WHAT IS A LEARNING CAMPAIGN?

A learning campaign is a structured, multi-touch, multi-channel effort to achieve a particular goal. For example, it could be focused on raising awareness or engagement in a specific initiative, driving overall learner sentiment or achieving behavioural change. Learning campaigns borrow thinking from marketing and behavioural science, to stay front-of-mind and influence learner behaviour.

At its core, a learning campaign is:

• Centred on a single behavioural goal

• Designed with your audience in mind

• Multichannel and delivered across multiple touch points

• Tied to moments that matter

• Measured against real-world outcomes

The reality of most L&D teams now is that they’re swimming in content. We have the development of learning down to a fine art. We know the theory and principles behind great learning experiences. And we have an abundance of high-tech learning platforms to choose from. But what we haven’t tackled until now, is making people want to get involved with our learning initiatives. And this challenge is just growing as time goes on: because those age-old ‘there’s a new course in the LMS’ emails are becoming less and less effective, with the change in our tech-savvy, highly-demanding audiences.

MODERN LEARNERS ARE DEMANDING MORE

No, this isn’t a debate about different generations in the workplace, instead it’s a sign of the times we live in. Whether your audience is full of Baby Boomers or Gen Z, it doesn’t matter: their expectations are rising. And that’s because our audience is marketed to every single day. They constantly receive hyperpersonalised, engaging and attention-grabbing marketing from brands worldwide — so rather than being happy to take instructions from a drab email, their expectations are higher and they expect you to emulate the world around them.

But this isn’t just a marketing issue, it’s a learning issue too. Click-next eLearning courses that look like they’re straight out of the 90s don’t cut it any more either. One-way, push content will not hook your audience in either. Modern learners are not just looking for modern marketing, they’re looking for the overall 21st century learning experience. So before we carry on digging into learning campaigns, we want you to heed this warning: You can have the best learning campaign in the world, but if your learning experience falls short, the campaign won’t work. It is paramount that you get the learning experience right too, if you want to get real impact.

But warning given, from this point on, we’re going to assume you have a perfect learning experience — and focus on how learning campaigns can get eyes on that learning, once and for all.

WHAT MAKES A GREAT LEARNING CAMPAIGN?

Having seen a lot of learning campaigns over the years, and developed award-winning campaigns ourselves, we’ve learnt what works, what doesn’t, and the common pitfalls L&D teams fall into. So here are the six key steps to creating a great learning campaign:

1. One clear goal
   
   This isn’t a wishlist. It’s one shift you want to see with your learning campaign. Be clear, detailed, and dare we say it, be SMART. It needs to be more than “Get people learning”, and certainly focus on more than “increasing completion rates”. This goal should focus on behaviour or performance change — and nudge your learners all the way from awareness through to applying the learning at hand. Once you’ve defined your goal, absolutely everything in your campaign should link back to this.
   
   
2. A defined audience
   
   To create a really, really good learning campaign — you need to know your audience deeply. So I’m going to assume that you’ve already created kick-ass learner personas. And if you haven’t… then hang your head in shame and hop to it!
   
   When building your campaign, choose a persona or two (or maybe more if you want!) to focus on. Your campaign should appeal to the motivations, goals and desires of your personas. That means you must think about how the messaging, visuals and goals relate to them.
   
   
3. Multi-channel delivery
   
   Sending an email is not a campaign. Neither is uploading a course to your LMS and letting the push notification do the work. It’s time to start thinking multi-channel and multi-touch when it comes to marketing your learning content.
   
   Instead of sending one email, one time to your entire audience to promote your content. Think about using different channels to complement your email strategy, like Slack or MS Teams messages, intranet banners, video explainers or manager toolkits. And then use these tactics and channels over time. Yes — an effective learning campaign takes more than a week, but more on that later.
   
   Your ultimate goal here is to show up where your people already are. So grab your personas, and work out where they already hang out.
   
   
4. A strong hook
   
   If your campaign comms sound like it was written by a staunch corporate employee in the 80s, nobody will read it. So cut the corporate comms and start thinking like a marketer. Flex your copywriting skills and think like a marketer. Think along the lines of Nike’s “Just do it.” or Hinge’s “The dating app designed to be deleted.” Answer the WIIFM and hook your audience into your campaign.
   
   
5. Reinforcement over time
   
   Imagine a world where you tell learners about an initiative, and they drop everything and do it straight away…
   
   Yep, it sounds like a dreamworld, because that’s exactly what it is. In reality, we need to nudge our audience towards learning, and stay front-of-mind. Spaced repetition is spoken about a lot in L&D, but you need to apply it to your marketing for learning too! Your campaign should span more than a week. In fact, in our experience the sweet spot for a learning campaign is between three and six months. So make sure you plan accordingly and reinforce your message over time.
   
   
6. Measure, test and optimise
   
   The truth is, when it comes to internal marketing and learning campaigns, you have to run them and test what works for your organisation (and what doesn’t!) So rather than launching a campaign and sticking your head in the sand, launch your campaign, review it, test it, tweak it and optimise it!
   
   If you’ve designed an email you think is bound to work and get butts a’movin, but in reality most people deleted it without opening it — make sure you tweak and refresh your next email! There’s no point making the same mistake twice, after all.
   
   But the ultimate test of whether your learning campaign works? Long term behavioural change. Not clicks. Not completions. But whether you’ve helped move the needle towards whatever your business goal is. We can’t tell you exactly how to define that right now, given we know nothing about your business, but if you do want some advice, the Marketing for Learning® Podcast episode with Nelson Sivalingam is bound to help.

INSPIRATION FOR YOUR LEARNING CAMPAIGN

Now, those six steps are absolutely fundamental in creating a learning campaign that works. But what you need to bring to the table is creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. We always advise our clients to get inspiration from the world around them (we’re all inundated with marketing campaigns day-in, day-out!) but if you’re looking for some learning campaign inspiration, here are two great examples:

How did we do it?

This campaign had a challenge: the visuals were directed by the external Generative AI campaign. Which meant to grab attention we needed to really flex our copywriting skills and lean heavily into the ‘what’s in it for me?’.

Rather than “speed up your workflow with Gen AI” or “Learn how to use Gen AI at Capgemini” we leant into the facts, and outputs of Capgemini's client success with Gen AI, for example:

• Detecting litter from the sky. All in a day’s work for Gen AI.
  The future won’t wait. Elevate your possible.

• GenAI shortened the time to market for new cancer drugs by up to 10 years.
  The future won’t wait. Use AI as an ally.

• The Nature Conservancy is preventing ecosystem degradation with GenAI.
  How will you use it?

These fact-led posts grabbed attention and stood out in a sea of sameness. It immediately answered ‘why’ Gen AI was so important, and fuelled employees to learn more about how they could integrate Gen AI into their working day.

But we didn’t send these messages out in one guise and leave it at that. Instead we leveraged that repetition and reinforcement we spoke about earlier, repeating messaging, nudging personas down the decision-making journey and ultimately persuading them to learn.

How did we do it?

This learning campaign was unique in the sense that we were targeting external learners. And although that had its benefits (hello paid LinkedIn ads!) It had its drawbacks too. A much wider, less-captive audience meant we had to grab attention and fast.

Our primary goal was to boost enrolments and completions, but knowing our audience deeply, we also knew we wanted to put them at the heart of this campaign. We knew that their authentic user stories, recorded face-to-camera, would tap into the emotions of new potential learners and simultaneously answer the WIIFM. For this reason we used strong storytelling across email, LinkedIn, paid ads and YouTube, to drive engagement with potential learners.

WHEN SHOULD YOU RUN A LEARNING CAMPAIGN?

It might surprise you to hear that not everything needs a campaign. If you’re updating your data protection training? That probably doesn't need a full campaign. Rolling out very targeted training at a specific cohort within your organisation? That probably doesn’t need a campaign either. But here’s a quick check list to help you determine whether you need a learning campaign or not:

You do need a learning campaign if:

• You’re launching a tool, process, or platform across the organisation

• You need to drive compliance – without sounding like legal

• You’re embedding cultural values (e.g. inclusion, wellbeing, integrity)

• You want to boost visibility of learning as a whole

• You’re solving a real, specific behaviour gap

You don’t need a learning campaign if:

• You’re ticking a box (and you know it!)

• You can’t name the behaviour you want to change

• Leadership isn’t bought in with the new initiative

• You’ve got nothing worth saying yet

• You have a rubbish learning experience, and you know it!

The most important thing to remember is that a learning campaign cannot paper over the cracks of a poor learning environment. You need to ensure you have the ground work laid; an experience that works, leadership that is bought in, and a clear, meaningful objective that impacts the business bottom line.

LEARNING CAMPAIGNS VS INTERNAL COMMS

OK, this is a conversation we have a lot. Typically when working with clients, they tell us that internal comms deal with all of this ‘marketing stuff’. But the truth is — they don’t. We need to form an alliance with internal comms, but accept that they have very different objectives than we do when running a learning campaign.

L&D teams can partner with comms. But when we're running a learning campaign, we're looking to do more. We want to influence and activate action, not just inform. And that’s the key difference. Yes, it’s great if we can get a spot in the internal monthly newsletter, but if we want real impact, we must run campaigns.

Let’s compare:

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR CAMPAIGN WORKED?

Remember the 6 key steps to a great learning campaign that we discussed earlier? We told you to define one clear goal — that’s where we need to start when trying to work out whether your campaign worked or not.

Because even if you got loads of clicks. A tonne of sign ups. Ample people talking. The only thing that truly matters is whether you’ve hit that predetermined goal.

If you have, then well done! You’ve changed behaviours or performance and impacted the business bottom line — and that’s what L&D is all about.

But if not, that’s okay too. You will have a tonne of data and information from your first learning campaign, that you can learn from, and use it to adapt any future campaigns.

Whichever way it goes for you, one thing we can say for sure is that even a campaign that doesn’t reach your great expectations, is still way better than that one lonely email you used to send. So keep at it. Keep learning. And keep giving your audience the fully integrated, modern learning experience they deserve.