24 Learning Campaign Fails (and How to Avoid Them)

Marketing for learning® isn’t about hitting “send” on another “new course available” email. It’s about audience insight, strategy, and campaigns that actually cut through the noise. But the truth is, marketing often falls short in L&D teams. Corners are cut. Comms are rushed. And ultimately, engagement tanks.

However, we know that internal marketing can (and does) work for L&D teams across the globe. And we’ve also seen why it doesn't work, because sadly learning pros keep tripping over the same mistakes. So rather than fall for the same ol’ pitfalls, we’ve taken the liberty of compiling 24 of most common marketing for learning fails we see — and how you can avoid them #YoureWelcome.

STRATEGY & TIMING FAILS 👇

1. TREATING YOUR CAMPAIGN AS A ONE-HIT WONDER.

Fail: Thinking that one email, one announcement or one noisy launch week is enough to change behaviour.

Fix: Learning campaigns need consistency, not one-and-done messaging. If you want real impact with marketing, you need to adopt a multi-channel, multi-touch approach. In L&D we speak so much about spaced repetition, and the same applies to marketing! So make sure your campaign is full of nudges and sustains momentum consistently after your launch event. So in a nutshell, let’s leave the one-hit-wonders to the ‘Macarena’ and ‘Come On Eileen’ 😉

2. LAUNCHING AT THE WRONG TIME.

Fail: Pushing a big campaign during quarter-end chaos.

Fix: OK, your latest learning initiative might be very very important to you. Your boss might want you to get this initiative out by the end of the quarter. You might be rushing towards this fictional finish line at the end of the month.

But is it the right time to roll out a campaign to the rest of the organisation? When they’re also running towards the end of the quarter? Your sales team is trying to close deals. The finance department is reconciling the books. Marketers are mapping out the next quarter. Do they have the time and mental capacity to focus on your campaign? No, probably not. So make sure you’re considering timing, and other internal initiatives, before going full steam ahead rolling out your campaign. Timing is key!

3. TREATING MARKETING AS A SIDE HUSTLE.

Fail: Leaving marketing until the last minute — a cobbled together slide deck for an all hands meeting and sliding into managers DMs the week after launch — and calling it a “campaign.”

Fix: OK, we get it. You’re a learning pro. You don’t think marketing needs to be in your repertoire. So it falls to the bottom of your priority list. You tack it on to the end of the project, when you suddenly realise you need to actually tell people about your shiny new initiative. But to really get impact with your learning campaigns, you need to build marketing into your project plan from day one, and give it the same time, energy and resources as the learning itself. After all, if nobody knows about it, they ain’t gonna do it. Which renders the learning itself absolutely pointless.

CHANNELS & REACH FAILS 👇

4. SHINY CHANNEL SYNDROME.

Fail: Using new channels to communicate to your audience, just because you can.

Fix: OK, your new Viva Engage Page or Slack Channel might be super exciting, but if your people aren’t using it — what’s the point? Sharing messages to empty, lifeless channels is just as useful as talking to a brick wall. It’s really not going to get you anywhere! So consider your audience carefully, and think about where they already hang out, then market to them there. Don’t fragment your marketing further by having to persuade them to go to a new channel before you can even convey your message to them.

5. PUTTING ALL YOUR EGGS IN THE EMAIL BASKET.

Fail: Thinking email is your only channel of communication.

Fix: Mix it up! It’s not enough to only use email in your learning campaigns. What about your deskless workers? What about those who only ever skim read their emails (and typically send yours to the bin)?

Over-reliance on email is slashing your chances of boosting learner engagement. So pair email with your other channels, like posters, Slack/Teams nudges, manager activation, or even lock screens! (If you want some inspo about channels you can use, check out our podcast with Caroline Fitzpatrick of L’Oréal, she listed over 18 channels!)

6. COPY-AND-PASTING EVERYWHERE.

Fail: Posting the exact same message everywhere — email, intranet, Slack — and wondering why nobody bites.

Fix: OK we get it, you’re looking for some time-saving shortcuts. So copying all the text from your email into an intranet post seems like a great idea. But it’s not. You need to adapt your messaging for the channel at hand. For example, you want short, punchy messages for Slack, highly visual assets for your intranet and personalisation for email. Make sure you’re pushing the right message on the right medium, if you really want your people to bite.

LACK OF AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDING 👇

7. AUDIENCE AMNESIA.

Fail: Treating all your employees like one big homogeneous blob that all think and act the same.

Fix: Personalise, personalise, personalise! Segment, segment, segment! We talk so much here at MAAS about personalisation en-masse. And most L&Ders interpret that as targeting audiences based on job title. And sure, that’s better than nothing. But if you want to really take your personalisation up a gear, develop learner personas. Personas enable you to really flex your marketing muscle and target your audience based on their wants, needs and pain points — a surefire way to get them engaged.

8. COPYCAT CAMPAIGNS.

Fail: Stealing campaigns from another company — or recycling a vendor’s generic comms — and expecting them to land. What works in one culture will flop in another.

Fix: Borrow ideas, sure. But always tailor them. Adapt tone, visuals, and context so they feel authentic to your organisation. A copy-paste job doesn’t inspire trust — it just shows you didn’t put the effort in. Your audience will see straight through it and your engagement rates will plummet further.

9. IGNORING EMPLOYEE VOICES.

Fail: Treating employees as spectators, rather than participants.

Fix: It’s time to stop designing learning in a vacuum. We must test our initiatives — the learning and their campaigns alike — with our audience. Roll out pilots, leverage A/B testing, and learn what works for your unique audience. And don’t overlook the IKEA effect — the (disproportionate) value people place on experiences or products that they’ve co-created. Get people involved, and watch their desire to engage increase too.

10. MISALIGNED WITH BUSINESS GOALS.

Fail: Focusing on what works for L&D, not the organisation or its people.

Fix: Ok, you might have just purchased a new content library, jam-packed with thousands of eLearning modules. And increasing usage in that might be your priority. But the rest of the business? They’re looking at the business strategy, and focusing on outcomes. So make sure your learning campaigns are aligned with the business. If you can show how learning supports revenue, retention, or customer experience, your initiatives (and campaign) instantly gets traction — from the top down.

Our People Impact Loop® methodology shows you how to get it right from the outset.

COPY AND MESSAGING FAILS 👇

11. JARGON OVERLOAD.

Fail: Saying really dull, banal things like: “Upskilling opportunities to leverage synergies in cross-functional capability development.” 😴

Fix: Your audience are human beings, so speak to them like humans! Be clear, straight-forward and always answer the ‘What’s in it for me?’ Lead with benefits, not features, and focus on persuading your people to engage, rather than overloading them with messaging that requires them to decipher a code. A great way to overcome this problem is the ‘read it aloud’ test. If you read it out loud and find yourself stumbling on words or sounding like a robot — it doesn’t pass the test!

12. HYPERBOLIC SUBJECT LINES.

Fail: “Exciting new learning opportunities await you!” 🤔

Fix: Exaggeration is a great way to get your email or message sent straight to the ‘bin’ — after all, no one likes to feel misled or deceived. So when writing a subject line or heading, answer the WIIFM straight away. Remember to put your audience first and get to the point swiftly. “Save 3 hours a week in Excel.” will get more impact than “Learn More About Excel And Become A Spreadsheet Superhero Today”. Yep, this does take time and effort — but it’s what your learning campaigns deserve!

13. OVERPROMISING, UNDERDELIVERING.

Fail: Selling a 20-minute module like it’s a life-changing masterclass.

Fix: Your audience will see straight through an unrealistic promise. So set honest expectations about the impact of your learning intervention. In fact, it’s better to underpromise and overdeliver, than the converse. This approach betrays trust with your audiences and guarantees next time you contact them, they’ll dismiss it. True ‘boy who cried wolf’ stuff, this.

CREATIVE AND DESIGN FAILS 👇

14. POOR VISUAL CHOICES.

Fail: Bland stock photos. Random fonts. Off-brand colours.

Fix: Design is paramount in learning and marketing. And there’s a few rules that too many L&D teams break time and time again. So when designing assets for your learning campaign, make sure you don’t fall into these traps:

• Bland, 90s style stock imagery. Seriously, nobody’s going to engage with your marketing if you’re still showing two corporate stooges shaking hands, or someone laughing at a computer screen.

• Going off-piste with colours, fonts and other design choices. Yes, you want to stand out. But no, you shouldn't stand out by looking like an intruder in your own organisation. Make sure you’re using your brand visuals, and that your campaign looks like it belongs.

• Overuse of the same visuals and layouts. This is a sure-fire way to make people ignore your message — because they think they’ve seen it before! (This is called banner blindness, and is something you really have to keep in mind when using templates and stock libraries. There’s a fine line between consistency and overuse!)

15. OVERLOOKING CONTEXT.

Fail: Dropping walls of text onto the intranet, or emails, or posters.

Fix: Often context is as important as content. And it’s something L&D often overlooks. Think about the channels you’re posting on — and make sure what you’re posting is appropriate for the channel. For example, emails shouldn’t have paragraphs upon paragraphs. Posters should be scannable from a distance, and not require a magnifying glass to read. And nobody wants to spend more than 5 minutes reading an article on your intranet. So make sure you’re considering the context, as well as the content, and thinking like a marketer — use scannable chunks, bold headlines and clear call to actions,

17. NO CREATIVE HOOK.

Fail: “Learning at Work Week Fun!”

Fix: Yeah, nobody is as excited about learning as us L&D pros. So we have to work a little harder to make them interested. Having a theme, or a hook, for your learning campaign is a great way to do this. Not ‘Learning at Work Week’ or ‘Gen AI training!’ Instead come up with a clear theme, slogan or hook that people want to talk about. Creativity sticks when it comes to marketing, so come up with something that will drop into your audience’s day-to-day vernacular and will become sticky.

See how we built a killer hook for Capgemini University and engaged over 300k employees.

DATA AND MEASUREMENT FAILS 👇

18. IGNORING DATA.

Fail: Running campaigns on your 20+ years experience, gut instinct and CEO assumptions.

Fix: You know what they say about assumptions, don't you? So leave them out of your marketing. Be data informed about your marketing and campaigns. Track opens, clicks and sentiment from each initiative you run — and use that to learn more about your audience, what works and what doesn’t. Then go deeper, and dig into proof of knowledge, proof of skill and proof of performance. All of this evidence and data should guide you through future learning efforts, in a constantly flowing, iterative loop.

19. COLLECTING DATA, DOING NOTHING WITH IT.

Fail: Running surveys and tracking metrics… then letting the insights rot in a spreadsheet.

Fix: The only thing worse than an L&D team with no data, is an L&D team with loads of data that they don’t touch. Each and every time you run a campaign, you should be collecting data, and checking back in with previous data. What does it tell you? How can you act on it? Show your employees that you respect them, and that you’re constantly iterating and doing better. This is how you build trust — a key component of any effective marketing for learning initiative.

HUMAN FACTORS 👇

20. SKIPPING MANAGER ACTIVATION.

Fail: Hoping employees engage without their manager’s blessing or guidance.

Fix: Whether we like it or not, people are looking for permission to learn (and eat, drink, take breaks and way more!) from their managers. So instead of overlooking manager activation — we need to make it as easy as possible for managers to give their team members the green light to learn. So we need to equip managers, as part of our learning campaigns, with talking points and toolkits to encourage their teams to get involved. Yes, this does mean marketing twice: first to managers (then through them to employees), as well as directly to the employees themselves. But it’s worth the effort, we promise!

21. IGNORING PEER POWER.

Fail: Using only corporate, senior voices to promote learning.

Fix: Yes, senior leaders and management can be a great sway in getting audiences involved (like we just saw in Fail #20). But that doesn’t mean we should overlook peer power. Influencer marketing is one of the most powerful tactics to use in marketing for learning. Because ultimately, your people believe their peers more than they believe your CLO, Head of L&D or even the CEO. Their peers have no ulterior motive to tell them to get involved, so recommendations and suggestions seem sincere and believable. So make sure you’re showcasing peer stories and testimonials. And make your audience realise “if they can do it, I can too!”

22. NO NARRATIVE.

Fail: Launching random learning with no bigger, overarching story.

Fix: Storytelling is paramount in marketing for learning. And that doesn’t mean starting each article or blog post with “once upon a time…” It means building a strong campaign arc for your initiatives. Start with a challenge, show the protagonist's journey, and present a solution. For example, show how your learning has transformed an employee’s career, or how they’ve leveled up thanks to your training. Hey, you could go wild and couple this with influencer marketing from fail 21 and really get some bang for your buck. But however you do it, make sure you’re always presenting your narrative in all you do, and keep up the momentum!

23. INFORMATION OVERLOAD.

Fail: Bombarding employees with everything at once.

Fix: Prioritise your initiatives — yes, they might have all gone live on the LMS on the same day, but do you need to market them on the same day? No, no you do not! The truth is, if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. So you need to start making some tough choices. Step back and prioritise your initiatives based on business needs and objectives, and drip-feed your marketing over time. Remember, less noise = more cut-through. Consistency over volume wins every time. 💯

24. FORGETTING THE HUMANS.

Fail: Treating employees as “learners” instead of people.

Fix: If you’ve followed us here at MAAS for any length of time, you’ll know we really don’t like the word ‘learners’. It’s a phrase that’s problematic and gives the impression that your audience’s primary objective is to learn. And we all know that isn’t the truth. Instead, think about your audience as human beings (because they are!) and focus on their struggles, motivations and goals. Because the truth is, marketing only works when it’s human-first.

DON’T LET MARKETING BE THE WEAK LINK IN YOUR L&D TEAM

The truth is, most L&D initiatives don’t fail because of bad content or experiences. They fail because nobody knows (or cares) about it. Marketing for learning changes that — but only if it’s done right. It takes learning out of the shadows and makes your audience actually want to get involved. Get it right, and learning will become part of your organisational culture.

So if you’re ready to go from making mistakes to building real learning momentum, make sure you’re avoiding these mistakes. And if you really want to catapult your function to excellence? Download our 100 marketing for learning hacks now!