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14 ideas for edtech company incentives

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:32:50 +0000

How do you attract new customers, and keep existing ones coming back?

What is a customer incentive?

Everyone likes to have an incentive dangled in front of them, but you can’t just use any old “ethical bribe” — it needs to be appropriate.

I was once offered discounts on buying a suite of computers for my school if I persuaded my colleagues to take out an insurance policy!

This was both inappropriate and, let’s be honest, sleazy.

Apart from anything else, what would trying to persuade my colleagues to take out a new insurance policy have done for my reputation?

And where would it put me if they lost money as a result?

But even if the insurance policy was so good it would have sold itself, that incentive was inappropriate for one very simple reason.

The school was buying the computers, and therefore it should have been the school (or an organisation it sponsored) that benefitted from any incentives rather than individual members of staff.

Ready to grow your edtech business?

What kind of "ethical bribes" might you offer potential customers?

Partner incentives

Some companies have a system whereby when someone buys something, they are provided with a discount code to pass on to a friend.

In the context of edtech, this idea could be adapted in several ways.

For example, a school could pass the code on to another school with which they have a relationship.

Or, in a secondary school, a department making a purchase could pass the discount code to another head of department.

Subscriptions

Another idea, especially for companies who produce content like textbooks, manuals, or software is to have a subscription scheme.

If a school customer pays, say, £100 per year, every new item or upgrade is provided free of charge.

If each item costs, for instance, £20, it doesn’t take long for the subscription to pay for itself.

That’s the advantage from the school’s point of view. The advantage for the company is that it has a guaranteed income.

Training

If the product is complex or is upgraded, providing free training once a year to the whole staff can be a powerful incentive for some schools.

Training programme

As we know, companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft run certified teacher training programmes.

The great thing about them is that the credentials achieved have currency. That is to say, their “graduates” can use them to make themselves more attractive in the job market.

You may not be aware that some smaller companies run similar programmes, whereby some trainees achieve a basic skills level, and some go on to achieve a “master” level.

It can be very reassuring for a school to know that one of its teachers is able to train others in the intricacies of a product.

Is that an incentive your company might offer?

Free survey

Before the pandemic, wireless network companies tended to carry out free surveys of a school’s set-up, followed by a report on what they needed.

An alternative version of this idea took the form of free audit software by which a school could find out, for example, what software was installed on its stand-alone computers.

Loyalty programme

We’re all familiar with this concept: spend a certain amount of money and receive coupons giving you discounts on particular products.

User forums

Another kind of incentive is access to closed user forums or private Facebook groups, in which users can share ideas and resources, and find out how other users have solved some problems.

Faster support response times

Mailerlite, the mailing list service provider, operates a system whereby free users can obtain support by email, but paying users can get help immediately via live chat.

Access to beta programme

Access to beta versions of products, and the opportunity to test new ones or upgrades, can be an attractive proposition to some potential buyers.

Early access to new releases/upgrades

An extension of the preceding suggestion is being given the opportunity to buy new products and upgrades before they are on sale to the general public.

Amazon has a scheme for Prime customers whereby subscribers can “buy” some ebooks for free a month before they are officially published.

Discounts

This is a variation of other suggestions here: existing customers are offered discounts on future purchases.

Bonuses

Rather than offer a discount, consider offering a bonus.

Some sellers prefer this because offering a discount could be seen as lowering the perceived value of a product, whereas the term “bonus” tends not to have that sort of negative connotation.

For example, some sellers on the internet will advertise that if you buy this product within the next 3 days, you will also receive one or more free reports as a bonus.

Affiliate/referral program

This is a way of encouraging your customers to do some of your marketing for you.

It may be, for example, that you pay them 20% of the value of a purchase by a referred customer.

This sounds like a lot, but the idea is that you will still retain 80% of the value of a sale you might not otherwise have made.

Free maintenance

Finally, another incentive might be to offer a free maintenance visit or service visit once a year.

Perhaps this could be one of the benefits of being a subscriber if you decide to offer such a scheme.

Mix and match your incentives

As we have seen, some of these ideas overlap and can be mixed and matched.

Perhaps none of them in themselves would be enough to convince a person or school to buy your product.

However, if two companies are offering similar products, it could well be an incentive scheme that tips the balance in favour of one of them.

Want more exclusive education marketing advice?

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What should a customer newsletter contain?

Terry Freedman, Guest Author, ICT in Education — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 10:12:55 +0000

Once a school buys your product or service, an email newsletter is a great way of keeping them informed of new developments.

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On the topic of newsletters it would be remiss of us not to suggest you sign up to our super popular TAIT newsletter, sent to people like you who want to get better at marketing to schools

Cool? Back to it, then.

Who should subscribe to your newsletter?

The obvious answer is “customers”, who should be encouraged to subscribe to your newsletter when they make a purchase.

But don’t ignore future customers. If you introduce value into their lives for free then they’ll become more favourable to a sales conversation further down the line.

What’s the best email to get from a teacher?

It’s tempting in our industry to see their school email address as the holy grail, and that personal email addresses are mostly useless.

However, a named email address like fred.bloggs@gasworkslane.sch.uk means that if Fred Bloggs leaves the school your newsletter emails to him will be rejected.

We’d advise that a personal email, which will follow the teacher from job to job, is superior for newsletter sign ups.

Ultimately you can’t force the issue, but don’t worry too much if you end up with lots of Gmail and Outlook addresses – if they get value from your newsletter they’ll stick with you.

What are the attributes of a good newsletter?

Quick read

Never forget: people don’t read, they scan.

If your newsletter is going to be read by teachers, who are particularly time poor, making it “snackable” is probably a good idea.

If you wish to provide in-depth articles, use the newsletter to link to deeper articles on your own website (or others, you can’t be the expert on everything!).

Practical tips

Rather than simply a list of links to guides on your website, include a practical tip or two.

This could be something like a keyboard shortcut that will save people time.

Or it could be in the form of “Did you know that…”, suggesting an alternative way of using a feature, or highlighting a feature that people might not know about.

New developments

If you are bringing out a new version of your product, a sister product or are making some changes, tell people what they need to know, and most importantly if they need to do anything.

The best newsletters are about them, NOT you

By all means, announce new developments, but try to avoid sending out a newsletter that is only one big hard sell.

By and large teachers, like others, need convincing of the benefits of something before spending money, especially given constricted school budgets.

Try gentle persuasion instead.

Customer surveys

One good use for a newsletter is to find out through a survey what people like about your product, and what new features or products they would like to see.

It’s a nice way of helping your customers to feel important and involved.

Relevant research

Is there a way that customers could use your product effectively by applying the results of independent research?

For example, as described in 7 Insights from nudge theory, an experiment found that sending parents a postcard asking them to improve their kids’ attendance and punctuality had a positive effect.

That finding could, presumably, be applied in many different circumstances.

Telling your readers about it could prove useful to them even if it doesn’t directly involve your product.

Insider tips

Obviously, you can’t give away confidential information, or the contents of a new report before it’s been released.

However, if you’ve been involved in the discussions that have led to the report’s publication, you can be among the first to comment on it when it is published, and to suggest what its implications might be for the users of your product.

Good subject line

It’s good to experiment with different subject lines, especially if the software you use enables you to carry out A/B testing.

There is plenty of advice on subject lines on the web. Three of the most effective kinds I’ve discovered are an intriguing question, a summary of the main contents, and a list headline like “10 ways to improve…”.

Industry open rates

Finally, publishing a newsletter won’t do much good if nobody opens it.

A couple of useful measures are the percentage of people on your mailing list who open your newsletter (Open Rate), and the percentage of people who open the newsletter that clicks on a link. This is known as the CTR, or click-through rate.

What constitutes a good Open Rate and a good CTR will depend on the industry you’re in.

For education, according to Mailchimp, the averages in 2020 were just over 23% and just under 3% respectively.

Different email list providers give different figures, but they are all in the same ballpark.

Therefore, if your open and click-through rates are around 23% and 4% or higher, you’re probably doing something right!

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