Hello, this is Aubrey from easyschoolmarketing.com, and I'm excited to be here today to talk with you about one of my favorite topics, how to engage your parents during the holiday season. Now oftentimes, we get to December and we're like, "Oh, winter break's coming. "Ah, let's just finish this stuff up and get there." And you know, we might send out a holiday card or something, but beyond that, we're kind of all burnt out. But this is a pivotal time to really engage our parents in the life of our mission and really get them that warm sense of, you know, connection as they head into the new year. So I'm gonna share some of my favorite tips for doing that.
Now this number one tip has to do with video, but not how you think. And we just tried it with our annual giving campaign with one of my clients, and it worked splendidly. So all you need is your phone, and you need a person such as the head of school or yourself or maybe some faculty and staff. And basically, you can send little mini snippets of video to your parents via text. So let's say the Smith family has volunteered and is just a wonderful family at the school. You would quickly get on there for 10 seconds, maybe, and say, "Wishing you, the Smith family, "such a wonderful holiday season.
"We hope you enjoy this time with family and friends. "We're so grateful that you're part of our wonderful," you know, "X name community." And this is really meaningful because you're giving, it's a personalized message, much more than if you were to send an email or even sometimes a handwritten card. This is key. And so it only takes 10 seconds. That's the beauty of it. Do it informally, anywhere around school, and send it off to the Smith family. Bonus if you could include one of the Smith children in there. But just keep it simple. I like to say B minus effort. A plus would be Smith family children in there and you're wishing the Smith family a happy holidays.
The B minus effort is produce, produce, produce, and you want to produce, you could produce, let's say, maybe it takes 10, 15 seconds per video, and let's say you need a breather in between, okay. You could get 10 videos done in 10 minutes. And let's say you had even a school of 600. You could knock these out with different people, all if you had like five different people going at the same time, in less than 30 minutes. And what an impact that would have for your families. So that is a tip I hope you will try this holiday season. And let me know, I can't wait to hear about it. Now another tip that I often say this is throughout the year you should be doing is to send personalized cards to your families with their child's photo on it. Why? Well, it's such an easy way and such a soft touch that you can really connect with parents.
Do it through the holiday season. Maybe their child is in a special performance or you see them doing a particular piece of, you know, a lesson or something. Capture it. There are many apps on your phone, TouchNote, Ink Cards, everything, and you can easily upload that photo and dee, send it off to the parent. And what a wonderful surprise they get in their mail. And as we all know, our email boxes are quite crowded nowadays, but the mail is not as much. So this will be a wonderful surprise for your family during the holiday season. Let's think of some other ways we might engage our parents this holiday season.
One of my favorites is, this is actually a time when people's work schedules tend to be a bit more flexible with all the activities. So I suggest if you are maybe having like that last week before winter break when everything is already crazy in the classrooms, maybe this is a time when you can have a child-parent activity in the classroom like baking or maybe they're going for a hike. Something simple that doesn't require one, the parent to do anything, number two, a high cost to the school, and number three is not like completely offline with mission. You wanted to make it easy for everyone involved. So if you have something like that, you could easily create a parent could come read in, you know, at school sometime.
You could create a SignUpGenius and send it, you know, a little online signup form, and send it out to parents and they could select the date and time they wanna come read in the classroom. Never go back and forth with dates. Make it was easy as possible for them. So you could do all these things. The parents could come in and sing, you know, holiday songs with the kids. It gets them in the classroom. Now a word of warning, these are busy Millennial parents. Their schedules are crazy. So one, you need to give them advance notice if you're going to do this. Number two, you should make it either at a drop-off or a pick-up time where most families are going to be so that it's not in the middle of the day when parents are at work. Make it easy so they could take an hour or two off work, go do this with their child, and take their child and leave.
That's the easiest way and plenty of advance notice, please. But something like that and maybe dabble a few opportunities here and there is very effective for warming hearts during the holiday season. Now let's think of some other ways. What else could you do around your school to make sure that parents feel engaged during this time of year? Let me see, some of my other favorites are have to do with emails. Now we all are bombarded with emails during the holiday season, especially for donations, but I like to create emails that highlight videos of what's going on in the school. I mean, this is a very festive season in a lot of schools. So are there musicals, plays, you know, singing things, holiday cheer? Any of those sort of things that you have going on, make sure you video them, make sure you send it out in an email, obviously post on social media, but you're sharing and connecting with the parents.
Added bonus is if you use video for faculty and staff to say, you know, "Happy holidays from the Math Department," or something like that and you're posting that on your social feed. That parents are really connected. I mean, think about it, the teachers are usually spending more time with their children than they are during the day. They're very connected to these teachers. And to have them wish them a happy holiday season means a whole lot to them. So that is a very effective way to warm hearts and engage your parents this holiday season. Let's see what else we have. I suggest that if you are doing something, maybe like an all-school assembly sorts, that's another opportunity that you can engage parents.
Or you can film it live. Now depending on what sort of restrictions you have with photography and live filming, you could do some Facebook Lives around that. You could do Facebook Live, you know, holiday wishes or have some of your faculty and staff sing silly songs. These are all wonderful ways, and I guarantee you're gonna get record engagement on them with your families.
Now this number one tip has to do with video, but not how you think. And we just tried it with our annual giving campaign with one of my clients, and it worked splendidly. So all you need is your phone, and you need a person such as the head of school or yourself or maybe some faculty and staff. And basically, you can send little mini snippets of video to your parents via text. So let's say the Smith family has volunteered and is just a wonderful family at the school. You would quickly get on there for 10 seconds, maybe, and say, "Wishing you, the Smith family, "such a wonderful holiday season.
How to Engage Private School Parents This Holiday Season ? Top 5 Tips
"We hope you enjoy this time with family and friends. "We're so grateful that you're part of our wonderful," you know, "X name community." And this is really meaningful because you're giving, it's a personalized message, much more than if you were to send an email or even sometimes a handwritten card. This is key. And so it only takes 10 seconds. That's the beauty of it. Do it informally, anywhere around school, and send it off to the Smith family. Bonus if you could include one of the Smith children in there. But just keep it simple. I like to say B minus effort. A plus would be Smith family children in there and you're wishing the Smith family a happy holidays.
The B minus effort is produce, produce, produce, and you want to produce, you could produce, let's say, maybe it takes 10, 15 seconds per video, and let's say you need a breather in between, okay. You could get 10 videos done in 10 minutes. And let's say you had even a school of 600. You could knock these out with different people, all if you had like five different people going at the same time, in less than 30 minutes. And what an impact that would have for your families. So that is a tip I hope you will try this holiday season. And let me know, I can't wait to hear about it. Now another tip that I often say this is throughout the year you should be doing is to send personalized cards to your families with their child's photo on it. Why? Well, it's such an easy way and such a soft touch that you can really connect with parents.
Do it through the holiday season. Maybe their child is in a special performance or you see them doing a particular piece of, you know, a lesson or something. Capture it. There are many apps on your phone, TouchNote, Ink Cards, everything, and you can easily upload that photo and dee, send it off to the parent. And what a wonderful surprise they get in their mail. And as we all know, our email boxes are quite crowded nowadays, but the mail is not as much. So this will be a wonderful surprise for your family during the holiday season. Let's think of some other ways we might engage our parents this holiday season.
One of my favorites is, this is actually a time when people's work schedules tend to be a bit more flexible with all the activities. So I suggest if you are maybe having like that last week before winter break when everything is already crazy in the classrooms, maybe this is a time when you can have a child-parent activity in the classroom like baking or maybe they're going for a hike. Something simple that doesn't require one, the parent to do anything, number two, a high cost to the school, and number three is not like completely offline with mission. You wanted to make it easy for everyone involved. So if you have something like that, you could easily create a parent could come read in, you know, at school sometime.
You could create a SignUpGenius and send it, you know, a little online signup form, and send it out to parents and they could select the date and time they wanna come read in the classroom. Never go back and forth with dates. Make it was easy as possible for them. So you could do all these things. The parents could come in and sing, you know, holiday songs with the kids. It gets them in the classroom. Now a word of warning, these are busy Millennial parents. Their schedules are crazy. So one, you need to give them advance notice if you're going to do this. Number two, you should make it either at a drop-off or a pick-up time where most families are going to be so that it's not in the middle of the day when parents are at work. Make it easy so they could take an hour or two off work, go do this with their child, and take their child and leave.
That's the easiest way and plenty of advance notice, please. But something like that and maybe dabble a few opportunities here and there is very effective for warming hearts during the holiday season. Now let's think of some other ways. What else could you do around your school to make sure that parents feel engaged during this time of year? Let me see, some of my other favorites are have to do with emails. Now we all are bombarded with emails during the holiday season, especially for donations, but I like to create emails that highlight videos of what's going on in the school. I mean, this is a very festive season in a lot of schools. So are there musicals, plays, you know, singing things, holiday cheer? Any of those sort of things that you have going on, make sure you video them, make sure you send it out in an email, obviously post on social media, but you're sharing and connecting with the parents.
Added bonus is if you use video for faculty and staff to say, you know, "Happy holidays from the Math Department," or something like that and you're posting that on your social feed. That parents are really connected. I mean, think about it, the teachers are usually spending more time with their children than they are during the day. They're very connected to these teachers. And to have them wish them a happy holiday season means a whole lot to them. So that is a very effective way to warm hearts and engage your parents this holiday season. Let's see what else we have. I suggest that if you are doing something, maybe like an all-school assembly sorts, that's another opportunity that you can engage parents.
Or you can film it live. Now depending on what sort of restrictions you have with photography and live filming, you could do some Facebook Lives around that. You could do Facebook Live, you know, holiday wishes or have some of your faculty and staff sing silly songs. These are all wonderful ways, and I guarantee you're gonna get record engagement on them with your families.
