The Parent Who's Already Gone [279]

Re-enrollment contracts are going out this month. Maybe yours already went out last week.

I want to talk about the families who won't sign.

Not the ones who are moving out of state. I'm talking about the family that toured your campus two years ago, fell in love with the art room, enrolled their daughter, showed up to every parent coffee for the first semester, and then quietly stopped showing up to everything.

They're still enrolled. For now. But they made their decision months ago. And nobody in your building knows it yet.

Here's what I've seen over and over again. Re-enrollment is treated as an administrative function. A form. A deadline. A signature line. The business office sends it out, admissions tracks the numbers, and everyone holds their breath.

But re-enrollment is not an administrative moment. It's a marketing moment. Maybe the most important one of your entire year.

You spend thousands of dollars attracting new families. You build landing pages. You run ads. You host open houses and shadow days. You nurture leads through a funnel you spent months building. And then, once they enroll, the marketing stops. The family gets handed off. The marketing team moves on to the next cycle.

Meanwhile, that enrolled family is forming opinions every single day. Every email from the school. Every interaction at pickup. Every time they see another school's social media post and think, "Huh, that looks interesting."

All of that is marketing. And none of it is being managed by the marketing team.

The families who leave don't usually leave angry. That's the part that gets missed. They leave quietly. They leave because the story your school told them during the tour stopped matching the story they were experiencing on a Tuesday afternoon in February.

So here's my challenge. Before those re-enrollment deadlines hit, sit down with your admissions team and ask one question: Which current families are we worried about?

If nobody has an answer, that's your answer.

Thanks,
Brendan

I didn't write School Marketing The Right Way for people who have time to read marketing books. I wrote it for people who don't.

That's why one reader said, "I read it in two days, and I hate reading." Another called it "THE book for School MarCom Professionals." A head of school said he wished it had existed when he was still leading a school.

Here's what it's not: theory. Jargon. A 300-page argument for why marketing matters. You already know it matters. You're living it.

Here's what it is: 188 pages of practical, actionable guidance built from 28 years of doing this work in schools. The strategies that actually move the needle on enrollment numbers. The mistakes I made so you don't have to. The frameworks that work whether you're a team of ten or a department of one.

Available in paperback, Kindle, hardcover, and audiobook.

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