Reaching out to schools can be a huge boost for increasing attendee registrations, especially in CodeDay regions that are relatively new (and thus cannot rely too much on word-of-mouth). When thinking of schools, make sure to include both teachers and student organizations/clubs.
You should designate specific volunteers as school liaisons, with each volunteer being responsible for reaching out to a handful of schools. School liaisons should either:
For each school (or school region, if there are a lot of schools), you should also create a dedicated promotional code. For example, if you are sending flyers to Smith Public High, you should create a promotional code “SMITH” for 20% off. This will not only encourage students to register, but it will also help you keep track of where registrations are coming from.
You should NOT limit yourself to CS teachers only - although they can be a good starting point, CodeDay is meant for students from all backgrounds, so you should include teachers from different subject areas as well! When mailing flyers to teachers, you can typically use the school’s mailing address with “ATTN: [Teacher Name]” written above the address. Or, if you are emailing flyers to teachers, you can often find a directory of teachers on a school’s website. Try to directly contact teachers, instead of going through district officials or administrators.
Other people/organizations to consider reaching out to are:
You should contact all the organizations on your list to tell them a bit about CodeDay, and ask them about a partnership. For teachers, you can expect a 20% to 30% reply rate on emails. For schools and clubs, asking for promotion is likely enough, but for related organizations you can offer some sort of cross-promotion where we list them on our website, have them speak at the kickoff, and send out an email to our participants after the event.
To send promotional emails en masse, you can use a tool like YAMM to automate the process. (Ask your CodeDay contact if you'd like to expense a YAMM license.) This is useful because G Suite limits emails to 500 recipients if you are using the Gmail web interface. You can also customize the email per-recipient, which can be handy when distributing promo codes.
Here are some sample emails you can customize. (You can also attach our For Schools Flyer.)
Hi (name),
I’m helping to organize a coding event for students in (city); do you think any of your students might be interested?
The event, CodeDay, is a 24-hour event where students have the opportunity to make games or apps of their own design, while learning more about coding. It’s aimed at students who know a little bit about how to code, but aren’t yet excited enough to work on projects outside of class.
CodeDay is being held on (date). I found your name when searching for teachers whose students might benefit from something like this.
Do you think your students might be interested? I can send over some flyers! Thanks so much!
Hi (name),
I’m helping to organize an event for students interested in making games or apps in (city); do you think any of your students might be interested?
The event, CodeDay, is a 24-hour event where students have the opportunity to make games or apps of their own design. Obviously from the name, CodeDay is attended by coders, but we’ve found that students are often interested in making art, music, etc. for the games and apps. It’s a lot of fun.
CodeDay is being held on (date). I found your name when searching for teachers whose students might benefit from something like this.
Do you think your students might be interested? I can send over some flyers! Thanks so much!
Hi (name),
My name is (name), and I’m a member of a non-profit working hard to get college students excited about coding.
We run something called CodeDay: a 24-hour event where students have the opportunity to make games or apps of their own design, while learning more about coding. It’s aimed at students who know how to code, but aren’t very involved in the tech community, or working on projects of their own design.
We just announced that we’re running CodeDay on (date). I was looking for teachers whose students might benefit from this, and came across your name.
Would you be interested in promoting this to your students? I can send over some flyers :) Thanks so much!
Clear provides the ability to generate promotion codes for your event, which are extremely useful in figuring out which partners are actually promoting the event, and who you should follow up with.