussions with parents also reveal an interesting variety of views, with some parents suggesting that while certain teachers are providing interesting and useful work that can be undertaken at home, others in the same school have not come to terms with the new world.
Although such surveys as we can do at this time are not of the normal representative standard, they do indicate a range of views, and suggest there is an extra value in experimenting with advertising at this time.
To help companies that are experimenting with new approaches to advertising at this time we are currently offering two extras for the duration of the pandemic.
First, for all companies already engaged in, or now starting our “4 email” or “6 email” programmes we will offer two additional emails free of charge, to allow for additional experimentation.
Second if you wish us to look at your proposed or past emails and offer ideas and re-writes, to help raise response rates at this time, we will do that free of charge.
Details of the 4 Email Service and the 6 Email Programme are on our website, or you can call 01604 880 927. If, because of changes in our office services at this time, we can’t take your call at once, just leave a message or an email address if that is easier. Also you can, as ever, email us at Stephen@schools.co.uk
Tony Attwood