Emails are incredibly powerful. The first thing we do in the morning is check our inboxes, waiting to hear from business partners, friends and services we trust. Daycare is one of them, and that’s what makes daycare email marketing a powerful tool.
No matter if you want to boost your enrollment or keep the existing customers happy, email marketing can improve the relationship with parents in your daycare. That’s why we’ve prepared customizable strategies to help you grow your daycare with no fuss – just some right information at the right time.
We’re also giving you a free daycare email marketing resource and checklist PDF to help you get started with daycare email marketing or improve your strategy.
Let’s dig in!
1) Spice up your update emails with CTAs
This is a good strategy if you’ve already using daycare email marketing and want to make it even better.
Update emails (regular newsletter) are great for keeping parents in the loop regarding changes and events in your daycare. However, update emails are the easiest type to just skim through and delete.
To keep the parents engaged, you can add a CTA (call to action) to emails you send out regularly. You’ve given them enough information with your email, but what should they do?
For example, if you’re informing parents of new changes, you can add a feedback link. It can be an optimized survey or an option to send a quick reply to email. Do parents have any questions? Replying to their email is a much better option than letting them worry.
If you’re using daycare email marketing for events, make sure your CTA is to have them RSVP to the event instead of just saying that there will be an event taking place.
Before asking them to RSVP, tell them what they are getting out of the event and why they should come. This way you are giving parents enough value to make a conscious decision to participate more in your daycare.
Regular update emails are a must for every daycare, especially if you have a lot of busy parents. It’s a way of keeping the conversation going, even if you can’t meet up with parents as often as necessary.
And it doesn’t even have to be time-consuming for you as the daycare owner. We’ve listed email marketing providers where you can set up a template and update it in 2 minutes in our daycare email marketing PDF.
2) Keep track of prospective parents
We’ve previously written about why having a house list boosts enrollment, and why you shouldn’t forget the parents who didn’t go through with enrollment.
Of course, giving a good daycare tour goes a long way, but there are many things that factor into the enrollment decision. A lot of parents keep an eye on daycare they are interested, and by using daycare email marketing, you can highlight why your daycare is the right one for their child.
The only thing you need for this strategy is interested parents’ email addresses and initiative. When parents call or email you about getting a tour of your daycare, make sure you got and saved their email.
Make a list of all those parents who have been interested, and follow up later on.
This is great for those parents who aren’t as warmed up to your daycare to appreciate a phone call. Email is unobtrusive, and it can provide a lot of valuable info for them to base their decision on.
You can offer them a special discount if they enroll their child at a specific moment or inform them about changes in your daycare that can make their lives easier.
For example, if you’ve started using Hopping In, you can tell them that they now have the ability to book extra time or drop the spots their child will be absent from (while earning a partial refund).
Hopping In is also great for potential parents who want to “try on” your daycare. They can book a vacant spot – whole day or half-day – without going through the full enrollment process. It’s risk-free for them, and they might just end up loving your daycare enough to enroll their child full-time.
However, this only works if they know about your program.
By keeping them updated through a targeted newsletter (more info in our daycare email marketing PDF), you can show the parents that your daycare is always improving.
3) Provide additional value with daycare email marketing
Now that you’ve kept current customers interested and showed new ones what your daycare has to offer, it’s time to start thinking about how to give them even more.
This largely depends on who your customers are.
If you have a lot of busy parents who want to be more active in their kids’ lives, you can help them do that. Weekly or monthly roundup newsletters work best (and for times of posting, consult our daycare email marketing PDF) because they give a lot of valuable information and allow parents to find the information they need.
On the other hand, if you have parents who want to connect, you can look into hosting events for parents only or starting a Facebook group where they can share information.
When thinking about providing additional value, don’t just think about your daycare center. In this case, you are a medium through which other useful information comes to parents, and that creates a good long-term relationship (as well as benefits for your daycare).
Choosing a daycare for their child is a matter of trust for parents, so show them that you are willing to go the extra mile and understand that it’s not easy for them.
If you are giving your customers more with your daycare, offering programs like Hopping In to help them get care they need when they need it (and refunds if they don’t need it), why not also show it with daycare email marketing?
How to Use Our Daycare Email Marketing Resource PDF
You can customize these strategies to fit your daycare, but we are sure that you can come up with even more.
To help you with optimizing your daycare email marketing, we’ve assembled a list of resources such as:
- email marketing providers
- email sending times for different occasions
- customer segmentation (making sure that the right emails are going to the right parents)
And many more to help you polish your daycare email marketing strategy without spending hours on research.
You can download Hopping In’s daycare email marketing PDF here
Author: Hopping In Blog
Sholom Strick is an expert on the business of running daycare centers and founder of Hopping In, a tool that helps childcare centers and family daycare providers fill unused spots.
To contact him or for media inquiries email s.strick@daycareteam.com
