March 3, 2025  |  Peter Long

Is K-12 Email Marketing Dead?

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Almost every week now MCH Strategic Data fields a call about how to solve declining ROI on K-12 email promotions. Frustrated and concerned K-12 marketers frequently ask us – is email marketing in the K-12 market dead? The quick answer is absolutely NOT! But we will be the first to admit it can be easy to draw that conclusion when you look at an ever increasingly difficult navigational landscape for email messages. Things like:

1. More aggressive IP blacklisting posture from Google, schools, and districts.
2. Much more difficult and time-consuming processes to repair damaged IP reputations.
3. New IP start-up processes now take months to initiate instead of days.
4. New technical best practice sending protocols from major ESPs.
5. Artificial Intelligence filtering of messages.
6. New proposed Gmail Shielded email addresses.
7. And more...

But time and time again MCH Strategic Data has been able to show concerned K-12 email marketers a path forward to positive ROI sometimes with amazing results. How is this possible? Well, there are a few keys to success. Here is a quick road map you should consider if you find you are struggling with your K-12 email response rates and ROI.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

MCH Strategic Data is a midwestern, Kansas City-based company with a 100-year history. Any Midwesterner movie-goer will tell you that “The Wizard of Oz” just never gets old. (For the younger generation reading this – click here for a short clip that should set the perfect background to our blog post.)

Time and time again, MCH finds that customers, prospects, and even competitors just choose to follow their own rules of how things should be done instead of following some standard email guidelines. In some cases, it’s an honest mistake, but too often it is a calculated misstep. Some may intentionally push the limits or even ignore best practices, and the entire organization ends up in “email jail”.

Instead of flying your broom against the wind with email marketing, remember Dorothy! The journey down the yellow brick road still requires plenty of work and adjustment along the way, but the path is clear. MCH works hard to try and keep you informed, and we are always willing to talk to you and review your sending processes and email design choices.

Over the last year, MCH has written many blog posts about all the things your team needs to know. The reality is that K-12 email marketing is still going strong - but it may not be as easy as it was just 10-15 years ago. Like so many things in life, the process has gotten more complex, and marketers need to spend a bit more time educating themselves on all the best practices. Here are some general guidelines to keep your feet on the yellow brick road:

1. Target your audience. Smaller groups more likely to be interested in your offering will reduce the risk of getting blacklisted.
2. Use clean email lists, including your customer and prospect records. Low bounce rates are critical in today’s email market.
3. Stay centered on engagement, not just sales or leads! Pure prospecting is much harder these days, and your readers need a reason to engage with you further. Engagement rates are every bit as important as open rates.
4. Provide value and information. Reduce word choices, images, and subject lines that will easily be filtered out by AI or spam software.
5. Throttle your sends carefully. District and school domains have been set up to find and stop digital threats. Lots of identical emails hitting a domain at once will frequently get blocked due to safety concerns.
6. Research the new standards on email sending identification and security information. Senders who are transparent and verified avoid a lot of potential scrutiny further downstream.
7. Send regular communications to keep your sending reputation up. Sending your email to a massive list once or twice a year does not sit well with receiving domains. Keeping a consistent, but not overbearing, sending process keeps your brand in front of people and creates a much more impactful relationship with your audience.

If you feel your efforts are struggling, then give MCH a call and let’s have a conversation. MCH doesn’t force any particular creative templates, but we do adhere to all the best sending and targeting practices. In next week’s post, we’ll share a real-life case study showcasing how MCH demonstrated to a major K-12 publisher that email marketing remains effective and valuable.

More Insight from MCH:

• Click here to read up on Navigating the Educational Email Marketing Landscape
• Read More about Google's Shielded Email
• Future Proof your K-12 Marketing plan with Programmatic Advertising

About MCH

For nearly a century, MCH has empowered educational marketers with the data, tools, and solutions needed to thrive. Our cutting-edge technology continuously updates and verifies millions of educator records, ensuring you have the most accurate information for your campaigns.

Use our free ListBuilder tool to explore our education data, or Contact Us to strategize as a team.