3 Steps. to Ending Your School District s Communication Headaches CONSTANT CONTACT FOR SCHOOL DISTRICTS SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "3 Steps. to Ending Your School District s Communication Headaches CONSTANT CONTACT FOR SCHOOL DISTRICTS SCHOOL DISTRICTS"

Suzan Skinner
8 years ago
Views:

1 3 Steps to Ending Your School District s Communication Headaches 2015 Copyright Constant Contact, Inc. SCHOOL DISTRICTS

2 Be honest: how would you grade your school district on its ability to communicate effectively? If you re still relying on old school methods of communication, there s a good chance you have some room for improvement. From finding a reliable way to keep parents and your community informed, to creating a system that keeps things running smoothly throughout your different schools and departments there s a lot you need to consider. Luckily, there are steps you can take to improve communication. With these steps you ll be able to create a system that can help grow your school s community, increase parent involvement, and drive student success. 2

3 Step 1: Bring your communication online Sending notes home in backpacks and leaving memos in teacher s mailboxes used to be the best way to communicate with parents and staff members; but today, people are managing their lives in a whole new way. In an increasingly paperless world, people are relying on devices like smartphones and tablets to manage their daily responsibilities. As a result, they are used to having messages delivered in a way that is convenient on-the-go and that enables them to find the information they need at a moment s notice. If you haven t already, now is the time to embrace online communication tools. is a great example of this. With , you can easily manage a database of contacts and send out messages to keep all of your different audiences informed and up-to-date. You can send a monthly newsletter that keeps parents and community members connected with everything happening within your district. And can also send out timely messages like alerts or announcements in a moment s notice. can also improve internally and give staff members the information they need to be successful. In addition to , there are also online tools for: Events: Increase attendance and involvement at upcoming school events by promoting your event online. You can create an event homepage with important details about your event, and also give parents, students, and staff members the ability to register for your event online. Survey: Collect feedback from parents, teachers, and faculty with an online survey tool. Get new ideas to improve your school and make sure parents and staff members feel like their voice is being heard. Social: Grow your community online with social media. Social media is a great place to share updates with parents, and let them post their questions and comments online. 3

4 Step 2: Bring it together Once you ve identified the different tools your district needs to communicate effectively, you ll need a plan to bring it all together. For some districts, that will mean having one office responsible for all internal and external communications across your entire district. You may also want to give more control to your different schools, and let them send s to parents and teachers on their own. Either way, it s important to have a way to manage all of the different activities you have going on. One of the best ways to bring your district s communication together is with an all-in-one dashboard. At the district level, you ll be able to create and send messages out across your network, and also have the ability to track all of your different activities. If you have multiple people and offices involved in managing your internal and external communication, you ll be able to see which messages are being sent, from where, and how your different audiences are responding. In addition to seeing an overview of your different activities, you also have the ability to track the performance of your messages to see who is opening, clicking, and sharing the messages you sent out. This will help you determine which members of your audience are paying attention to your messages, and identify any roadblocks that are making it difficult to communicate with parents, staff members, or students. 4

5 Step 3: Get organized Even with the right tools to communicate with your audience, you still need to take steps to keep things organized. Consider the following steps: Choose software that allows you to manage the database in one central location. This will streamline your communications efforts and save resources in the process. Group your audience into separate lists so that you have the ability to send specific messages to each group. This allows you to send information to staff members, without worrying that you ll share sensitive details with your wider community. You can also send targeted messages for parents at different schools within your district. Build specific templates for each of your schools so that they can easily reach out their audience. This is especially important for any weather-related or time-sensitive messages you need to send out. With the right tools and strategy for reaching your audience, you ll be able to improve communication within your school district and eliminate the roadblocks that are holding you back. 5

6 The Right Choice for Schools Constant Contact makes it simple and fast for school districts to communicate. We have been revolutionizing the success formula for schools since Our all-in-one online marketing platform helps drive engagement with parents, staff, and your community; all with centralized and local controls to maintain consistencies. Only Constant Contact makes online marketing simple for school districts with affordable, easy-to-use tools, free award-winning support, do-itfor-me services and an extensive network of educators, consultants and technology partners. Your district s success depends on great communication. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION PROGRAM For more info, call our experts at or visit us at

Start Time: 1:00 pm Central. 10 Keys to Achieving your Goals with Email Marketing

Start Time: 1:00 pm Central. 10 Keys to Achieving your Goals with Email Marketing 2014 Start Time: 1:00 pm Central 10 Keys to Achieving your Goals with Email Marketing Becky Deitenbeck Co-Founder, Performance Tech Solutions Constant Contact. Authorized Local Expert www.performancetechsolutions.com