What is the Best Email Marketing Campaign Strategy for Teachers?

If you want the best email marketing campaign strategies and tips for your teacher email list, you’ve come to the right place, friend. Email marketing campaigns may seem intimidating, but it’s time to bust through the overwhelm and craft the best email marketing campaign to sell your resources and so much more. Did you know that one email a week is more impactful for your teacher business than posting on every single social media channel every single day of the week?

Wanna know why? It’s the same reason you rarely see your friends’ posts but have no shortage of ads in your feed… the algorithm. I’m not saying social media can’t work in your favor but building an email list and selling your TPT products to your subscribers using an awesome email marketing campaign strategy is a powerful shortcut. It’s not only for more sales, but also for more community connection, visibility, future opportunities like creating and selling your own courses or membership. 

So where the heck do you start?! I’ll break your first email marketing campaign down step-by-step, but to get everything you need to create the best email marketing game plan for your teacher business, click here to download my guide: Email Marketing for CEO Teachers. Then, go heat up that coffee you forgot about, and let’s get started! 

Why Should You Spend Your Precious Time on Email Marketing Campaigns?

As a CEO Teacher®, you may be asking yourself, “Can’t I just sell my stuff on TPT and call it a day?” 

Of course, you could, but think of it this way — let’s say you made homemade soaps (patchouli-scented for me, please!). Would you rather sell your soaps in someone else’s boutique or have your very own? Email marketing is a little bit like having your own boutique, just a whole lot easier to manage. 

Because there’s only so much time in a day, am I right? As teachers, we know better than anyone that every minute matters. The demands of life, let alone running a classroom, building a business on the side, raising a family, oh you know, the list goes on! It’s a lot to handle, which is why you’re here — you want to use the time you have to make the biggest impact possible in both your business and the lives of your students. 

Email marketing is your new best friend because get this…

For every one dollar business owners spend on email marketing campaigns, the average return is forty-two dollars. And even if you’re investing time and energy instead of dollars, email is still said to be about 122% more effective than social media when it comes to making sales!

The average email open rate is around 20-30%, which might not seem like much, but the average reach you get on social media is closer to 3% of your audience. On Teachers Pay Teachers, your tools for marketing your resources are even more limited. 

Over 4 billion people around the world use email. That’s double the number of Facebook users. You’ve got endless potential to reach the people who need you most with your best email marketing campaigns!

How to Get Started with Creating the Best Email Marketing Campaigns – CEO Teacher® Style

I don’t just want you to make a few sales; I want you to build a community that trusts you, loves what you’re doing, and looks forward to hearing from you. So we’re gonna do things a little differently, teacher friend. Most teacher entrepreneurs get started with email marketing without knowing its true potential. Now that you know what’s possible, I’m going to encourage you (and give you a plan) to play the long game. 

Build relationships with your subscribers and prioritize connection and service — I swear to you, the sales will follow. In the end, you’ll sell more resources when you lead with love than just randomly sending out 20% off emails that have nothing to do with who you are or how your resources can help parents, teachers, and students. That, my friend, is not an email marketing campaign strategy built on connection or long-term success.

Here’s how to get started on the right foot and set yourself up for major success… 

STEP 1 ⇒ Email Tech Tools Simplified

First off, don’t panic. The tech to start a teacher email list is easy peasy. If you can download a PDF, you can start an email list. You don’t even need to have a website to start your email marketing campaigns, so don’t let a lack of an online presence stop you! Although you should know by now how important a website is too, but I digress.

Where things DO get tricky is when you realize just how many options you have. There are dozens of different email marketing systems ranging from totally free to hundreds of dollars a month. Some online gurus are giving wrong advice for the sake of “cheap,” and I want to give you the best platform to use to get started with your email marketing campaign ideas, period. 

My favorite is ConvertKit because it’s easy for teachers to get started with email the right way. It is super intuitive (meaning it won’t take you hours and hours to learn), and it allows you to use it to send emails and have landing pages in case you don’t have a website ready to go.

Convertkit has one of my favorite features of any email marketing campaign platform, and that’s a visual automation feature where we can create email funnels and see what they look like visually to ensure all systems are a go. I could go on and on about why I love and recommend ConvertKit for those getting starting to create email marketing campaigns, but I’ll let you see for yourself. You can sign up for a free trial right here.

STEP 2 ⇒ Start Building Your Email List 

Once you’ve got your email marketing system sorted, and if you signed up for my free guide, I’ll take you even further on understanding how this works; it’s time to start building your list. This is where you get to put on your teacher hat and get creative before creating your best email marketing campaign.

You know how to coerce kiddos into doing their homework (if you’re a homework kinda teacher), so you’ve got ALL the skills required to build an enticing lead magnet that people will get in exchange for signing up for your list (*cough* like the free guide waiting for you in your inbox!). 

Think of it like creating a teaching resource — the only difference is you need to create something that your ideal buyer would L-O-V-E to get for free. 

Let’s say you’re an English teacher for grades K-4 and your resources are for parents and teachers looking to teach phonics. Your lead magnet could be something like “A Free Guide to Phonics Simplified: 7 Myths That Make Learning to Read Harder Than It Has to Be.” 

Your lead magnet should be something directly related to your niche, and the title should be irresistible! I would love for you to hop into our Facebook community and share your ideas there. We love when teachers bounce ideas off of each other! It’s also a great place to go if you’re feeling stuck. Once you’ve created your lead magnet, it’s time to get to work using our CEO Teacher® email marketing campaign strategy.

STEP 3 ⇒ Create Your ‘Connection First’ Email Marketing Campaign Strategy 

As your email list grows, you might find yourself wondering what to send to all these people who want to hear from you (and buy your fantastic teaching resources!). 

That’s where your CEO Teachermail Strategy comes into play. This is a tried and true best email marketing campaign strategy I use in my business every day, and I’m sharing it with you here. If you’re a visual learner, you’ll definitely want to get your hands on this guide because I’ve got a map of the email marketing campaign example laid out for you. 

Here are the cliff notes: you offer your lead magnet everywhere (TPT, social media, your blog, any video you create, any podcast you create, etc.), and then your potential customers opt in to get this amazing lead magnet by giving you their email address. They are redirected to a Thank You page, and the email with their lead magnet is sent. After that email, you send them a few more emails. It all starts with connection, and then it leads into the sale.

And then you continue the beautiful email relationship you’re building….it’s lifelong! But don’t let that overwhelm you. I love to nerd out on these email marketing campaign strategies, so this is just the tip of the iceberg. We go deeper in my free CEO Teacher® Email Marketing Guide, and there is more where that came from!

More Best Email Marketing Campaign Practices You Need to Know About

How to Write Emails that Actually Get Opened

A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing

Signed, Sealed, & Delivered: Email Marketing Basics

Are you ready to get started on your email marketing journey? Don’t forget your handy-dandy Email Guide for CEO Teachers. Download it, print it out, and get ready to create the best email marketing campaign!