We surveyed 54 EdTech and education suppliers to find out which channels are delivering, which are draining budgets, and what's making growth feel harder than it should.
54 suppliers completed the survey, spanning early-stage startups through to established players with thousands of school customers. It's one of the clearest pictures we've had of how the sector is actually approaching school sales and marketing.
The majority of respondents sell pedagogical or curriculum-facing products directly to schools. This is the most competitive part of the market, where teacher attention and budget sign-off sit furthest apart. A smaller group sell back-office and admin tools, where the buyer profile and sales cycle look quite different. Around one in five categorised themselves as "other", which reflects how many EdTech businesses straddle multiple categories or have evolved their offer over time.
In terms of scale, the sample skews towards the more established end. Over four in ten respondents have 3,000 or more school customers, meaning we're hearing from people who have already solved some of the early growth problems and are now working on harder questions around retention, expansion, and efficient acquisition at scale. Roughly a third are in the 101 to 500 customer range, navigating the tricky middle phase where scrappy founder-led selling needs to become something more repeatable.
Almost all respondents sell to both Primary and Secondary, with the majority also targeting MATs. Only a small number focus on a single phase or school type. Most are chasing the whole market, which means they're competing for the same attention from the same stretched school leaders.
More than half of respondents say selling to schools is getting harder or more expensive. The remaining 43% say it's about the same as it always has been. Not one supplier said it was becoming easier.
The reasons are not hard to identify. School budgets remain under sustained pressure, with senior leaders expected to do more with less and scrutinise every line of discretionary spend. Decision-making authority has become more diffuse, particularly in MATs where procurement may sit with a central team, a business manager, or a curriculum lead depending on the structure. And the sheer volume of supplier outreach has driven up the cost of attention. Schools are being contacted more, which means individual messages land less.
There is also a structural shift happening in how schools relate to EdTech vendors. The enthusiasm of the post-pandemic period, when schools were actively looking for digital solutions, has been replaced by something more cautious. Buyers have been burned by tools that promised transformation and underdelivered. Pilots stalled. Renewals didn't land. Trust is now a precondition for getting a conversation, and trust takes time to build at scale.
What this means practically is that the margin for error on marketing spend is shrinking. Channels that don't generate clearly attributable pipeline are increasingly hard to defend in budget reviews. And yet, as Section 3 shows, the channels that score highest are often the ones that build slow, patient trust rather than immediate conversion. That tension sits at the heart of EdTech marketing right now.
Respondents rated every channel they had used on a 1 to 5 scale, where 1 means poor return and 5 means excellent return. All 16 channels are ranked below, from highest to lowest average score.
The results are striking. The top-scoring channels are not the ones that attract the biggest spend or the most industry attention. Direct mail, LinkedIn outreach, small local events and digital ads all sit above a 2.8 average, while the large, high-profile events and the broadcast email channels cluster at the bottom. The market is voting with its experience, and the verdict is consistent: intimacy and relevance outperform scale and visibility.
It's also worth noting that average scores across all channels remain modest. The highest-rated channel in the survey, direct mail, averages just 3.2 out of 5. Nothing is working brilliantly. For most suppliers, the real question is not which channel will transform their growth. It's which channels are worth keeping and which should be cut.
| # | Channel | Effectiveness (out of 5) | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 📬 Direct Mail | 3.2 | |
| 2 | 🎓 MAT PLN Events | 3.0 | |
| 3 | 💼 LinkedIn Outreach | 3.0 | |
| 4 | 📲 Digital Ads (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn) | 3.0 | |
| 5 | 🏘️ Small Local Paid Events (SBM, LA, HT communities) | 2.9 | |
| 6 | 🔗 Paid Referral Campaign | 2.8 | |
| 7 | 🎯 Speed Networking: The Education Showroom | 2.6 | |
| 8 | 📅 Professionally Run Events (GovNet, Optimus etc.) | 2.3 | |
| 9 | 🤝 Speed Networking: Blue Cow Education | 2.2 | |
| 10 | 🎪 BETT Show | 1.9 | |
| 11 | 📋 Purchased Email Lists (Sprint Campus, EdCo Spirit) | 1.9 | |
| 12 | 🔊 Speed Networking: Nexus Education | 1.7 | |
| 13 | 📧 Paid Email Campaigns (Buzz, EdCo, Sprint Education) | 1.7 | |
| 14 | 🔍 Marketplace: EdTech Impact | 1.5 | |
| 15 | 🏛️ The Academies Show | 1.4 | |
| 16 | 🛒 Marketplace: BESA LendEd | 1.0 |
A few results deserve close attention. Direct mail topping the chart will raise eyebrows, but it makes sense when you consider how it's being used. A physical piece cuts through digital noise, signals investment, and arrives in the staffroom rather than a spam folder. It doesn't require a school to be actively browsing. It arrives regardless. The suppliers rating it highly are likely using it as a warm channel, following up events or reinforcing existing relationships, rather than cold door-drop volume.
The clustering of LinkedIn outreach, digital ads, and MAT PLN events at joint second reflects something important: channels that allow targeting by role, organisation type, or community membership consistently outperform broadcast approaches. The common thread is relevance. Reaching the right person in the right context, rather than reaching the largest possible number.
BETT's score of 1.9 is the result most likely to generate debate. It's not that suppliers aren't attending. Many still do. It's that the return isn't justifying the cost. A stand at BETT represents a significant chunk of an SME's annual marketing budget, and at 1.9 out of 5, that's a hard conversation to have in a budget review. The counter-argument, that BETT is a brand-building exercise rather than a lead generation one, has some validity. But it requires a long-term perspective that's increasingly hard to hold when growth targets are quarterly.
Both EdTech marketplaces sit at the bottom of the table. A 1.5 and 1.0 respectively suggests that passive directory listing, without active promotional spend or review generation, isn't generating meaningful inbound. These platforms may still have value for suppliers who invest in them properly. But for those who listed once and moved on, the data reflects what they already know: nothing happened.
Six conclusions emerge clearly from the data. Some will confirm what experienced practitioners already suspect. Others challenge widely held assumptions about where EdTech marketing budgets should go.
With the highest average score across all 16 channels, physical mail is outperforming almost every digital channel in this survey. The likely explanation: it's being used thoughtfully, not as a volume tactic. A well-produced, relevant piece of mail to a targeted school leader carries a different weight than a generic email blast. If you've written off direct mail as old-fashioned, the data suggests it's worth reconsidering, particularly for warming cold accounts or following up inbound interest.
SBM meetings, local authority gatherings, and headteacher community events score 2.9, comfortably above BETT (1.9) and The Academies Show (1.4). Smaller, more targeted gatherings where attendees are self-selected tend to generate better conversations and more actionable follow-ups than large trade shows where foot traffic is high but intent is thin. If you're allocating an events budget, the question isn't whether to attend BETT. It's whether the same spend on ten local community events would do more.
Both channels score 3.0, above average but still modest. The suppliers seeing results from LinkedIn are almost certainly using it to build consistent presence and authority over time, not to fire off connection requests and InMail sequences. Digital ads similarly reward audience targeting and creative quality and punish lazy execution. These channels work for suppliers willing to invest in them properly. They are not a shortcut to pipeline.
A score of 1.9 is a significant data point. Many suppliers still attend BETT for brand visibility, competitor intelligence, and sector presence, but the survey data suggests the direct commercial return is weak. For suppliers with limited marketing budgets, the opportunity cost of a BETT stand is considerable. The challenge is that BETT is also where competitors appear, making unilateral withdrawal feel risky. But the data suggests that staying without scrutinising the return may be the bigger risk.
Purchased email lists (1.9) and paid broadcast campaigns through third-party suppliers (1.7) both sit in the bottom half of the table. Schools are among the most over-messaged audiences in any sector, and cold generic outreach to school inboxes has been so heavily abused that recipients have learned to filter it out almost automatically. Volume is the enemy of relevance, and relevance is what schools now require before they engage.
Both EdTech Impact and BESA LendEd score at the very bottom, 1.5 and 1.0 respectively. A listing without reviews, case studies, an active response presence, and potentially paid promotion appears to deliver almost nothing. Marketplace presence may still provide social proof and discovery for suppliers who invest in it properly. But for suppliers who listed once and moved on, the data reflects what they already know: nothing happened. Passive presence in competitive directories rarely converts.
When we asked suppliers to describe their biggest frustration when marketing to schools, four themes came up repeatedly. They reflect structural challenges that no single channel or tactic can solve on its own.
Getting through to the actual decision maker rather than a gatekeeper, the wrong department, or someone without budget authority is the friction point that keeps appearing. In a MAT, procurement authority might sit with a central IT director, a curriculum lead, or a Chief Operating Officer depending on the category of spend. In a standalone school, the Headteacher may want sign-off even on small purchases. The decision chain is long, poorly signposted, and changes without notice. Suppliers report burning significant sales time on conversations that stall because they never reached the right person.
Teachers operate in an environment of relentless demands on their attention, and leaders are no different. Suppliers describe a pattern where a school leader expresses genuine interest, agrees to a trial, and then simply never finds the time to engage with it. The product doesn't get evaluated. The feedback never comes. The renewal conversation is awkward. Time poverty doesn't just slow sales cycles. It can collapse them entirely at any stage, including well into the onboarding process.
Every EdTech supplier is competing for the same limited attention from the same school leaders. The volume of outreach, email campaigns, LinkedIn messages, event invitations, cold calls, has reached a level where schools have developed strong filters. One respondent described a rule of 12: it takes more than twelve meaningful touchpoints before a cold contact will genuinely engage. The implication for suppliers is that single-channel, single-touchpoint campaigns are almost structurally unable to break through.
Several respondents flagged the difficulty of capturing the value of brand awareness within organisations that measure marketing on short-cycle attribution. A supplier who sends direct mail, attends a local event, and maintains a consistent LinkedIn presence may generate a sale twelve months later. But which activity gets the credit? Most attribution models either can't answer that question or actively mislead on it. This creates a bias towards short-cycle measurable tactics, even when the evidence suggests those tactics underperform over time.
What's notable about these frustrations is that they're largely independent of channel choice. The right-person problem doesn't disappear if you switch from email to events. The time-poverty problem affects how schools engage with direct mail just as much as digital content. These are structural features of the school market. They call for more patience, more persistence, and a longer planning horizon than many EdTech businesses currently operate with.
The open-text responses to this survey contain some of the most useful signal. Behind the averages and percentages are real practitioners who have tried these channels with real money and real consequences. A selection of unedited responses below.
Marketing has always been hard, that hasn't changed. Schools get bombarded with companies getting in touch, therefore it's about how you can cut through the noise. We go on the basis it will take an average of 12+ touch points before a contact will engage. Just because an event or campaign doesn't return a clear ROI doesn't mean it was a waste of time. It will be another touchpoint for many. It's important to be selective about which events to attend and knowing your ICP.
I avoid anything that doesn't involve authentic referrals and introductions. I don't spend on events with stands, speed pitching etc and find outbound marketing largely fruitless, costly and time consuming. Reaching decision makers through established relationships and asking for introductions is most helpful.
Teachers not having enough time to engage with content and explore new resources. Or even exploring and fully utilising the resources they have already invested in.
Schools that sign up for free trials but never even log in, despite our efforts to get them onboard.
Talking to the right person to reduce the sales cycle, and so many people turning up late to meetings and demos.
As always, they are difficult to get in front of when they are in the right frame of mind to buy.
The fact that it's easy for their attention to be diverted elsewhere as they have so much going on.
Several of these responses point to the same underlying issue from different angles. The school market rewards patience and relationship depth in ways that most commercial sales processes aren't designed to accommodate. The referral-and-introduction approach described in the second quote, which many suppliers treat as too slow or too hard to scale, may actually be the most efficient path to conversion when the alternative is 12+ touchpoints to warm a cold contact.
The free-trial activation problem in the fourth quote is particularly common and particularly costly. A school that signs up and never logs in represents wasted acquisition spend, a lost renewal opportunity, and often a negative word-of-mouth outcome. It's a growth problem that looks like a product problem, and it sits at the intersection of sales, onboarding, and customer success. A gap that many EdTech businesses haven't yet fully closed.