Capturing the Attention of Busy School Leaders

Renaissance Collaborates with MDR to Build Continued Awareness Among School Leaders

School leaders regularly clock more than a standard, full-time workload every week. In fact, a recent study showed that on average, principals work nearly 60 hours a week. This makes them an especially challenging audience to reach for the thousands of education technology companies and other education vendors who are competing for principals’ attention.

Recognizing this challenge, Renaissance, a global leader providing assessment, reading, and math solutions for pre-K–12 schools and districts, wanted to build awareness of the company as a thought leader and trusted resource for educators and school leaders. In addition, Renaissance was looking for a way to spark engagement with education decision makers, including directors, principals, and teacher leaders.

Campaign Goals

Renaissance partnered with MDR to develop an award-winning campaign with high-value content to capture the attention of these extremely busy school leaders.

  • Position Renaissance as a champion for educators
  • Build brand awareness
  • Promote thought leadership and free resources for K-12 decision makers

Strategy

In collaboration with academic advisors and experts from Renaissance, MDR created a series of guest articles for the School Leaders Now and WeAreTeachers online communities that drove visitors to deeper content on the Renaissance website. The goal of the articles was to promote four free guides created by Renaissance on topics like, ways to motivate students, K-12 student reading habits, and an assessment guide for education leaders.

Results

The articles were promoted through branded email campaigns using MDR’s national educator database, garnering a 24% average open rate. The articles were also shared through social media campaigns to build third-party endorsement, capturing 1.25 million impressions and thousands of engagements. The campaign achieved more than 90,000 total page views and 500+ downloads of the free guides on the Renaissance website.

The guest article program helped Renaissance reach school leaders with relevant content, raise brand awareness through social media impressions, and drive traffic back to the Renaissance site.

“We appreciate the opportunity MDR provides to share our original research and data-fueled insights with their large audience of educators, so they can use the information to help accelerate learning for all students.”

– Linda Germain, Senior Director of Marketing Operations, Renaissance

Read the full case study here.