Services Available

We have over 21,000 schools email addresses and over 31,000 schools postal addresses. All English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish state and independent schools are now included.

Email-shots
We can send an email on your behalf to 4,300+ uk secondary schools, 17,000+ primary schools, or both;
for £150, £200, £300 repectively +vat. By directing the email to Headteacher, Head of Maths, Literacy Co-ordinator, etc. we believe we can reach the school staff member you are most interested in.

Email-design/conversion
For a simple 'letter' type email design, with maybe a couple of pictures, we will convert/create the email from your Word doc or whatever, at no extra charge.
Complex graphical layouts with tables & forms etc., would cost up to £65 extra; unless you provide us with a prepared html file.

Examples of emails sent out by Schools Mailserver recently can be seen on the Missed One? section of our website.

Address Databases
If you prefer to send the emails yourself, we can provide over 21,000 uk schools email addresses on a 12 month licence for £950 +vat. The licence restricts you to 12 (monthly) email-shots in the year. Prices for primary only or secondary only email address licences are £650 and £450 respectively.
It must be said that a certain amount of IT expertise/assistance may be needed to email this number of schools successfully and regularly.

We can also supply over 31,000 uk schools postal addresses & Tel nos on a 24 month licence for £350 +vat. No usage restrictions

Databases are supplied as a CSV file suitable for import into Access, Excel, Word, Outlook, etc.
All necessary fields are supplied so that you can select schools by name, county, LEA, postcode, primary/secondary, state/independent, etc.

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Notes for Clients composing emails.

The most effective mail is

concise ... short & to the point
contains your clickable email & web addresses;
from a named sender rather than just company name;
contains some sort of 'special offer' for the school
minimises effort needed to respond by customers; i.e. "click here and email us your name & school address" is likely to get more response than a more complex system or a 'print, fill-in and post' form.
an image which attracts the eye also helps.

Emails can appear to be from 'Your Name' or 'Company Name' or 'Your Name - Company Name'. If you produce a simple letter-type email with maybe a couple of pictures, in e.g. Microsoft Word, we can mount the pictures on our web-server and create the html email for you at no extra charge.

A complex graphic layout costs extra unless you create it yourself. We can send any time; within 24hrs for urgent jobs. Normally a mailing of this size would go out overnight.

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Avoiding Spam Filters

Certain words and effects used in emails are likely to trigger some spam filters which some schools use. The best way to check is to send the email to yourself and see if your own filters notice it. The strongest effect on spam filters comes from mails which come from known anonymous spam-servers. If you/we send from our own email addresses, things should be OK.

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Notes for Designers creating html emails.

Emails must not be too large; embedded images or attachments are not permitted. Our usual outgoing email is about 12K.
Images should be linked from a web-server (not embedded in the mail); optimised for the web; and preferably containing ALT text.
We find that 'Styles' do not always survive their journey through Outlook or other mail-readers. I recommend using simple html, and TESTING.
Bear in mind that often schools will want to print the email and forward on paper to teachers. It can therefore desirable that the email prints out sensibly onto A4 sheets. Test by sending to yourself as an email and printing.
If you are sending a graphically complex html email; bear in mind that some schools convert it into a plain-text email which will probably look a mess.
The solution to this is to put a line at the top which says something like 'If this email does not display properly please click here' ... linked to a copy of the page on your webserver. See: samples for many examples of emails which do this.
Please supply finished creation as html source code attachment; (text).

See: samples for sample emails.

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Notes for clients intending to send bulk emails for the first time:

Your ISP is likely to impose a limit on how many emails you can send in one mail; ie. how many bcc addresses allowed in each email. If your limit is say 20, you will have to send one email for each set of twenty schools in the 21,000 school list. In order to avoid such problems use a bulk emailer program which will send emails directly (see GroupMail - Bulk & Group Email Marketing Softwarel).
Sending emails using Outlook: When sending bulk emails, the To: address should be an address that you own; eg. schools@mycompany.co.uk

The schools email addresses should go in the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) address field, seperated by semi colons. Doing it this way avoids sending everybody's email address to everybody else.The simplest way of achieving 2 above, is to import the email-address csv file into your Mail Reader software.
For example with Microsoft Outlook, create a new 'Address Book' called say 'schools'. Import the CSV data file into this new address book. When it comes to mapping in the fields, you only need to ensure that the 'email' field from the CSV file goes into the 'Email Address' field in the address book; it doesn't matter what happens to the other fields. In Outlook I use the 'Signatures' as the emails. Put your html email in the Signatures folder, and it can then be entered into a new mail with one click.
You also need to set up an email 'account' in Outlook set up with the correct From address, company, and Reply-address

Golden rule; test it ... by sending it to yourself 3 times.
Triple check it; You dont want to send 21,000 emails with errors in them.

To send mails: using Outlook
Create new mail in Outlook; add To: address, Subject line and 'Signature';
Click on Cc to open address book; select first 20, 50, or more addresses into Bcc field. It's possible to put in up to about 200 addresses in the Bcc field at a time, before your PC starts to groan.
Ensure mail is being sent from correct 'account'; Send.
Note that your ISP may limit the number of addresses you can include within one email.
Sending emails using bulk emailing software:
There are various software packages around to help with bulk emailing; for example : Group Mail.
Group Mail has a built in html editor for composing mails and helps manage your addresses.. You can import addresses into groups. The software will even clean up lists, removing dead email addresses.
You can try the free version:
at: GroupMail - Bulk & Group Email Marketing Software

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Advice on sending bulk emails yourself legitimately

Email addresses supplied by us are the administratrive addresses of the school as published on their websites or by their LEA. In order to comply with the EC Directive you should:

Clearly identify in the email the person or company who is sending it.
Include in the email a method by which the recipient can remove themselves from the list and from receiving further mails; via an email or website link.
Remove quickly any school from your list who requests it.
Acknowledge to the school that they have been removed.

If a school complains to your ISP about receiving unsolicited emails; if you have the remove mechanism specified above in place and you have removed all schools who have requested it, your ISP should be satisfied.

Settings

Before your email is sent we will ask you for decisions on the following email settings:

From: name; Who is the email From: ? ... Your name or company name or both?
e.g. 'John Smith' OR 'Xyz Ltd' OR 'John Smith - Xyz Ltd'
Subject: subject line
We recommend a subject line such as:
Please Forward to Head of History ... New Henry VIII Syllabus
This has the advantage of indicating which member of school staff the email is intended for, as well as the usual indication of the subject of the communication.
Reply-Address:
e.g. sales@xyzltd.co.uk
This email address is needed. Even if you dont instruct your reader to click on Reply, inevitably some will.

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Contact details for all UK schools & colleges

You may like to know that we maintain a website with contact details for all UK schools & colleges at: www.schoolswebdirectory.co.uk

You might find this useful when trying to contact schools who have responded to your emails.

Contact:
Paul Welbank

Tel: 01603 477619
Fax: 0870 7051136