The WirED Marketer: Contrarian Takes FTW - 4/21/26

Hey hey, Marketing Pals!

Greetings from San Antonio, Texas! Where the riverwalk is bustling and the tacos are plentiful. We just wrapped our final 2026 EdWeek State of Teaching event, and while I didn’t plan to make this newsletter about it… the energy of it stuck with me.

Here are a few thoughts on my mind.

1. Teachers are navigating hard conversations… without training.
   One teacher shared: “We’ve never received PD on how to have a tough conversation with parents.”
   Opportunity: Messaging, tools, or PD that help educators handle high-stakes communication isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s needed. I recently took a crucial conversations training, and the learnings from it are now part of my everyday toolbox.
   
2. Principals are stretched thin.
   Imagine having 50+ staff, 800 students, plus community expectations. I wouldn’t survive one week.
   Implication: Anything that saves time, simplifies decisions, or reduces cognitive load will resonate.
   
3. Leadership is THE lever.
   A district leader said it best: “The best thing we can do is put a great principal in every school.” A good principal will help their teachers thrive. When teachers thrive, students do.
   Takeaway: If you’re marketing into districts, don’t overlook principals—they’re key influencers on what gets adopted (and what doesn’t).

Alright, now let’s dive in. Thanks, as always, for reading.

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Your WirED Marketer,

—Melissa, Senior Director, Marketing at Education Week

P.S. — 📩 Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ‎⠀⠀⠀⠀

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✨ In this edition you’ll find:

• The increasing demand for early childhood content
• A hot tip for optimizing your subject lines
• Marketing curriculum? Here’s a tracker on curriculum adoption cycles

What’s Trending ✨

Early Childhood Education, that’s what.
Admittedly, I’m all in on this one (mom of young kids over here). But it’s not just me. Our habitual readers have been devouring early childhood content. Need a quick refresher? Early Childhood Education (ECE) typically spans birth through age 8 (pre-K–2).

I’m hearing a clear shift and have been for a while now: district leaders are thinking about pre-K–12, not just K–12. Why? Because what happens early drives everything that follows.

There’s also a practical reality: dual-income households are now the norm. Childcare and early education aren’t “nice to have”—they are essential infrastructure.

What this means for marketers:
If you’re in (or adjacent to) ECE, staying current isn’t optional. It’s a moving, high-demand space with growing influence on district decision-making. Position your solutions around outcomes and workforce realities.

Here are the 3 stories our audience can’t stop reading right now:

• What One Researcher Saw Inside 29 Kindergarten Classrooms
• Toileting and Tying Shoes: Young Students Increasingly Lack Basic Skills
• Has the Practice of Redshirting Kindergartners Peaked?

Wondering what redshirting means? In early childhood education, “redshirting” refers to delaying a child’s entry into kindergarten by a year, even if they meet the age cutoff. It’s commonly debated though, as research is mixed on long-term benefits.

DO THIS: Optimize the heck out of your subject line data 👇

Create better subject lines using your data. Input a couple of months’ worth of your subject line data into your enterprise GenAI tool and ask it to look for trends. Do certain topics drive higher open rates? How about your tone of voice? What about character count? This is a great recommendation from Dan O. from Inbox Collective. More on that later.

When I did this, I found that you all like:

1. Contrarian takes
2. Relatability
3. Curiosity

I love this about you, my fellow WirED Marketer pals! I too love a contrarian take. Here are my top 3 unpopular opinions that nobody asked for:

1. Steak is gross. I’m the weirdo that goes to a steakhouse and orders the chicken dish.
2. I’ll take a PC over a Mac laptop any day, though you’ll have to pry my iPhone from my cold dead hands.
3. You can keep your Kindle. I’m not reading any book on a screen. Nope.

What are yours? Do tell. I’ll share the good ones in the next edition.

Poll: Would you join a WirED Marketer (in-person) meet up at ISTE-ASCD in June?

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If you are headed to ISTE+ASCD and you haven’t booked your hotel room yet, I’m told you’re going to want to do this. They go fast, and you don’t wanna be the colleague that stays 6 miles away at the crusty motel that resembles the one on Schitt’s Creek, would you?

What We’re Reading 📚

[Article, The Inbox Collective] How I’m Using AI With My Newsletter
You don’t have to write a newsletter to find this article on best practices incredibly helpful.

A few key takeaways:

• AI is so good at analyzing survey results. I used to always avoid open-ended questions because sifting through the survey results was such an onerous task. Those days are over. The efficiencies are wild.
• Repurposing your newsletter content for social. Dan Oshinsky calls this “The Thanksgiving Dinner Strategy.” It’s a brilliant analogy… but also now I want turkey, stuffing, and crappy and gelatinous Ocean Spray cranberry sauce (IYKYK).

[Tracker, EdWeek Market Brief members only] Curriculum Adoption Cycles: Which States Are Building Approved Lists?

Until just one week ago, there wasn’t a place you could go for all curriculum adoption, and although this is public information, it can be really tricky and time consuming to find. Enter our new Curriculum Adoption Tracker! For sales teams and R&D, this tracker might just be your new best friend!

Meet A Marketing Operations SME 👋

Deb Monkman, founder of Gremlin Marketing Labs and (full disclosure) a consultant here at EdWeek.

When she’s not unwrapping marketing chaos, she can usually be found babysitting kitties, exploring a museum, or at the beach with a good fantasy book.

What’s one mistake you see a lot of B2B or B2E marketers make when it comes to marketing operations? 
“One mistake I see all the time is not having the right people, processes, and platforms in place when implementing marketing tech. You need all 3 to succeed. Without processes, you risk inconsistency in usage and reporting. Without skilled people, the technology gets underutilized, and you end up paying for something you’re not fully using. Without the right technology, you’re stuck with manual processes that eat up valuable time and energy. Don’t just buy the shiny new tool. Clearly understand your pain points, upskill your team or hire the right talent, and put the right processes in place. People + Processes + Platforms = Success.”

What’s one best practice that that serves you well in the marketing space? 
“Take the time upfront to save time later. Automate what you can and create templates whenever possible. Templates drive consistency, especially when it comes to testing and reporting, and they add efficiency, so you can focus on what actually matters. When you skip proper setup, you risk inaccurate reporting, mistakes, and spending even more time fixing things later.”

What advice do you have for teams that are seeing decreased engagement via the email channel through their ESPs?
“Re-engagement campaigns should be part of your overall strategy. You can run standalone campaigns or set up an always-on slow drip where you send high-value content at a lower cadence. I’ve found the slow drip approach to be a great low-effort way to re-engage audiences. It’s easy to track and makes it simple to tie results directly back to your efforts.”

Say What?! 🦜

What we’ve heard at the watercooler, on social, out and about…

A district leader, on communication preferences with vendors:

“I work with them via email and face to face… I rarely talk on the phone with publishers and tend not to answer.”
— Anonymous survey response from a March 2026 EdWeek Research Center national survey.

✨ Sales friends: this is your gentle reminder to meet the customer where they are.

That’s all folks. Thanks for reading. See you again in 2 weeks.

Your WirED Marketer,
Melissa AND team, because every marketer knows, it takes a village.

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