The communications and marketing team is responsible for the school’s voice, branding, and marketing materials, including but not limited to the school’s website, social media presence, digital and print advertising, direct email, and public relations efforts, as well as the school’s major publications, such as the EMS Newsletter and Apple Tree Magazine. In addition, the team manages communitywide EMS outreach, partners with EMS offices on message clarity and delivery, and collaborates across departments to streamline and simplify systems to improve the experience of enrolled and enrolling families.
The highlights below provide an overview of the recent work that may be of greatest interest to the EMS community.
Expanding our Digital Marketing Territory
EMS’ marketing strategy incorporates a combination of digital and print advertising to leverage the unique benefits of each.
Digital marketing provides several advantages over print marketing: it can reach a wider audience, provide more accurate targeting, offer real-time analytics, and be more cost-effective. It also allows for greater personalization and interactivity, which can lead to higher engagement and conversions. This year, we are increasing our investment in digital marketing and expanding our territory to include LinkedIn and TikTok. We are currently producing assets for these additional platforms that feature the voices of students, alumni, faculty, and staff. On an ongoing basis, we work with Metric Marketing, a data-driven, digitally-focused agency specializing in private and independent school marketing, to review our success on all platforms and optimize our messaging (often limited to 30–90 characters) and placements.
Print marketing still serves us as it can be more tangible and memorable and convey a greater sense of trust and credibility. However, it is very difficult to measure its ROI. Print marketing placement is generally guided by region, readership, cost, and mission alignment, with further spending priority given to publications that reach an in-market audience (i.e., individuals who are actively researching and considering schools and, therefore, may be more likely to apply and enroll).
New Creative Campaign
Building on our strong digital work with Metric Marketing, we have engaged them in a refresh of our creative direction.
At the highest level, our objective is to drive leads to the admissions team for 2025–2026 through a creative campaign that highlights EMS’ marketable differentiators. Specifically, we want to engage right-fit families for key entry grades in the early learning division, lower school, and middle school — with an emphasis on middle-school grades.
The end result will be a cohesive set of strong visuals and messaging with a wow factor that can quickly grab the attention of prospective families and communicate just enough information about the school to inspire a click to learn more. From there, the prospective family member is guided through messaging on a customized landing page toward a simple call to action: to book a tour, connect with the admissions team, or begin an application. It is important to note that messaging is customized.
To inform EMS’ creative direction, Metric Marketing conducted interviews, roundtables, and brand and market research. With this foundation, they produced customer journeys, digital strategy, and campaign concepts from all they gleaned. With these assets as our base, we then identified a creative territory: “Itʼs not either/or. Itʼs both/and.ˮ
Our balanced approach cultivates students who are both successful and well-rounded because we believe you shouldnʼt have to choose either a rigorous education or a joyful childhood, an inspired journey, or a celebrated destination. We give you both — and so much more.
While the look and feel of the new creative campaign has been developed primarily for our digital marketing, we look forward to carrying the striking visuals and messaging into our print materials, such as our lookbook, and upcoming website refresh.
A Refreshed Website
While transitioning the EMS’ website to a new content management system, which will allow the school to have more immediate access to and control of the content, we are taking this opportunity to review the messaging and structure of our marketing funnel and site capabilities, including the display of large-format imagery and videos and ensuring mobile optimization. We also plan to recenter messaging and visuals around our new online creative direction and, throughout the development process, ensure alignment with our strategic plan, currently under development.
Telling EMS’ Story
The department collaborates with faculty and staff across the school to highlight the latest news and achievements of The Elisabeth Morrow School and its students, alumni, faculty, and staff through various channels and platforms.
We communicate daily with families through our social media accounts. Going a bit more in-depth, summaries in our digital newsletter (sent two times a year, fall and spring) link to articles on the website. Our most robust stories and features appear in our magazine, typically produced 1–2x annually.
Apple Tree Magazine
Released in October
By offering content that is of interest to multiple constituencies, our Apple Tree Magazine, along with our newsletter, serves as a tool of the retention of current families, the recruitment of prospective families, and engagement with alumni and donors.
Featured:
- Cracking the Code: The Science of Reading is transforming literacy
- Beyond Academics: Our Vision of the EMS Graduate is shaping the future, one student at a time
- Building Resilience in the Anxious Generation: How EMS continues to lead the way in child development
- Plus, social events, news from our alumni, celebrating the Class of 2024, and more.
Newsletter
We continue to see high engagement across our community, with an average open rate of 67%. Recent newsletter stories included: our impressive secondary school acceptances list, Little School’s Continental Math League, Morrow House’s Ethics Bowl, and the history of our Peter Lawrence Gymkhana (spring 2024), as well as our environmental science expansion, Chilton House’s Partnerships Series, Leadership Lab, and the history of Field Day (fall 2023). Our upcoming newsletter will be shared around winter break.
Social Media
Impressions increased across all platforms by 13.4% from November 2023 through October 2024. Of note, EMS saw impressive growth on Facebook with a 26.9% increase in organic impressions and a 265.1% in organic engagements largely driven by alumni engagement. These figures demonstrate the effectiveness of our social media strategy in reaching and engaging a wider audience. As our audience expands, so does our potential to connect with prospective families.
EMS in the Press
Some highlights of EMS news coverage from the past year include an ONNJ interview with Associate Head of School and Director of the Arts Amelia Gold (December 2023); social photos from our Book Fair & Storytelling Festival in Bergen Magazine (February); Northjersey.com and Patch preview of our summer program, Summer Explorations (February); highlights on our middle-school musical from News12, The Jewish Standard, New Jersey Stage, and Broadway World (April); a blurb on “Finding Messi,” the book written by Trevor Ostfeld ’21 in Bergen Magazine (May); Northjersey.com feature on Marie Dillard ’20 and the music program she started (June 2024); Bergen Magazine social photos from our 2024 Spring Benefit (July), and our Summer Coffee and Conversation Series in Broadway World (July).
Professional Development
This summer, EMS supported the continuing education of our associate director of content strategy and storytelling, Laura Adams Stiansen, who earned a certificate in Strategic Storytelling from Cornell. In April 2025, the communications team looks forward to attending the NJAIS Marketing and Communications Conference, which provides an annual opportunity to connect with peers and share best practices.
Did You Know?
Nearly all families, faculty, staff, and trustees read the Wednesday Envelope to stay abreast of the latest news and announcements at EMS. Typical open rates are around 90% of all recipients.
Results from our EMS family partnership survey showed great confidence in EMS, especially in the strength of our curricula (96% agreement) and the alignment of our academic programming across divisions (99% agreement).
Learn more about our vision and goals for the future of EMS
Important 2024–2025 State of the School topics include updates from Chilton House, Little School, and Morrow House, as well as Advancement, Auxiliary Programs, Enrollment, Facilities and Operations, Finances, and Community Life, Equity, and Belonging.
