eLearning Launch: How to Set Yourself Up for Success

Are you looking to launch your first or next eLearning course?

Professional education companies help people in all industries renew their professional licenses and access training modules. Many professions and states require licensees to renew their credentials through exams periodically. Continuing education is also becoming increasingly popular for internal corporate learning initiatives and training.

Companies that sell eLearning courses or corporate training to help individuals maintain their status as accredited professionals can take advantage of increased marketing opportunities by implementing direct marketing techniques.

Direct mail marketing can reach a broader audience, increase sales and maintain healthy customer relationships with current students. For example, direct mail can be used to remind students of upcoming certification requirements and guide them through the specific courses of an eLearning project in advance of a launch. It can also be used to jumpstart and validate your eLearning ideas.

Postalytics is the best way for professional education companies to run a direct mail campaign to launch an eLearning project or eLearning course. With Postalytics, you can connect with people in the right place and send personalized messages at the right time.

The importance of a successful eLearning launch

The continuing education and training business is highly competitive. Differentiation and trust are very important when eLearning course providers within an industry may sell similar products. That’s why your marketing launch is key. If someone noticed your email ad but did not click through, a direct mail piece with dynamic content could help them convert. Studies suggest that consumers are more likely to trust messages they receive in the mail than those they see online. They also remember them better and are more responsive.

The chance of engagement is slim if your launch isn’t well thought out. Read on to learn how to maximize the chances of an eLearning course launch success.

How do you launch an eLearning platform?

It’s not enough to design an excellent eLearning program. You’ll need to decide how to market your business and get the word out to sell to potential students. The Internet is a crowded space for advertising, and it can be challenging to get noticed, so you will need a strategy. A multi-channel marketing campaign is an effective way to launch an eLearning platform, whether for a corporate initiative or a broader, industry-focused learning program. Running campaigns across multiple channels increases the chances of a successful launch.

Prepare key stakeholders

If you are launching an online learning program for your company, make sure everyone from your senior management to other employees understands the metrics and goals and how they can track their progress on the platform. Talk to managers about what they want their employees to get out of the eLearning program, and make sure they know how to use it. It would help to highlight the benefits of your course over traditional learning and show your clients how their employees and staff can directly benefit from your online learning program.

Generate interest

To reach more users with your eLearning platform, try offering a preview of your online course to create buzz. You probably already have a website or dedicated social media page for your business and product, so it’s essential to convince learners to visit those pages to get the word out.

Many people will not buy a product or online course the first time you present them with the learning opportunity. To combat this, give them a taste of what they can expect. Convince them that you have something worth purchasing. Remember that not everyone is open to eLearning, but if you can provide an experience that convinces them to take the course and buzz to generate their interest, you will succeed in making them your client. Offering a sample or sneak preview of your services so people can evaluate your product is a great way to generate interest.

Direct mail

Direct mail is a marketing strategy where a company sends a physical letter, flyer, package, brochure, postcard, etc., to their potential and/or existing customers. Direct mail campaigns are a great way to target the right audience for a launch. For example, for a product launch, this targeted approach can help companies find qualified buyers who are more likely to be interested in the product. In your case, professionals need to renew their credentials periodically. This means a better return on the initial investment.

You can also use direct mail for coupons, surveys, and introductory offers to promote your eLearning courses. All of these things increase both awareness and recognition of your brand and test purchases with minimal risk to your target market.

A direct mail campaign is a good option because you can measure it with QR codes and personalized URLs. Postalytics has made it easy to add these to your material. With this strategy, an eLearning service can add a coupon code to the mailing they design on the Postalytics platform and then measure how many people use that promo code. This can highlight ROI for the campaign and provide information for future product launches.

Social media

One effective way to promote your online course is to be omnipresent online. It’s already known that most people spend hours each day on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. So, promote your product on your blog and social media accounts using the analytics of each to reach the right audience.

Tell them about your web course, describe the benefits of online learning, and keep them interested by giving them a little taste of what to expect. Show them a sample lesson or, if you know your target audience well, give them a free web test to test their knowledge, prove their skills, engage them and give them an idea of how they can benefit from your courses.

Email marketing

An email sequence is a series of emails sent to your audience over a period of time. They are usually automated and serve different purposes, from introductory emails (first contact) to product release/update announcements (re-engagement). For example, you can use a cold call email or sales email to generate leads, while a follow-up email can nurture your leads with content.

If you have a relevant mailing list for your launch, you can use email marketing tools and a platform like HubSpot as part of a multi-channel campaign to launch your eLearning program and set up an automated email sequence for your potential learners. You are more likely to achieve high conversion rates by targeting specific audiences.

Marketers should not rely solely on email campaigns. In addition to email, you can also use any combination of letters, postcards, catalogs, flyers, and samples to create more compelling campaigns that appeal to a broader audience.

Direct mail and email marketing can work together to create a more comprehensive marketing campaign with higher ROI. Combining email marketing and direct mail allows your customers to experience your message differently. They may overlook an email or throw away a flyer, but they are likely to take notice and respond to your message if they have both. By staggering your email and direct mail marketing, you can also ensure that your customers are not inundated with either form of advertising. This can help them feel less spammy about your material and more likely to trust the product you are offering.

SEO

When writing blogs about your eLearning business, you need to research and find the right keywords for your eLearning business. Using these keywords in your material will improve search engine optimization (SEO), which means people searching for courses like the ones you offer will find your company more quickly on Google and critical search platforms. For example, if your online courses are related to real estate, you can use keywords like “real estate continuing education” and “real estate license renewal” to link to your classes and improve your SEO ranking. Think about the keywords people might search for when looking for the courses and resources you offer on your platform.

Reviews

Once you have created an eLearning course, the next step is to obtain reviews and testimonials. Some people may want to see these reviews or testimonials on your website or in marketing materials before signing up for a course.

If learners give you feedback, you can use it on your website or in marketing materials to share the eLearning experience. However, if they are still on the fence about whether or not to take your course, they will be more likely to choose it if they know the course has worked for others and understand the learning objective.

Pilot your eLearning system with direct mail before launching

Another approach you can take when launching an eLearning program for learners is to create a minimum viable course as a learning process. This is a trial version, an initial taste of what the course looks like. This is a pre-launch model where you create a low-cost course to prove that people are willing to pay for topics that interest them and gather feedback and testimonials from your students.

A pilot also helps you discover bugs and poor design in the eLearning software before they can affect the overall eLearning rollout. You then have the opportunity to make it more user-friendly if you need to.

You can efficiently distribute this offer using direct mail letters or postcards to a targeted mailing list. Using QR codes or personalized URLs on the material, you can link and track delivery and response metrics. The data is displayed on your Postalytics dashboard in real-time. By analyzing the data from your pilot, you can optimize your direct mail materials and adjust your mailing list segmentation to achieve a better response ratio when creating your launch campaign.

Follow up leads

If you want to convert your potential course participants into course subscribers, you need to provide them with value. You need to show them that your company is worth their time, and the best way to do that is to nurture them through a series of communications.

Try this onboarding sequence, which is ideal for launching an eLearning course. It’s a great way to introduce newcomers to your company and products, build relationships and foster long-term retention. It combines direct mail letters, postcards, and emails.

Offer user support

You may not be able to monitor requests 24/7, but make sure support is available when needed while learning after you have launched. It’s important to include contact information in the email or direct mail so learners can get help when they need guidance. This shows that you care about the learner and your brand values them.

Put yourself in the learner’s chair and have support available to answer their most likely questions. Helping the learner throughout their journey and responding to their questions with quality support is a great way to build a strong connection with your user and foster loyalty. This, in turn, can lead to engagement with your company and subsequent eLearning course purchases after your launch date.

Final thoughts

Direct mail marketing is an effective way to introduce new products to a broader targeted audience. Postalytics has developed an automated direct mail platform that is ideal for launching your eLearning course while supporting you from start to finish with your campaign. You don’t need to rely on external marketers, design practices, or freelancers to put together your launch campaign or worry about creating material.

Our easy-to-use tools empower you to create and manage the launch from your computer in a fraction of the time it would typically take. So no more worries about meeting hectic delivery dates or finding designers to help you over major holidays. You can do it all yourself while enjoying the real value offered by Postalytics.

Thanks to our quality pre-built postcard and letter templates based on instructional design, you can design, customize, personalize, print, sort and send your direct mail to potential learners online in just a few clicks. Our design team comprises marketing experts, so your direct mail material will be based on optimized template designs to get the best response while using your logos, colors, and images to remain on-brand.

Through integration with HubSpot, Mailchimp, and other CRM tools our platform integrates with; you can easily set up triggered drip campaigns. We offer you the best value for your money with benefits like lower postage costs and measurable launch campaign reports to support your marketing efforts for the courses you have created.

With Postalytics direct mail automation driving your eLearning launch, you have the best chance of setting your marketing team up for success.

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