Canada-based Safe Beginnings was going from strength to strength and they knew they needed a training management system to handle the influx of course registrations. What they didn’t expect was another 50% increase in bookings after they implemented Arlo.
Safe Beginnings First Aid is Canada’s leading provider of infant and toddler-focused safety courses. Established in 2016, two sisters realized a passion for child injury prevention and have now taught essential lifesaving skills to over 11,000 parents, caregivers and professionals. Co-founder Holly Choi comes from a background in training physicians on medical software, and following the birth of her first daughter she saw an opportunity to translate her mix of teaching experience and medical knowledge into first aid training to help other parents.
It turned out to be the right move – the business quickly exploded! The only downside to the exponential growth was that their current eCommerce solution wasn’t stacking up. Holly was spending many late nights manually processing registrations, managing inventory, and transferring students between courses. She knew she needed a course management system, but didn’t really know where to begin. After months of research, and over 30 different software trials, Holly found that Arlo was the ultimate solution for her training business.
“I actually went as far as making a spreadsheet with each of my business’ unique needs as a column, and tracking which software was able to do what. Ultimately, Arlo was the only solution that met all our needs.”
Some of those requirements included a seamless integration with their existing WordPress website, a smooth registration and payment process with for customers (using Stripe), the ability for non-techy staff to login and make changes to course registrations without “messing anything up”, and automated emails (reminders, course packages, venue information). One feature that Holly initially didn’t think she would use is the Arlo Tasks feature. Tasks provides the ability to set-up reminders to promote courses on social media and remind venues of bookings, and Holly now describes it as a “game changer” for her business.
While Holly was splitting her time between running her business, manual course administration and TMS research, her business success continued. So when she completed the implementation of Arlo in January 2020, she expected to free up some time – but she didn’t expect another leap in the growth of her business. She was pleasantly surprised to see an immediate 50% increase in sales, and record sales months for January and February.
“We had a 50% increase (!!) in our sales following the implementation of Arlo. I personally believe that being able to integrate Arlo into our website, and making our courses so easy to sort through by type and location made the customer experience a lot smoother and easier to navigate. We knew that making the transaction easy would result in more checkouts, and Arlo has done that for us.”
Holly Choi – Co-founder
But, when COVID-19 hit, the business took a drastic turn. Holly had to cancel all face-to-face courses and quickly shift to an online delivery method. Thankfully they had Arlo, and within a week of the pandemic being declared they were offering regular live webinars via Zoom. Holly says it was “so easy” to switch their existing face-to-face courses to online using Arlo.
“Having Arlo was amazing. We were able to pull students from the Arlo registration database directly into the newly scheduled courses as they emailed or phoned us to rebook, and it was so painless and easy.”
In the four months since COVID hit, Safe Beginnings has run nearly 40 live webinars and have expanded their business globally – with the online learning option drawing registrations from the USA and Europe. The online option has received positive feedback from students, and Holly says they’ll continue offering webinars well into the future.
With a growing number of North American training providers, like Holly, using Arlo to power their businesses it made perfect sense for us to open an office in Canada, enabling us to provide a better service for those clients. Read more…
