Email sequences meet your target audience where they are and guide them through your sales funnel. They are personalized, consistent, and valuable.

A successful email sequence understands the prospect’s journey through their actions in the sales funnel and what they need in order to continue.

But, to understand email sequences and segmenting, it’s most important to understand your sales funnel.

Begin with your target audience. Out of all the district leaders, k-12 administrators, and supervisors, narrow this group into one person. Narrowing down your target audience to one person makes copy and content creation much easier.

Every sales funnel follows the same stages. Here’s a breakdown of each stage and how email segmenting fits into the funnel:

Awareness:  Your ideal customer found your website through a social media post, Google search, or advertisement

Interest:  The prospect liked what they read, so he or she entered their email into your newsletter or lead opt-in.

Desire:  The prospect receives a series of nurture emails that resonate with him or her. They want to make the purchase.

Action:  Because your nurture email sequence provided personal anecdotes, case studies, and testimonials, the prospect is ready to book a sales call with your team or buy outright.

Because this prospect handed over their email credentials, he or she revealed valuable information you can use to your advantage. Depending on what they entered their email for tells you what they’re looking for when it comes to your EdTech business. A nurture email sequence enables you to build more trust and credibility. Typically, the bigger the price tag, the longer the sequence.

If your target audience includes multiple groups of people, like superintendents, principals, and teachers, for example, it’s best to segment your website immediately or create multiple lead magnets to cater to each ideal customer.

Here’s a list of lead opt-ins that are successful in the EdTech space:

While it might seem overwhelming to create these types of lead magnets for the sake of segmenting, it’s entirely beneficial to your business. It helps you to know what your audience wants, and what they’re looking for when it comes to your offer. Ultimately, lead opt-ins drive more qualified traffic to your offer. Then the right email nurture sequence helps your EdTech business make more sales.

That’s because your lead opt-in segments your list based on the prospect’s action. Once they exchange their email, they’ll receive the free download and the email nurture sequence begins.

For lower cost products or services, a 5-day email sequence is best, but for district leaders who have the buying power for an entire school or district, they’ll need to be nurtured more with a 14 to even 21 day email sequence. Due to the high-ticket cost for district buyers and their bid restrictions, you’ll likely need leads to book a call with your sales team. But either way, the segmented list creates momentum in your sales funnel.

How to create an effective lead opt-in for educators

To craft a lead magnet that actually converts your target audience begins with understanding who they are.

Education is a complex industry that has more layers to it than your typical business to consumer. That’s because you cater your business to the buyers in education but they’re not your final end user. In many cases, district leaders sign off on an EdTech product or service after receiving proposals from principals or supervisors. But the principals and supervisors merely oversee products and services. It’s the teachers who end up learning your product to use within the classroom with the students.

This trickle-down effect means your marketing efforts in the education space need to be well-crafted and intentional. And that begins with knowing your audience well.

Follow social groups where school administrators participate to learn more about their pain points. Analyze how they ask questions and how their counterparts respond. This will make your lead magnet more effective in converting potential leads because it will speak to your target audience.

When you create a lead opt-in, remember to keep it simple, specific, and solution-based. Every lead opt-in needs to help your target audience solve a pain point, and it needs to overdeliver. This overdelivery builds trust and authority.

What does a strong email nurture sequence look like for educators?

A 5-day welcome sequence typically follows this outline:

• A Welcome Email

Send this email to your prospect along with their free download. This is an opportunity to showcase how you help educators so remember to reinforce this idea. Educators want to know how you’re going to help them, so identify their pain points and share how you help.

• Share relevant content

Remember those pain points? Send another email that outlines a common pain point for your audience and share a helpful blog that addresses and alleviates.

• Explain your company’s mission and values

This is a time to showcase your business’s vision and mission statement. Educators align with service-oriented values, and being in the EdTech space means you want to help your audience, so share your why-it definitely matters to them

• Provide social proof

The next email in the sequence needs to showcase social proof. Share case studies, unique anecdotes from administrators, or case studies that prove your effectiveness. 

• Call to action

This is the time to share your offer and what you want your target audience to do. 

The average clickthrough rate in education is 7.49% even though the average open rate is 25%. If you find your conversion rate is lower than this industry standard, try tweaking the copy a bit with different subject lines and preview texts to start. It’s always best to do A/B testing to see what’s working. If there’s still an issue, try out different social proofs or relevant content shares. With emails, it’s always a matter of testing and analyzing those results to see what works and what needs to change.

Need support for your email campaigns? First Step Advisors specializes in planning, executing, and refining K12 campaigns as part of our embedded marketing and sales enablement service. 

Contact us for a free consultation today!