Wow, it’s been over 2 weeks, and I still haven’t finished typing up all these notes. Here was another pretty good session I attended about creating courses. Now, I have never created a course in my life, but I’ve always thought about it because there are some topics that I feel I’m pretty knowledgeable in. I can see how courses can be A) fulfilling as I love teaching and helping people with what I know B) a profitable means of making passive income.
But why customer retention?
If people buy your course, you want to make sure they follow through until the end of your teachings because you want people to vouch for you. You want to make sure your students actually graduate because you want them to attain the value from your courses. If a bunch of your students dropped off, it would be hard to upsell them requesting them to buy another class or write a testimonial. Your brand will lose its credibility if your students don’t find your teachings useful. And of course, word of mouth of course is important. If your students do well and learn a lot, they will want to tell their friends about it. Therefore, you’d be missing out on even more sales if your students aren’t graduating from your classes.
Customer retention is HUGE for your courses!
Here are some tips that were mentioned on how to increase this factor and make sure more of your students graduate.
How to Increase Customer Retention with Your Courses
On average, only 3% of people who sign up for a course will graduate. Business models around this must be broken because they are lacking retention. And with this low percentage, brands get dumped when expectations are not met.
And if you’re only getting that 3% to graduate, that 3% is the only audience you can upsell to.
The cost to acquire a new client = 5x more than the cost of upselling to an existing client.
Your number 1 asset is your list and your clients.
So how do you improve graduation numbers? You have to create a wow experience. And to do that, you’ll need a few components:
Quizzes & Certification
Quizzes and certifications should let your users know they were doing in the past, where they are now, and where they need to be in the future. They should be able to consume this information within 5 minutes.
Reporting
You should always know where your customers are. You should be able to always measure client success, see where your clients are in their timelines, and how they are comprehending the course. With this information, you should be able to know where any friction is taking place, AKA where they might be struggling. Make sure you know where all your students are in the funnel, so you can push them to success and improve your course based on struggles customers may be experiencing.
Create Digital Badges and Call Users “Certified”
Badges should show:
- How many hours and exams students have completed.
- The new skillsets the users have gained.
- The type of information they can use in their resumes.
Why? Think about the “black belt” analogy. People wouldn’t be as inclined to work on attaining their black belt in karate if they knew it would take 5 years to accomplish. The other colored belts within their journey help students stay motivated.
I believe the speaker helped create courses for IBM. He told us that:
- 87% of IBM badge earners felt more engaged with IBM and were more motivated to learn.
- Badge earners achieved a 70% completion rate, and 50% of them were upsold to earn another IBM badge.
- Overall there was a 60% increase in downloads, and 29% of all clients graduated & got certified.
Add a Login
40% of people who log in will complete the course and earn a badge.
Add a “Module 1”
Out of those 40%, 60% will graduate if they complete a “module 1”. (And 67% of those people will graduate with a “Module 2”.)
Create Social Sharing Buttons
81% of users will share on LinkedIn, while 19% will share on Facebook
Conclusion?
Apparently a 5% increase in client retention could result in a whopping 75% increase in profits. Crazy, I know. These tactics can really help if you’re trying to build a course to teach people how to create passive income, to learn an instrument, or whatever you’re an authority figure in.
I hope that was helpful! Have any additional tips? Let me know in the comments below 🙂
