The back-to-school season is one of the busiest and most critical times for school marketers. Between the excitement, anticipation, and inevitable communication overload, setting the right tone from day one is critical. To do that you need a clear, multi-channel communications strategy that delivers timely, relevant, and engaging content to your entire school community.
In a recent Veracross webinar, Content Marketing Manager Ashley Santana joined forces with Aubrey Bursch, Founder and CEO of Easy School Marketing, to share practical strategies for building a communications plan that not only supports a smooth start to the year but helps cut through the digital noise. Drawing from their deep experience in school marketing and communications, they offered actionable insights, best practices, and real-world tips to help you stand out and stay connected.
Understand the importance of a plan
“Without a plan, communication really becomes noise,” shares Aubrey Bursch. She describes a common scenario: a new family joins the school, excited and slightly nervous, only to be met with a flood of disjointed emails: uniform orders, athletics announcements, extracurricular sign-ups, payment deadlines, corrections to previous messages. The result is confusion, chaos, and potentially, some doubt about their decision to enroll.
On the other hand, a well-structured communications plan making parents feel well-supported by building confidence, trust, and connection. It ensures that families receive the right information at the right time and sets the tone for a positive experience with your school. What’s not to love about that?
Begin with a communications audit
Before making any sort of strategic changes or plans, Ashley Santana recommends starting with a comprehensive audit of your school’s communication landscape. Take a moment to identify:
- Your target audience
- All the platforms or ways they can receive communications
- The individuals or departments responsible for the communications
This audit will not only show the many channels that communications can be shared from, but also the vast amount of people who can communicate with your community. It can also provide valuable documentation to support requests for additional resources or staffing to support the implementation of a strong communications plan.
Develop a content strategy
Aubrey introduced a helpful framework for developing a content strategy: the “two buckets” approach.
- Must-haves: These are operational communications such as health forms, drop-off instructions, and calendars. They should be clear, concise and easy to access.
- Mission-driven magic: This is your storytelling content. It includes blog posts, social media updates, classroom snapshots, and alumni features that showcase your school’s values and culture.
As you develop your strategy, it’s important to remember that each “bucket” serves a specific purpose. A content strategy will help you better organize and plan out content to ensure it reaches your audience and accomplishes its intended goal: inform or inspire.
Get organized with a master calendar
Without a complete picture of your school’s communications, your brand-new content strategy might start to feel like it’s falling short. One of the most effective tools shared during the webinar to combat this potential pitfall was a master communications calendar template. Ashley described how this simple Google Sheet allowed her to create a central hub to track all school communications for more efficient cross-departmental collaboration, less communications overlap, and overall consistency.
“It allowed me to create that one place for all communications,” she explained. The calendar includes details such as the department, platform, audience, and timing of each message. By adding links to each message as sent, the calendar can also serve as an archive for future reference.
Combat communication fatigue
With parents receiving an average of four school-related emails per day, communication fatigue is a real concern. To address this, Ashley and Aubrey recommend gathering data through surveys to understand the preferences of your community such as preferred communications channels, timing, and message formats.
They also emphasised the importance of a coordinated communication plan across departments. That’s where the master calendar can really come in handy. “When everyone sees the big picture, you avoid that dreaded pile-up,” Aubrey said, referring to the common issue of multiple departments sending messages simultaneously without coordination.
Lastly, utilizing portals to create a centralized hub for families is another great way to combat the communication fatigue we all face. By keeping all important information in one, easy to access location, you eliminate the need for multiple emails to share things like lunch menus, calendars, grades, and more. You can even publish emails created via Veracross composer as a news article to a specified portal, helping families digest important information without additional notifications.
Craft the right message
It’s important to remember that crafting a strategic communications plan is not a one size fits all approach. Different messages serve different goals, and the way you write, format, and share your messages should reflect that.
Consistency is also an important way to build trust and confidence with your community. When families, staff, and students know what to expect and when, communications feel purposeful, not overwhelming. For example, watch open and engagement rates soar when families know that your weekly newsletter is sent every Monday, letters from the Head of School are sent the first Friday of every month, and parents’ association emails are sent every Friday.
Embrace a multi-channel approach
Your school’s website and email communications will most likely always be the primary ways in which you engage with your community. Every email needs a clear purpose, and content should be organized with bullet points, bold headings, and clear subject lines. Your website is the #1 marketing tool in your arsenal for attracting perspective families. It should have cohesive branding and language throughout and really showcase what families can expect, your mission and values, and ultimately why your school is worth the cost.
Diversifying the ways in which you share messages is key when crafting a strategic communications plan. Embracing a multi-channel approach ensures every message is seen, understood, and retained. Keeping tips for your emails and website in mind, school should also consider utilizing:
- Portals as a central hub for forms, FAQs and schedules. Parent, student, and new family portals are some of the most popular portals Veracross customers are using.
- Social media to engage and inspire through storytelling. Content should remind families why they chose to send their child to your school and create FOMO (fear of missing out) for prospective families.
- SMS for urgent or time-sensitive updates. Great for event reminders and emergency alerts with a 98% open rate!
- A mobile app to create a custom experience for families with easy access to key information in the palm of their hand. Utilize push notifications to break through digital noise.
- Direct mail for certain strategic use cases like save the dates for a giving day or a personal postcard as part of your schools’ admissions process. Be sure to use QR codes if applicable to provide a seamless digital experience.
Preparing for long term success
Back-to-school communications is more than just logistics — it’s an opportunity to build trust, reinforce your school’s values, and create a sense of belonging. As Ashley put it, “That value-added storytelling content is really key. It makes people feel good — and that’s what you want when they’re engaging with your community.”
With the right tools, a thoughtful strategy, and a collaborative approach, school marketers can set the stage for a successful and connected school year that leaves their entire community satisfied.
