LERN Club Articles
Back Cover Best Practices
The back cover of a brochure is often overlooked and its importance minimized, when the same effort should be put into its development as the front cover. The back cover is actually the second most viewed page of a brochure, aside from the front cover, and can be the first thing someone sees if it is left or delivered upside-down. Below are some best practices to consider when designing your back cover.
Inside Salesperson
Over the last five years, contract training teams have had to focus on lead generation more than ever in the past. No longer are the phones constantly ringing, but their institutions are expecting increased revenue, operating margin, and net.
10 Ways to Increase the Shareability of your Content
The success —or failure —of a piece of content is no longer determined only by its quality.
The shareability of content now plays a major role in how the content is received and perceived by your audience. The promotion and sharing of content cannot be an afterthought. In order to maximize traffic and increase engagement, planning your promotion and sharing strategy should be a central part of your overall content creation process.
5 Keys to Great Customer Service
Great — not good — customer service is an essential part of running a successful lifelong learning program.
In fact, if customers don’t come first in everything your program does, you are in danger of failing them, says Fred Bayley, LERN Senior Consultant and customer service expert.
How to Target Messages to Nurture Leads
Gone are the days when one message was enough. Every buyer is unique and needs to be treated as so with targeted messages and content. It’s likely you have a handful of buyer types or personas —buyers with similar problems, needs, wants, demographics and behaviors. LERN, for example, has recreation, community education, association, and continuing education buyer types or personas.
Producing Quarterly Updates
Winning continuing education and lifelong learning programs are ramping up their direct and digital marketing in order to remain competitive with their open enrollment course programming customers and contract training clients. But they are also increasing their internal marketing efforts as they work to build institutional support.
Keeping Staff Engaged in their Work
Keeping staff engaged is one of the challenges of the decade. With engagement, staff will become more loyal, more productive, and more connected to their work. People who are disengaged are more likely to miss work, make mistakes, have conflicts, and cause discontent among other staff because they are not involved and attentive in their work.
The Increasing Importance of Annual Reports
Increasingly, LERN is discovering more continuing education and lifelong learning programs developing annual reports.
An annual report is a comprehensive review of a continuing education or lifelong learning program’s activities throughout the previous year. The annual report is intended to give both internal and external stakeholders information about the program’s activities and performance.
2019 LERN International Awards
Each Year, LERN accepts nominations for the LERN International Awards competition. The purpose is to recognize best practice in the field of lifelong learning, continuing education, and recreation. Winning nominations will focus on practice that is innovative, replicable and which can serve as a model for others, and will include documentation of impact or success.
Growing Impact of Information Specialists
In the 1980’s, LERN introduced to North American continuing education and lifelong learning programs, the Information Specialist position. LERN had successfully added the Information Specialist position to LERN’s staffing structure and was reaping significant benefits, including increased LERN member satisfaction.
Creating Content for your Blog
If done right, business blogging can help you generate more website traffic, more leads and a more authoritative voice for your customers.
Is it Worth the Cost to Cut Color?
While developing a print brochure in full color may be costlier, converting to a black and white brochure might end up costing your program more in the long run.
Top 7 eTools Trends for 2018
A chat box for your lifelong learning program is one of the top 7 eTools in lifelong learning for 2018, according to Dan Belhassen, one of the foremost authorities on eTools for the field of lifelong learning. See that story on our LERN Home Page.
How to Develop Classes from Local Events
Local events such as festivals, sports events, and even store openings are excellent programming opportunities.
Title Change Increases Enrollments
While many course titles are short, to the point and not cute, developing titles the bottom line. Here is what one LERN member program did to revive a class that was lagging.
Brochure Tips: Better Course Listings
After you have used the cover and introductory pages of your brochure to create interest and pull the reader in, you need to make sure your courses and programs are listed in a way that is easy for the reader to understand and creates the least resistance to registration.
Breaking News: Your Marketing Mix Now Big 5
There are now 5 big promotion media that need to maxed and interact with each other for a complete and success marketing effort, successful practitioners at the Interactive Marketing session at the big LERN Conference agreed.
Member Stories: Targeted Marketing
Growth had been stagnant for the Teen College program at Pikes Peak Community College Workforce Development Division. Teen College offerings, intended for middle school students, were included in the same catalog as adult education programs and were promoted in the local newspaper.
Member Stories: Partnerships
When the Continuing Education Department at Central Oregon Community College began creating a new product for existing customers, they thought really big.
Using Social Media to Grow Your Email List
Email lists naturally decay by 2 percent a month or 22.5 percent a year.
How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Program
The thoughtful development of campaigns that focus on content instead of promotion can pay off.
Increase the Effectiveness of the First Two Pages of your Brochure
The first two pages of a brochure bridge the gap between the attention grabbing aspects of the brochure cover and the real information offered in the class listing section. Bridging this gap is very important since many readers can be lost between these two sections if the first two pages don’t excite the reader to delve deeper.
What’s Next for Integrated Marketing
Finding out what media works best with other media, and the benchmarks and ratios for success is the top agenda item for LERN staff researching the next level for Integrated Marketing. We hope to find out from the best practitioners such data as:
Members Using More Creative Brochure Branding
LERN has observed a trend that increasingly more members have been doing a more creative job branding their brochures. This includes everything from the brochure name to logos and slogans.