Best Practices

You want to deliver on the promises you’ve made to students. That means offering quality classes and minimizing cancelations. Although weather or illness will sometimes result in last minute schedule changes, you try to keep your class cancelation rate as low as possible. No one likes to call off a class due to a lack of registrations. 

Yet, sometimes it really is better to cut your losses and not hold a class so you can preserve resources and energy for something else. Your goal shouldn’t be to eradicate cancelations entirely. Focus instead on keeping your class cancelation rate at or below average. We’ll show you how. 

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The holidays can be hectic, especially if you have something to market. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are a prime time to promote classes as gifts or get students lined up for the new year. But what about the holidays themselves? 

As you plan your holiday marketing strategy, you may tend to avoid scheduling messages to go out on the days just before Thanksgiving or in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The thinking goes that people are focused on holiday celebrations and spending time with family. They probably won’t want to engage with marketing messages, right? But there’s one big problem with that logic — it doesn’t reflect how people actually behave. 

We’ll show you how to plan a holiday marketing strategy that makes the most of people’s shopping and social media habits around the holidays.

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Costs are rising everywhere. That means buying materials for your classes, paying instructors, and just keeping the lights on is more expensive than it used to be. Unless you have an endowment or other major funding source, and in many cases even if you do, it might be time to increase class fees to help bridge the gap.

Knowing you need to raise your prices is one thing. Actually making the change is another. You might be worried about upsetting students, or fear that raising your prices will make classes less accessible. 

Those are reasonable concerns. But, in the long run, raising prices really can be in everyone’s best interest. We’ll show you why and how to raise your prices while keeping students happy.

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When it comes to marketing your informal ed programs you have lots of options. From classic solutions like email to up-and-coming social media sites like TikTok, the opportunities seem endless. Unfortunately, your time and energy are limited. You don’t want to spend hours a day marketing on every channel, you want to focus on the one that works. So now you’re wondering, what are the best digital marketing channels for informal ed programs?

Great question, and the answer is more straightforward than you might think. As part of our State of Informal Learning Report 2022 (SOIL), we dug into the marketing channels that moved traffic to sites using CourseStorm as their registration platform. With nearly 1 million registrations under our belt, we had plenty of data to explore. Our research revealed the three best digital marketing channels that informal ed programs can use to promote their classes. 

Read on to learn what they are and how you can put them to work for your programs. 

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You want to maximize registrations and use your marketing budget wisely. Timing your advertising well can help you meet both goals. Start too early, and you’ll be advertising to people who aren’t ready to make a decision. Wait too long, and their calendars will already be full. So when is the best time to start advertising a class? The short answer is: 

You should start advertising a class at least 40 days before the class starts. 

That’s the general answer, but there is some nuance to it. Your goals, the audience, and even the time of the year can impact the best time to start advertising a new course. Let’s get into the details so you can time your advertising with confidence.

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Prices may be rising everywhere, but your mission hasn’t changed. You still want to provide personal enrichment and quality education opportunities to people in your community and beyond. That means you need to offer affordable classes while supporting the financial stability and long-term success of your program.

Achieving that balance might not be as difficult as you think. To start, expand your thinking beyond the list price of the course. We’ll share some tools and strategies you can use to keep classes affordable for the greatest number of students even if you do need to raise prices.

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Think back to the last big purchase you made. How did you decide what to buy and who to buy it from? If you’re like most people, you probably talked to friends or read reviews. These methods of social proof helped you feel confident that you were making a good purchase. You can give your potential students the same confidence by collecting and sharing student testimonials. 

We’ve already done a whole series on feedback and why it’s important, but testimonials are a little different. A testimonial is a statement endorsing your program or class. While feedback may be positive, negative, constructive, or neutral, a testimonial is always positive. To put it another way, feedback is about improving your program, testimonials let you tell people how great it is. 

We’ll show you how to collect student testimonials and how to share them to help promote your classes. 

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If you agree that everyone deserves access to education, then you probably believe that accessibility is important. In physical spaces like classrooms and theaters, accessibility may take the form of ramps, elevators, or special seating. Maybe you have a sign-language interpreter available or offer assistive listening devices. But what about on your website? 

Accessibility takes a different and sometimes less visible form in digital spaces, but it is just as relevant. To make learning accessible to everyone, you need a website that everyone can use. That means your website and your registration software need to be accessible too. 

Unfortunately, website accessibility isn’t a given. Unless you’ve made a conscious effort to build an accessible website, you probably don’t have one. Course registration software and other online tools can also affect accessibility. Here’s how to make the whole course registration process more accessible.

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The myth of learning styles has been haunting education for years. It’s the idea that you can help students learn by adjusting the format of your teaching to match the way students prefer to learn. Despite the popularity of the concept, there’s very little scientific evidence to support it.

If you want to help adults learn, you’re much better off focusing on adult learning theory. Adults seek out education and learning experiences to fulfill a handful of important needs. We’ll talk about each one and how you can use theories of adult learning to help your learners meet their goals.

But first, let’s bust the learning style myth.

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While you may not usually think of your education program as a business, it can still benefit from a Google My Business account. In fact, any local organization that has direct contact with the public can claim a free business profile on Google. Your profile can help people discover your organization, quickly answer common questions, and offer social proof about your classes. 

Since Google searches account for more than 83% of all internet search volume it’s worth your time to stand out in Google search. A business profile can help you: 

• Take control of your business information
• Make sure no one else claims it 
• Interact with students and respond to reviews
• Share photos and updates
• Access information about how people use your profile

Below we’ll show you how to put a Google My Business Account to work for your education program.

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