Holidays mean lots of buzz around shopping, office parties, home decor, etc.

Holidays also mean customers getting bombarded with promotional messages from various brands across industries.

While people are gearing up to soak in the vacation spirit and brands are ramping up their promotional campaigns, the edtech industry may see a drop in engagement as the break begins and ‘shopping’ takes priority.

But here are some user engagement strategies you can set up to keep the engagement going during the holiday season.

Holiday campaign ideas for user engagement in EdTech

While it’s normal for everyone to take a break from learning during the summer holidays, a complete disconnect may also mean they never return. Here are some strategies we recommend setting up:

1. Offer discounts

Bring some cheer to your customers (new and old) with exciting discounts during the vacation days. These offers could include offering popular courses and subscriptions at discounted prices for a limited period. Alternatively, you can offer access to a premium course/ module exclusive for the vacation season.

2. Send season’s greetings

The holiday season is the perfect time to strengthen your customer relationship. So, send an e-card or a personalized note to thank them for their patronage. It’s always a great idea to keep the marketing agenda aside and send your customers a Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays note.

3. Make information available at the fingertip

Notch up your customer service so that your customers ( i.e., students and their guardians) can access information anytime, even during the summer holidays. Ensure your customer representatives are knowledgeable while making FAQs available on the app and website. You may also consider live chat, email, and phone support to offer guidance at any time.

4. Improve the product

Users are naturally engaged with useful products that make their lives easy, bring in value, and are easy to use. So, improve your product that ticks off all these parameters. This means adding new features that the students might find helpful. For instance, if the students have complained of any bugs previously, it’s time to fix them.

5. Make it engaging

Students love applications that are interactive and engaging. Consider bringing in gamification to make the tool more engaging. Gamification will help improve the student’s communication and problem-solving skills.

Interactive quizzes with immediate answers and educational games are also popular among students, so adding these features to your tool will surely boost engagement.

Add curated content for students who love self-learning. Consider adding a leaderboard to the tool to help students track their progress while encouraging healthy virtual competition among the student community.

6. Implementing in-app and push notifications

Using in-app and push notifications helps improve user engagement. These small micro pieces of content pop up on the screen even when the student is not using the app.

When the users are away from the app enjoying their vacation, a gentle nudge will help to remind them about you. Planning in-app and push notifications in the holiday theme is a good way to add some element of brand recall.

User engagement strategies for holidays for EdTech

Now that you have some holiday campaign ideas, let’s dive into some strategies you must try for your edtech brand for the upcoming summer holidays.

1. Omnichannel for maximum engagement

Look at any Gen Z or millennial, and you’ll find them glued to their smartphone, hopping from one platform to another. And it’s not just a vague claim. A report mentions that 99% of Gen Z users own a smartphone.

So, it only makes sense to connect with your user base across multiple channels. Target different apps for specific promotions and advertisements.

For example, TutorBin, an online tutoring platform, grappled with fragmented communication. So, they partnered with WebEngage to improve its student engagement and retention rate. After this collaboration, TutorBin witnessed:

• 13.7% increase in unique conversions
• 25% increase in retention
• 187.82% overall conversion with web personalization

Explore how WebEngage’s Journey Designer can help you create workflows to deliver tailored experiences across platforms.

2. Personalize your campaign

Collect your customer insights to create segments based on their preferences. Leverage AI to understand the user’s behavior and what they liked in the past and send them targeted, personalized campaigns at the onset of the holiday mood.

Treat them to exclusive deals to entice them to make a purchase. For instance, for avid learners, we may highlight advanced courses or specialized learning paths aligned with their interests. Exploratory learners might be enticed with bundles of diverse courses or engaging challenges to broaden their knowledge base. Meanwhile, potential new learners could be introduced to the platform with enticing offers such as free trial periods or discounts on their first course.

Akash Digital, an online learning platform for the K12 segment, partnered with WebEngage to boost their mobile app engagement.

With the help of the partnership, Akash Digital was able to achieve significant results. They introduced data-backed, targeted, and hyper-personalized learner communication. Some of the key highlights of the partnership were:

• 2.3X deduction in acquisition cost
• 18% boost in learners return to the app
• 31% increase in LIVE class attendance
• 50% increase in overall learner calls received via the lead nurturing

3. Loyalty all the way

Loyal customers are the backbone of consistent revenue growth.

Holidays are the perfect time to pamper them through personalized campaigns. Consider creating exclusive campaigns, offering discounts, and reducing course prices for your loyal customers.

WebEngage enables you to create customer segments based on interactions and past purchases to target this campaign to the right set of audiences.

Discover how WebEngage’s Segmentation feature helps you target ideal audiences based on interactions and past purchases.

4. Time to beat the drum

Holidays are the best time to create buzz about all you have done in the past year. Showcase your achievements — for example, how the past students performed, the success rate, your new offerings, and your contributions to society.

Create teaser campaigns with early bird access to your upcoming offerings. The idea is to create some noise that you promised and delivered. However, don’t go too overboard with it.

5. Leverage the downtime

For EdTech firms, the summer vacation season presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. While some educational institutions close for summer vacation, others may continue to offer classes, albeit in a different format, such as summer camps or additional courses. This can lead to a shift in demand and behavior among students and parents, impacting EdTech. But you can use downtime to improve your product, brainstorm new ideas, innovate, and diversify your offerings.

For example, developing specialized summer courses, partnering with summer camps or educational institutions, or introducing new features to enhance user engagement during the break.

You can also utilize the downtime to improve your product features for a better platform experience. For example, you can streamline and optimize your onboarding process to help new students navigate the app seamlessly. Consider bringing in gamification, tutorials, screen hits, and other useful features to help students access the right information at the right time. Remember, a smooth onboarding experience will help you boost your engagement.

Conclusion

Whether it is the holiday season or not, every brand must thrive for better user engagement and retention, and edtech brands are no different. While you may have various strategies and campaign ideas, you need tools to turn those ideas into action. That’s where WebEngage comes in.

To help you learn more about us and how we have helped various edtech brands, we have created a comprehensive eBook. In this eBook, you can learn about how our customers:

• Reduce new customer acquisition costs
• Nurture and retain existing customers to increase stickiness
• Engage with the most active customers to drive engagement

In this e-book, you will get access to:

• Toppr’s strategy to increase subscriptions by 133% through personalized campaigns
• How Testbook achieved a 15% conversion uplift from free to paid users
• How Unacademy increased engagement with the help of action-based recommendations
• 15% uplift in fee payments by multi-sided communication by Cuemath

Book a demo now to learn how WebEngage can help craft bespoke engagement strategies for your business.