STAEDTLER Teachers’ Club
A decade of building an online community
International stationery brand, STAEDTLER, is best known for its black-and-yellow Noris pencils — in fact, you probably used one in school!
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So, in 2012 we were (very) excited when the iconic brand asked Equinox to help increase its share in the education sector. As part of the original brief, we needed to design an integrated comms model which would drive sales through STAEDTLER UK’s education channels.
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The result? STAEDTLER Teachers’ Club UK — a free digital platform providing primary school teachers with access to quality teaching resources, CPD materials, and classroom campaigns.
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From the beginning, our objectives were clear — grow the Club’s reach and engagement while driving new memberships and sustaining sales within the education market.
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And, nearly a decade later — with 24,000 registered members and thriving sales in the sector — this is exactly what we’ve achieved. But, how we do it?
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Our strategy:
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At the heart of our approach is continuous research — to ensure we have a strong, real-time understanding of the PESTLE factors impacting UK primary schools. This is measured against the Club’s annual SWOTs, which we identify through focus groups, surveys and two-way member engagement.
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Month on month, and year on year, these live findings are fed into our working plans — which use a Community Based Marketing model to inform everything from the channels we use, to the content we post and the audiences we target.
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CBM is cited as “the next big thing in marketing”, but it has formed our strategy for more than 10 years (just saying). For us, it’s about uniting teachers; making their lives easier; and positioning STAEDTLER as a brand which understands them.
Through this model, our strategy is designed to push primary school teachers through the ‘Three Tiers of TC’:
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Tier 1: TC Tribe — our community of social followers who may or may not be members.
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Tier 2: TC Members — who have exclusive access to campaigns/materials/perks and receive direct Club communication.
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Tier 3: TC Ambassadors — our most loyal members, who regularly partake in campaigns/participate in two-way engagement.
Example tactics:
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Content creation — working across Facebook, X, Instagram and the website, all Club content is created within four pillars: recruitment, classroom inspiration, product focus and Teacher Talk. Through these pillars, our content works hard to recruit new members, inspire teachers, and showcase STAEDTLER products in engaging ways. From January to August 2024, this approach saw us generate reach of 5 million — the highest organic reach the Club has ever generated during an eight-month period.
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General classroom resources — members have access to hundreds of BESA certified teaching-resources, spanning a wide-range of curriculum-linked subjects. The resource-bank is updated quarterly against research/member requests, with thousands of annual downloads.
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High impact classroom campaigns — attracting thousands of participants, our annual classroom competitions attract new members and enhance the Club’s credibility through high profile brand partnerships, e.g., Disney’s The Lion King and Art Attack. Last year, the Lion King competition generated a standalone reach of more than 1m and attracted 860 new members.
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Member perks — we positively reinforce TC membership by offering money-saving perks at relevant retailers every year, from WHSmith.co.uk to The Positive Teacher Company.
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CPD support — alongside various CPD resources, events like the ‘Teacher Talk’ conference have helped to solidify the Club’s position as a key resource for professional development. Generating more than 500 total attendees, the event saw us broker partnerships with Mr. P. ICT, Greg Jenner, Angellica Bell, Michael Underwood, Disney on Stage, and Shazia Mirza — aligning STAEDTLER with a diverse range of respected voices within the education space.
Following the same strategic and tactical approach, below is a summary of the results we’ve generated during 2024 to date. Watch this space for more exciting Teachers’ Club activity, coming later this year — and beyond.
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