Targeted Campaigns: What They Are & Why You Need Them
Choosing the best place to begin with attendance improvement initiatives can feel overwhelming. But with access to the right data, you can quickly spot trends and patterns that point to specific challenges that numerous students and families in your district may all share. This information can be used to craft a targeted, data-driven campaign that directly addresses specific attendance challenges. Our partners have seen great success implementing these types of campaigns: read on for the details and perhaps some inspiration to carry out your own in your district!
What are Targeted Campaigns?
Bringing families in as partners for better attendance requires not just attendance-focused communications, but a wide array of timely and helpful messages that keep the importance of attending every day top of mind. Implementing Targeted Campaigns can be an effective way to support families, improve enrollment, and build a vibrant learning community as you boost attendance.
Our partners have found that by leveraging the EveryDay Platform, which surfaces attendance dip days, patterns, and trends, it’s easy to uncover what’s driving absenteeism challenges. Armed with this knowledge, plus communication and family engagement best practices, we’ve worked with districts to deploy Targeted Campaigns to specific student populations, schools, or district-wide to get attendance rates moving in the right direction.
How Do They Work?
To launch an effective targeted campaign, be sure to incorporate the following steps:
- Review your current & historic attendance data and identify any attendance challenges
- Dig a little deeper to determine if there is a systemic barrier: this may include further data analysis, surveys, or informal interviews with students & families
- Take inventory of your current resources, including staff, time, and money, to determine how extensive your plan can be
- Develop & implement your campaign
- Reflect and measure your results, letting these results inform future campaigns.
Real Life Examples
Our partners in Tempe Elementary School District in Arizona and Alliance Charter Schools in California have found meaningful improvements in attendance after implementing their own unique Targeted Campaigns in partnership with our team.
Addressing Thanksgiving Break Attendance Dips in Tempe
In Fall 2023, equipped with data intelligence from the EveryDay Platform, the Tempe Elementary team was concerned to see high amounts of absences the days before and after their Thanksgiving break in the prior school year, and were determined to get different results this time around. In addition to sending their regularly scheduled bi-weekly text nudges, the EveryDay Labs team sent a text message to families the Friday before Thanksgiving break reminding them of the importance of attending the week before Thanksgiving, and a text on the first day of break wishing them a wonderful holiday and a reminding them of the first day back. Paired with working together on fun attendance incentives before and after break, the team was thrilled to see progress clearly displayed in their dashboard right after the holidays!
Attendance had improved:
- Over 6 percentage points the day before break
- Over 4 percentage points the day after break
Avoiding School Closure Confusion in Alliance College-Ready Public Schools
Our partners at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools in Los Angeles are a charter network operating within LAUSD, and have struggled with attendance dipping when the district is closed but their own classes are still in session.
This August, we worked with Alliance to send a text the day before the LAUSD closure day to families of students with absence rates between 5-95%, reminding them that school was still in session and providing a link to the Alliance school calendar. Meanwhile, school teams implemented their own attendance incentives, resulting in a nearly 1 percentage point increase in attendance compared to the prior year.
Are you curious about harnessing the power of Targeted Campaigns in your district? We can help!