When most organizations go live with Accredible, they’re laser-focused on designing and issuing digital certificates and badges to learners — as they should be.
But if you think about how many emails learners receive a day, sending a single email awarding a credential is likely not enough to catch their attention. Without sending a second or third follow-up, you risk missing out on revenue drivers like increased shares, brand awareness, and reenrollment.
And, unfortunately, many organizations do.
While 71% of issuers send an email to award a credential, only a third send a reminder to open and share it. Even fewer issuers report:
- Sending credential expiration warnings (23%)
- Course recommendations (19%)
- Incentives for future courses (17%)
That’s why Accredible launched Email Campaigns earlier this year — email trigger functionality designed specifically to overcome this problem, enabling customers to find new ways to keep their learners engaged without engineering or marketing help.
In this post, we highlight the Email Campaign use cases leaders at UiPath, George Washington University, and InsideTrack are taking advantage of. But first, a quick look at how Email Campaigns have improved our customers’ overall open and share rates.
Fast Facts: The Impact of Accredible Email Campaigns
Open rate takeaways
On average, issuers using Email Campaigns increase their credential open rate by 3.6 percentage points.
To put this in perspective, say you already issued 10,000 digital credentials at a 75% open rate.
With Email Campaigns, you could increase your open rate to 78.6% (or more). That means an additional 360 learners would open and engage with your credentials.
LinkedIn share rate takeaways
With Accredible’s One-Click Sharing, learners can easily share digital credentials as a LinkedIn post and add them to their LinkedIn “Licenses and Certifications” section. These forms of sharing showcase learners’ knowledge and achievements, make them more discoverable to hiring managers, and spread the word about an issuer’s badging program.
On average, issuers using Email Campaigns have:
- Increased their LinkedIn share rate by 2.84 percentage points.
- Increased LinkedIn profile add rate by 3.8 percentage points.
If you’ve issued 10,000 digital credentials and hit a 25% LinkedIn share rate and a 10% LinkedIn profile add rate, you could see an additional 284 LinkedIn shares and 284 LinkedIn profile adds with Email Campaigns.
One association that issued only 25% of its previous volume of credentials (due to program seasonality) maintained its LinkedIn share volume after enabling Email Campaigns. That means they saw the same volume of user engagement on only a quarter as many credentials.
The Impact of Email Campaigns on Three Top-Tier Issuers
Below, we share exactly how (and why) learning leaders are using Email Campaigns to engage learners and grow their programs.
UiPath
About
UiPath is a robotic process automation platform that helps enterprise organizations streamline highly manual, time-consuming, and error-prone business workflows. To recognize customers, partners, and employees who complete UiPath Academy training, the company uses Accredible to issue digital credentials.
Background
When Corina Dulcu, Learning Alliances Program Manager at UiPath, started her role last year, she first focused on improving credential open and share rates.
“It really stemmed from what I was seeing internally,” she explains. “A lot of my colleagues had received one of our credentials but hadn’t shared them.”
She considered sending a Slack message or emailing peers but knew that wouldn’t be an effective use of her time. And she wanted an engagement solution she could extend to UiPath’s training community as well.
Coincidentally, Accredible was rolling out Email Campaigns, and Corina jumped at the opportunity. She saw potential not just in encouraging views and shares but also in renewal reminders and additional course promotion.
Email Campaign Use Cases
So far, the UiPath team has set up email campaigns for:
- Credential View Reminder, which nudges new certificate holders who haven’t yet opened their credentials to do so (and then hopefully share it on social media).
- Credential Renewal Notice, which reminds certificate holders that their certifcation is about to expire, with a prompt to where to get re-certified.
- Suggested Course Marketing Email, which recommends new UiPath courses based on credential recipients’ career paths.
Results
Email Campaigns immediately prompted more credential views, but what was really impressive was how much they increased LinkedIn activity:
- LinkedIn profile add rate increased by 26.7%
- LinkedIn share rate increased by 19.7%
To Corina, this share rate demonstrates that people are proud of their certification and want to show it off to their peers.
“It’s a sign that our product is still good; people are interested in it. There’s demand for certifications. So we need to continue down this road — it’s a good road.”
The one suggested course email Corina created took off, immediately hitting a 52% open rate. In the future, she hopes to take Email Campaigns even further, pairing them with Accredible’s Pathways to target people more effectively.
“Email Campaigns will bring awareness to different incentives, cross-promote courses, and generally help users build out the ultimate UiPath training curriculum.”
Even better, Email Campaigns will give Corina and her team valuable insights. Of the people who took Course A and were suggested Course B, how many took it? Did they end up taking Course C instead? The answers to those questions will help Corina tailor Email Campaigns — and the courses offered in the UiPath training program — to known user needs.
The College of Professional Studies at George Washington University
About
The College of Professional Studies at George Washington University is a private, federally-chartered research university located in Washington, D.C. Its College of Professional Studies is an accelerator for transformation. It invites experts and students from across industries and backgrounds to come together — even if they don’t always come to the same conclusions — and offers numerous educational certificates issued through Accredible.
For them, Email Campaigns were an ideal way to nudge participants to download their certificates and share them on social media, increasing the University and college’s digital presence in the process.
Background
After the College went live with Accredible, its team saw a major marketing opportunity: by encouraging more certificate sharing on LinkedIn, they could attract more students and grow their community.
Thomas Mastro, Director of Strategic Initiatives & Planning at The College of Professional Studies, shares, “Because a large majority of our student population are working professionals, many of them are active on LinkedIn. Adding badges and certificates to their LinkedIn page is impactful in the sense that then their networks will see, and possibly engage in our programming.”
When Accredible launched Email Campaigns, Thomas and his team were all in. And not just because of the potential to increase LinkedIn sharing.
The College of Professional Studies would be introducing more continuing education programs within the next year, and they liked the idea of doing an email follow-up to folks who had already earned a credential, exposing them to new coursework — another avenue for increased and continued involvement with their programs and offerings.
Email Campaign Use Cases
First, the College experimented with:
- Credential View Reminder, which gets sent one week after the “Congratulations, here is your badge” email.
- LinkedIn Share Reminder, which gets sent one month later, reminding students to share their certificate on LinkedIn.
Results
Accredible’s email best practices were a big help in deploying the first round of email flows for Thomas and his team, helping them make sure everything they wanted to say to learners was included and on brand.
Before launch, they ran the emails past their Accredible customer success manager (CSM), which was an invaluable double-check. “She told us to specifically say, ‘Please share on LinkedIn,’ something we didn’t originally have in our copy,” Thomas notes.
Refining their campaigns paid off. Overall, Thomas and his team increased:
- Credential open rate by 43.1% (with 11.7% of opens attributed to Email Campaigns)
- LinkedIn profile add rate by an impressive 133%
- LinkedIn share rate by a whopping 580.6%
The huge success of these Email Campaigns is getting Thomas excited to expand their usage as the College releases new digital badges, using the data they’re currently collecting as a benchmark.
“Year two, we're excited to refine and advance where we're at with these different campaigns and see how it grows our digital presence as people share and download. We’ll also be paying attention to which points in the Email Campaigns trigger the most download and share rates and updating our flows accordingly.”
Thomas is interested in exploring other types of campaigns as well. For example, pinging students who get halfway through sharing their certification or sending an email prior to issuance to keep students warm.
“If I were to be a first-time customer again, pitching Email Campaigns from the beginning would’ve made the case for Accredible that much stronger.”
InsideTrack
About
InsideTrack is a leading provider of coaching services for higher education institutions, workforce partners, and employers. InsideTrack has several coaching certifications and microcredential programs to help professionals maximize their impact on the lives of students and employees and earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) that demonstrate their expertise. InsideTrack uses Accredible to issue digital badges and remind them to share their achievements on social media.
Background
For Megan Breiseth, AVP of Learning and Development, getting hiring managers to associate InsideTrack coaching certifications with the words “highly qualified” is her ultimate goal. The problem? Increasing the visibility of those credentials.
“We want to signal to the marketplace that our certification is something to be desired. And with the guidance of our Accredible CSM, we realized that Email Campaigns could help us grow our community and visibility.”
Email Campaign Use Cases
InsideTrack’s preliminary Email Campaigns were meant to amplify open and share rates:
- Credential View Reminder, which gets sent if a learner hasn’t opened their credential at the 7-day mark.
- LinkedIn Share Reminder, which gets sent if a learner hasn’t shared their credential at the 2-week mark.
Results
So, once InsideTrack went live with Accredible, Ben Smith, a Learning and Development Manager on Megan’s team, had some more bandwidth to look at expanding the use of the platform.
“I finally made Email Campaigns a priority, and it turns out it was very simple and immediately effective.”
InsideTrack’s Credential View Reminder increased its credential open rate by nearly 30%, and its LinkedIn Share Reminder produced even better results:
- A 36.3% increase in profile add rate
- A 46.4% increase in share rate
Ben emphasized, “The LinkedIn campaign really created a pop for us,” — a pop Megan sees as potential future revenue.
“A former or prospective learner may see a badge on LinkedIn and say to their boss, ‘Hey, did you know InsideTrack has a training program? I want to become a trainer.’ Ongoing expansion and renewal with current partners is a big part of our growth, and Accredible is playing a role in it.”
Are Email Campaigns the Next Step in Your Credential Journey?
Email Campaigns are quickly becoming the “go-to” mechanism for increasing open, share, and engagement rates at leading learning and development programs in Higher Ed, associations, and even software companies — and we’re still planning to roll out new features.
A new email editor, scheduling, optimized send times, and more base templates are coming out soon, and our customer success team is on standby, ready to help you make the most of your campaigns.
Speak with them about adding Email Campaigns to your plan or schedule a demo with one of our experts.
Want to see more examples of credential email campaigns that significantly improved learner engagement, program referrals, and revenue first?
Check out this 30-minute on-demand webinar.
