Email campaign templates – targeted employers no relationship

Introduction

This resource is for employer engagement staff. It should be used to contact local businesses that might provide suitable industry placements to students. 

Senior managers in small businesses are often time poor. If you send one email introducing industry placements to a company, it is unlikely to be actioned, as more urgent priorities take precedence, and the email is eventually forgotten. 

By sending a sequence of emails over a four-to-eight-week period, you will remind businesses of your request to work together. This sequencing is more likely to generate positive responses. 

Use/adapt these email templates to contact local businesses in industries that are appropriate to the T Levels you offer. 

Once you send the first email, you should plan to send the subsequent emails at regular intervals of one week to two weeks.

Guidance

Whilst engaging employers that you have an existing relationship with is likely to be more fruitful in gaining commitment to industry placements, sending outbound ‘cold’ emails can still yield results – when done right. 

These emails have been designed to provide short, regular, communication to small businesses in your area. Here are some important things to consider when using the resource: 

Collate a mailing list:

Before contacting employers, you will need to collate a mailing list, so you can send emails in batches. Think about the types of business you need to engage and use yell.com or google maps to find suitable contact details. If you have budget it can pay to buy company data too as it will be segmented for you already. 

Using an email marketing platform?

You could send these emails to multiple people from your own email address, Bcc’ing in the email addresses in your mailing list. However, it’s important to know the pros and cons of using an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp or MailerLite to support you to do this. 

Your school or college may already be using an email marketing platform or have the same functionality through a CRM. If you are starting from scratch, email marketing platforms are usually free to use if you’re sending less than 1,000 emails a month.

1. Pros:

• Branding: If you want your emails to look more engaging, email marketing platforms often let you add a logo, images, and links – which could get you more engagement.
• Track opens: Many email marketing platforms also track opens and clicks of individuals that you email. This data isn’t entirely accurate (as the recipients need to ‘download pictures’ for the tracking code to work), however, being able to see if someone has read your email multiple times, may encourage you to pick up the phone and explain more.
• Opt-out support: If you are emailing organisations that have a ‘legitimate interest’ in knowing about industry placements you can do so. However, you do have to explain why you’re emailing and offer a way for recipients to opt-out of future emails. Email marketing platforms usually provide an opt-out or unsubscribe link as part of their package and suitable text that explains why the recipient is receiving this email.

2. Cons:

• Junk folder: If you are going to use an email marketing platform, it’s important that you calibrate it properly, so the emails appear to come from your school or college’s server. Otherwise, a lot of your emails could end up in people’s junk folder without anyone ever seeing them.

Supporting literature

One of the emails signposts people to a case study; another signposts them to a webinar or event. Before sending any of these emails, you should make sure you have a suitable case study and a webinar or event you can signpost toward.

If you don’t have your own case study, you could use a video from the published DfE case study resources.

If you don’t have the means to run a webinar or event, you could always encourage people to attend an event or skills show you will have a presence at and ask them to join you.

Each email should be adapted to fit your school or college’s particular circumstances.