The back-to-school (or back-to-college) season is back as schools and colleges around the western world hop into a new academic session come September As marketers, this season poses a big retail sale opportunity as demand for everything from books, stationery, new clothes, and everything in between spikes amongst the young ones. And if we’re talking about eCommerce stores, the stakes are high, since approximately 50% of shoppers in the United States plan to do their back-to-school shopping through online retailers. No matter your industry, this is the moment to power up your email marketing strategy with creative and revenue-driving back-to-school email campaigns. Here are some of our best tips to do so.
1. Create and promote back-to-school bundles
According to Amazon keyword and sales data, pre-built back-to-school kits are rising in popularity. Creating this kind of bundle can help you sell back-to-school essentials. Even if you’re not a school-supplies brand, create bundles that make sense for your own brand and tie them up with the back-to-school season through copy and design.
Bundles for today’s market
Now that nearly all US public schools offer full-time in-person learning, items like backpacks, thermos, or lunch boxes are back into the back-to-school essentials list. This brand takes advantage of the current scenario and offers customizable packs that include those items in different styles, enticing parents to buy not one, but multiple products at once from them.
Use bundles for your back-to-school sales
Blendjet pushes its best-seller as a perfect back-to-school buddy by pairing it up with ready-to-blend smoothie packs. It’s both a bundle and a sale. It may not be the most common back-to-school essential, but the brand finds a way to tie it up really nicely with the season.
For one-product-focus stores, this is a great example of how to push sales for that unique best-selling product!
Make browsing and shopping easy-breeze
Although parents are shopping every year more and more through online retailers for the back-to-school season, one thing that they may be missing is the personal experience of shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. Physical stores have the advantage of providing personalized help to parents in order to find exactly what they’re looking for. Do your best to make the browsing and shopping experience personalized and smooth through email campaigns and prevent parents or students from experiencing even more stress.
Create a back-to-school collection
Parents visit on average 2-3 stores when back-to-school shopping in order to find everything they need. Make sure they purchase everything they can from your own online store by creating a “Back-to-School Collection” to make it search-friendly and then promoting it through your email marketing.
Not only you’ll increase your chances of selling multiple products, but you’ll help time-pressed parents easily browse through your school essentials.
Create personalized and more specific back-to-school collections
Parents are probably looking for back-to-school essentials for more than one kid, so let them know you have everything for their little ones and the older ones too by promoting more specific back-to-school collections. You can create them based on grade, age range, gender, product type, price range, etc.
There’s a before and after the school day
Back-to-school does not only mean, back–to classes. It also means back to your pre-school and/or post-school routine. Therefore, pretty much any brand, no matter what it sells, can come up with back-to-school email campaigns to boost sales during the season.
Back-to-school routines
If you are familiar with YouTube, you’ll know videos of influencers sharing their makeup routine for school are a popular type of video, especially during this season. If you have a makeup brand, then this is a must-have back-to-school email campaign.
Curate your best sellers and promote them as back-to-school essentials!
Offer products in bulk
Anyone who goes to school, college, or work needs snacks to get through the day. What this brand does well is promoting buying snacks in bulk.
This is a great opportunity to also gather data from subscribers that buy from this type of campaign so you can send follow-up replenishment emails.
Get a good night’s sleep after school
As mentioned before, back to school comes with post-school routines. One of them, especially for parents with little kids is the sleep time routine.
Getting kids to bed can get difficult. This brand created a campaign based on that pain point and offers parents a way to get kids excited about going to sleep during a school night.
Don’t forget about parents/guardians
Yes, back to school is mostly a “buy your kids everything they need” type of event. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t target parents directly. Moreover, talking directly to parents can be a great differentiator and can allow you to grab the attention of your subscriber in a sea of kids-related content.
The age group with the highest average planned back-to-school expenditure in the United is the one that gathers consumers between 25 and 44 years old. So if your brand’s main audience is between that range, then these back-to-school email campaigns are essential.
Back-to-school sales are a must
Families are adjusting to a full in-person back-to-school season and new levels of inflation, which affect consumer spending. Around 52% of US shoppers say they only buy products that are on sale. So if you can run sales without affecting your margins, then definitely go for it!
“Stock up” and “buy in bulk” are great angles for back-to-school email campaigns that can go along perfectly with your sales.
Newsletters never fail
More than anything, shoppers are looking for value. Newsletters are a great way to continue to nurture your relationship with your audience by creating content that makes them feel your brand understands them and understands what they’re looking for during the back-to-school season.
Make it personal
If you want to use the “made by parents, for parents” angle (which can be really popular during this season), go for it, just make sure your copy is personal enough for people to actually create a bond with your brand. A letter from the founder or a personal story from a customer are great angles to exploit during the season.
The Why’s and the How’s
Provide solutions to back-to-school issues in your newsletters to bring value to your customers and give your own products a push in sales. Explain why to use your products and how to use them effectively.
Ready to power up your back-to-school email strategy?
