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Five campaign ideas to sell training to past attendees

If you want to sell more training this year, the first thing you should focus on is your customer database. This will be more efficient than increasing your advertising budget to attract new business.

Rather than just spamming your customer with all upcoming courses, you have priceless data at your fingertips to create ultra targeted course suggestions. This tailored approach will be welcomed by your customers.

What data do you hold about your customers that could help tailor your marketing? It is likely you will have:

  • Demographic and profiling information – eg. their location and job title.
  • Past courses they attended, including their feedback to them.
  • Courses they showed interest in but did not purchase.
  • The organisation they work for and the training other staff have completed.

Below are five campaign ideas to sell more course by leveraging your customer data.

1. Target similar courses

Promote courses that are similar to what someone has already attended. These could be courses about the same topic but at a more advanced level, or a complementary topic. You can identify these complimentary courses by looking for patterns in your data. This is exactly what Amazon or Spotify do when recommending books and music to you.

2. Target leads who did not purchase

If you allow people to register their interest in an unscheduled course, did they actually attend it? Likewise, did the people who clicked on your email links and visited your website last month go on to register? All of these interactions are signs of intent that should be followed up with a campaign or phone call. Marketing automation can help scale this follow-up approach.

3. Target dormant customers

Target people who have attended your training in the past, but not in the last 12 months. This audience may be getting their training elsewhere, have moved to a new job, or simply not got around to doing any training recently. You could email them a handful of recommended courses and a one-off “we have not seen you in a while” discount. You should also consider sending them a survey to better understand their learning needs.

4. Target key times of the year

There may be times of the year when your customers are more receptive to your marketing. For example:

  • When does their financial year finish? They may have professional development budget that needs to be spent.
  • Are they members of a professional body? They may need to submit their verifiable continuing professional development by a certain date, but not have enough points or hours yet.
  • When are they most busy during the year? They may do their training in the low season – e.g. real estate agents in Winter.
  • Do they need to know about new legislation or rules? They may need to stay updated on changes, which are often rolled out by governments and regulators in predictable cycles.

5. Target the colleagues of past attendees

Send a campaign to past attendees asking them to recommend the course to a colleague or run it privately in-house. You can offer the past attendee a ‘finders fee’ incentive to help the process.

Ready to get started?

Arlo’s campaign management tools can help you deliver these campaign ideas and more. For more information, schedule a demonstration today.