Association eLearning

A Philosophy on Education Product Pricing Strategy

Marketing new education programs is always a fun challenge. In particular we are getting a lot of inquiries about how to market and price new educational programs – especially eLearning products. Before I explain some key philosophies on this, let me refer you to my friend and co-author Mickie Rops’ fantastic entry entitled, “Knowledgizing Associations” that speaks to four value-based services that all associations should focus on. They are simply the ideas of Connect, Context, Filter, and Feedback (see her entry for the details).

Focus educational programs and services around the four values Mickie describes. Work very hard to provide as many of these values to your members as possible. But in the short-term, focus highly on the context and filtering aspects of content. Perceived value is what drives participants to education programs. Identifying what that perceived value might be is absolutely critical to the marketing and pricing challenge. Many times it is saving a member time and money by filtering out irrelevant content and explaining how and why that content can be applied to someone’s professional or personal life. Time and money are the two most common “value” items. With this in mind, here is a philosophy on pricing…

Free is not good. Unless you have some sort of legitimate reason for not charging for a program (a grant funded program, for example) you need to charge something to participants. The more you charge the higher the perceived value of the program. When you offer something for free, the buyer’s mentality is that it is not as valuable, even if it truly is. We also see significant numbers of no-shows for “free” programs versus paid ones.

Bundling products and services creates higher value. If you offer an education product, be sure to think about other products you can bundle with it. For example, you offer a seminar on how to build a great tree house. Your organization also happens to have a research report on new trends in tree house building. Bundle the products together to add value. You could even simply send an email out to everyone who attended the ‘how to build a great tree house’ course that lists all of your other tree house resources, with links to each. This links back to the filtering aspect of value creation.

eLearning Strategy Auction Item

For those of you interested in eLearning strategy consulting -  you should know that we have added an auction item to the ASAE/The Center's Silent Auction for their Annual meeting.   This is the third year we have supported the ASAE Foundation and have really enjoyed our strategy engagements with the auction item winners.  You can click on the link to the home page of the auction here.

You should know that 100% of the proceeds of the auction go to the ASAE Foundation.  Our auction item will be posted this week, so keep an eye out for it!  You can bid on auction items online or onsite at the annual conference.

eL Strategy Development - First Steps

In the last six+ years working in the association eLearning space it has been my observation that most organizations want to select technologies much too early in the process.  In fact, this excitement about technology has driven a fair number of organizations to make terrible technology selections in hindsight.   So as your organization gets started (for either the first or second time) creating an eLearning strategy, here are some tips as you begin down this path.  Keep in mind that future blog posts will take a deeper dive into each one of these areas separately.

1. Get the right people on your eLearning Strategy Team.
2. Be crystal clear about all of your learning populations. (This is key!)
3. Create a content map based on learning populations and/or core competencies.
4. Determine internal program management issues.
5. Map your content to the best delivery method to deliver the content. (Technology, face-to-face, or a blend)
6. Design content for delivery mechanism.
7. Test and Launch program.
8. Evaluate and update program.

Each one of these phases requires more in-depth processing but it gives you a road map to begin down the road of creating a strategy.  One of the things you may note is that the technology selection piece doesn't happen until step #5.  It is driven by the content sections of the strategy.   

Long-term success of an eLearning strategy depends on realistic and clear learner population needs.  More on all of this in the coming weeks.

Developing an eL Strategy

I am blogging from the CESSE Conference in Salt Lake City.   The Council of Engineering & Scientific Society Executives hosts this annual event utilizing a completely volunteer group of association executives.  It's very amazing.

Tomorrow we will be talking about developing an eLearning strategy.  This topic has really morphed over the last five years.  In the past few weeks leading up to this conference I have been focused on creating an analogy between strategy development and building a house.  While I'm not going that the home building process now, I can say that there are a lot of similarities.  Here is a short list of some of those.  You need to

1. Clearly identify the "team" you will be working with.
2. Clearly define the kind of house you want and make sure you identify all of its uses early on.
3. Make sure that all of the people living in or using the house have some input into their needs.
4. Be realistic about your budget and be sure to plan for a 10-15% overage in budget.
5. Know that the project will always take longer than you initially estimate.  Be patient.
6. Create a blueprint for your house and have the house built to the blueprint.
7. Know that you can always make changes to the plan. The changes just need to be well justified.

More on the details of the strategy process soon!

Onboarding - Time to competency for new hires

Onboarding is a relatively new (and highly illusive) term used primarily by companies in reference to the process of orientation and training of new employees.  The concept is that by introducing a new hire to information early in the employment process (sometimes even before they show up on their first day of work) you can get a new hire up to speed quicker - thus making them profitable at an earlier point.

The concept of onboarding also formalizes what tends to a be a rather informal training process for many employees.  If your association doesn't have the term on your radar screen, you may want to think more about it.  The concept can impact just about every segment or industry and can have bottom line results.

I just got back from ASTD's TechKnowledge conference where Onboarding was a topic of interest.  Randstad (the staffing company) is doing some great things with Onboarding.  They shared their case study at the conference.  Randstad did an impact study of their new program and estimated that in the first six months of 2005, the new Onboarding program helped to generate an additional $4 million+ in sales revenue (a 338% return rate). 

The program includes online courses, coaching sessions with the new hire's supervisor, tests, and other trackable activities all delivered through a Learning Management System (LMS).  The Onboarding process is not a training department function, but a managerial function supported by the training department. 

I am impressed by the the 16 week Onboarding program at Randstad and am spending time researching other Onboarding processes to see if we can identify some best practices.  The concept is a new one with significant bottom-line impact for organizations.  In the association world it is important to keep in mind that these types of training issues impact your association - regardless of whether you are a trade or professional organization.

I guarantee you'll hear more about Onboarding in the future!

Content is Critical to a Good eLearning Strategy

Last night I was at an association industry event and was asked about the types of projects that we are currently working on.  Reflecting on that conversation today, I wanted to post my thoughts on the importance of creating some sort of game plan (or strategy) for education technology for in association.   This posting is also a precursor to a virtual seminar that I am doing for ASAE/The Center on March 15th on the topic of eLearning strategy.

Creating a short-term game plan based on insightful information is a very good idea.  Many organizations used to get wow'd by the technology "cool factor" and simply selected technology for the sake of claiming that they are now offering "eLearning".  A trend, that I can only hope, is slowing down.  The hype of eLearning is diminishing which is a good thing.  And those who know me also know that my overall philosophy about eLearning is simply this...

                                       eLearning is nothing without good content.

Virtual Seminars - the first step to eLearning profitability

So you want to start an eLearning program for your association?  Start with audio conferences and/or virtual seminars.  Across the board we are seeing that associations that offer virtual seminars are profitable with these programs from the start.  In fact, I would argue that if you are not profitable with your virtual seminars or audio conferences, you're not doing them right.

We have a new White Paper that is coming out in two weeks on the concepts around audio conferences, virtual seminars and virtual classrooms.  The White Paper will be available on our site as a free download.  As soon as it's up, we'll put a link here.  In the meantime, check out our Resources page on the site for other useful association eLearning topics.