Blog / Create a Yearly Plan for Marketing Outreach

Create a Yearly Plan for Marketing Outreach

Effective communication is the cornerstone of strong school communities!

By Frogtummy | Posted May 14, 2025

When it comes to increasing enrollment and strengthening community engagement, many schools ask the same question: How do we stay consistently visible without burning out our team? The answer lies in a well-planned communication calendar that aligns marketing efforts with the school year’s natural rhythm.

In our recent Frogtummy Working Group, we focused on exactly that: creating a yearly marketing outreach plan that distinguishes between potential families and current families, while maximizing communication impact throughout the year. Here’s what we learned.

Potential Families:
Shown interest but haven’t yet enrolled.

Current Families:
Children are already attending your school.

How to get families to read communications?

Keep it clean and simple
Less is more. Keep communication as short as possible while still getting the message across. Use a newsletter template with bold paragraph headers and highlight time sensitive information.
Use text messaging when necessary
Send information via text message when time sensitive or of high importance.
Check to see how communication looks
Send messages to yourself to check for accuracy and make sure they are easy to read. Most families read their email on a mobile device so check to see how messages look on mobile as well.
Keep messages short
Consider breaking messages up and sending separately to shorten the length of the message. Some schools send a bi-weekly newsletter.
Send newsletters as JPGs
When sending your newsletter via email & text, show the newsletter "inline" as a JPG (in addition to attaching as a PDF and viewing on a website). A JPG can be scanned quickly without opening a file or visiting a website.

How to make communication to families personal?

For potential families, hold in-person events throughout the year
Whenever possible, invite new families into your school. Ideas from schools include:
- School Tours
- Enrollment Interest Meetings - One school holds these monthly with two Directors and they have been well attended.
- New Family Events - This would include orientations, Accepted Family Welcome events, summer BBQs, etc.
For new families, check in and get feedback
Reach out to new families in the Spring and see how their students are doing. Follow-up by having them come in to record parent/student testimonials.
For current families, remember they still need nurturing
Current families should have an easy way to communicate with the school. Use two-way communication to help nurture relationships with current families.