Tech giants like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Google have long cracked the code: customer education and certification programs drive 10% to 16% increases in key performance metrics across the customer journey — from acquisition to renewal.
However, with 85 million unfilled jobs projected by 2025 and 92% of learners actively seeking more courses, there's an even bigger opportunity ahead for technology and software companies to scale their certification programs.
The catch? With near-endless learning options available, you must deliver what learners want.
That's why we've compiled this playbook of five proven strategies to enhance your product certification program — backed by insights from this year's State of Credentialing Report and real examples from industry leaders like UiPath, Darwinbox, Snowflake, and Maven Analytics. Whether you're looking to upskill employees, maximize product usage, promote your brand, or generate new revenue streams, these tactics will help you build a certification program that drives measurable results.
Surveying over 1,000 learners, we found that 96% of learners who earned a digital credential consider it valuable for their career, and 78% believe it increases their chances of getting a job offer.
But it’s not just any credential these learners want. When we dug deeper into learner preferences, we found they value credentials that prove they have a specific skill set — one that helps them advance in their careers and land exciting job opportunities.
While they didn't have an instant preference for digital credentials, they wanted everything that only digital credentials can provide, such as:
These stats indicate that training leaders should invest time and effort into educating potential learners on the value of their credentials and showing earners the new professional doors their credentials open.
As IBM's Digital Badge program founder and Digital Badge Academy co-founder, David Leaser, points out, “Anybody looking at a badge [or certificate] should be able to understand what it took to earn it, what kind of assessment the person took, what kind of rubrics were used, and all that should be verifiable.”
Showcasing the value of your badges or certificates starts with taking a comprehensive approach to your credential metadata; it’s the first thing employers will see when they click on a badge. UiPath certificates are great examples. As seen below, its Certified Professional credential:
Its digital credentials landing page is another way it educates earners on the value of its credentials, showing how UiPath certificates:
Other organizations communicate the value of their product certifications through email campaigns, using these touchpoints to share learner success stories, earner job statistics, and tips for adding digital credentials to job applications and professional profiles — elevating your brand in the process.
There’s a discrepancy between what learners want in product certifications and what organizations deliver.
Most learners (97%) want a learning pathway or interlinked modules to help them master a topic, but only 29% of credential issuers provide them. And 92% of learners want to complete assessments or projects as part of their curriculum, but only 34% of issuers offer ways to test and apply learners’ knowledge.
These stats tell us that learners want to know (1) what’s coming next, (2) how all of the courses fit together, and (3) how they can solve real-world problems with your product or industry training.
Addressing these gaps may seem like a daunting task. To make it easier, consider breaking down existing product courses into focused skill modules and integrating existing content like webinars and guides. Pairing these materials with hands-on projects and assessments within a structured pathway allows for a flexible, comprehensive learning experience that builds skills progressively through interconnected microcredentials.
Helping learners visualize their learning pathway and awarding digital credentials along the journey will increase learner retention and application, encourage them to keep going, and reward them for staying the course.
UiPath does an excellent job of this, too. Their team breaks down their certifications into smaller modules that build on each other until a final assessment. Throughout, users learn from videos and knowledge checks and build automations across multiple use cases and industries, receiving separate certificates for each milestone they hit.
But the journey isn’t entirely prescriptive, either. Users can select which required courses they want to take, consume extra information, and take additional optional courses along the way, adding to and giving them autonomy over their learning experience.
Other organizations have taken a similar approach, seeing notable increases in learner engagement. Frogames, for instance, used Pathways to gamify their learning courses, which tripled its overall completion rate.
Tracking where learners drop off in your learning cycle can help you identify ideal spots for self-assessments or hands-on projects. Refining your coursework based on data can reengage your learners and motivate them to earn their credentials (and continue using your product).
Think about the last enterprise tool you bought. If you’re like most buyers, someone in your network probably referred you to their software of choice — or at least influenced your ultimate decision.
Product certification programs can grow that way, too. Seeing your digital certificates or badges on social media, resumes, personal websites, and email signatures gets folks curious about the certifications you offer, pushing them to explore your program and, ultimately, convert.
With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that issuers report increased online sharing as the most significant benefit of digital credentials. What is surprising is that just one in three issuers sends a reminder to open and/or share credentials, and 44% fail to recognize the learners who share their credentials.
Credential sharing is a powerful organic marketing opportunity because it establishes certified learners as experts in their domain, a status every professional wants to achieve.
Chaitanya Deepak, Associate Director of Training & Development at Darwinbox, explains, “In four months, our rate of issuing credentials improved by 60%. Why? Because with Accredible, we’re able to show learners the value of a credential — they get mini bragging rights and can show employers they are qualified.”
But sometimes learners need more than one nudge to exercise those bragging rights. And they need concrete guidance on how (and why) to share their credentials. One way to accomplish this is to set up triggered email campaigns.
For example, the UiPath team uses email sequences to:
These Campaigns were a resounding success. In a matter of months, UiPath’s LinkedIn profile credential add rate increased by 26.7%, and its LinkedIn share rate increased by 19.7%.
Evangelizing your product certification through credential sharing isn’t just an enrollment play. It can open the door to potential partnerships with higher education institutions to improve the classroom-to-workforce pipeline and increase product and brand awareness with learners early in their careers.
94% of learners want additional course recommendations to meet their career goals, but 1 in 4 don’t follow through. Why? Because they don’t know which course to take next. Adding course recommendations will motivate learners to keep learning, increasing enrollment and certification revenue.
Issuers are also missing out on another core value prop: connecting learners with future opportunities. 84% of learners want to be listed in an online directory of credential holders, but only 35% of issuers offer that service.
The key to keeping learners learning is making it easy for them to take the next step. For instance, the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) uses Accredible’s Recommendations feature to drive learners to relevant courses — from digital credential pages (its own and other issuers’ pages) and via Accredible’s credential search platform, CourseFinder. In doing so, IISE better markets its courses to new and existing learners, generating additional program enrollment and revenue.
Learners want to be spotlighted and connected to future opportunities, and organizations want to build an ecosystem or community of certified professionals. Creating a directory is a way to fulfill both needs simultaneously.
Snowflake's Certification Services Coordinator, Tara Miller, explains, “In our research, we find that 4 out of 5 global employers report challenges in finding skilled employees. That’s why we offer a directory — to quickly and easily identify Snowflake skills. We believe it’s a benefit to our certified population and to those seeking them out for open jobs.”
The Snowflake Directory now has over 2,700 credential holders and counting. In addition to listing each professional’s earned credentials and associated skills, directory profiles allow earners to add a short elevator pitch, work availability, and social media handles so hiring managers can find and contact them.
Snowflake isn’t the only issuer taking advantage of Accredible’s Spotlight Directory. Workato, an AI-powered enterprise automation platform, experienced 80% growth in program learners after launching digital credenteial and its white-labeled directory.
Its former Director of Certification and Education, Julien Clement, emphasizes, “We love the directory. It set the stage for creating an ecosystem of experts, which was a huge differentiating factor and a big part of our plans. If someone needs an integration developer to build a Workato recipe, they can go to our directory and filter by role and credentials, read their bio, and see the other credentials they might have earned.”
Credential data can tell you a lot about your coursework and even more about your learners. But most issuers aren’t tracking it.
Just 54% of issuers know which learners complete a course. Less than 50% know how long it takes for learners to complete their course or what content is most engaging. Even fewer organizations track what happens after a learner earns their credential — only 23% track which learners take additional courses, and a mere 13% monitor program referrals from shared credentials.
How far learners get in your courses, how engaged they are, how often they share their credentials (and where) — all of that information can help you ensure you’re attracting the right learners and can reveal new ways to level up your program.
The first step is to start tracking what you can. Over time, you’ll notice patterns and be able to make adjustments accordingly.
It’s worth noting that manual analysis can be time-consuming (and error-prone). A digital credentialing software like Accredible automatically tracks credential KPIs for you, leaving more time to interpret and act on the data. Chris Dutton, Founder & Chief Product Officer at Maven Analytics, went all-in on Accredible reporting:
“We now use Accredible analytics as a diagnostic tool, digging into individual credentials or courses with lower-than-expected share rates, looking for clues as to how we can improve those metrics.”
That close monitoring has been a boon for the Maven brand. Since its Accredible implementation, Maven Analytics has increased its credential share rate on LinkedIn by 250%, reeling in more learners and amplifying its certification revenue.
Making all these changes to your program is a challenge, even for the most experienced teams. And it’s even harder without a credentialing platform with sharing capabilities, a recommendations engine, and analytics built-in.
Accredible has helped over 2,300 organizations, including Google, Slack, Databricks, Stripe, and Asana, increase product adoption and value, boost brand awareness, and drive enrollment.
Curious to learn more about how we can help? Check out the platform for yourself. Book an Accredible demo today.
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Accredible is the world’s leading digital credential platform, enabling education and training leaders to increase learner engagement and drive program growth.
Accredible is the world’s leading digital credential platform, enabling education and training leaders to increase learner engagement and drive program growth.
