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6 Tips To Keep Students Engaged After An Online Course

Those who work as online producers or teachers need to offer quality material and know how to pass on knowledge, but it’s also essential to invest in online post-course engagement.

Hotmart

05/14/2021 | By Hotmart

The online courses market is constantly growing, and more and more people are interested in studying in a DE (distance education) format or creating their own classes. 

Those who work as online producers or teachers need to offer quality material and know how to transmit knowledge, but it’s also essential to invest in online post-course engagement.

Check out our tips on how to engage former students and find out why it’s worth investing in it!

Why is online post-course engagement so important?

When we wish to purchase something, we often search for recommendations from those who have already had an experience with that product or service. 

Therefore, the best recommendations will be from those who have taken your course and recommend it to others.

Besides, former students might be interested in taking new courses or purchasing additional materials. After all, these people are already familiar with your work and identify with the content you share.

But if you don’t offer anything valuable after the course, they’ll become interested in other things and stop interacting with what you produce over time. 

And this is why post-course engagement is so important! 

By building student loyalty, you increase the chances that they’ll enroll in your launches and become advocates for your brand.

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6 tips for engaging former students

We know that the process of creating content and delivering the classes must take up a lot of your time. 

And how will you manage to invest in engagement actions? Where do you start?

Don’t worry; engagement doesn’t have to be complicated and time-consuming. 

It can be done through simple actions that, besides cultivating the relationship with your former students, can provide great ideas for new content or improvements for your next classes.

1. Ask for (and offer) feedback

Asking for feedback is the first step in keeping in touch with the people who have participated in your courses.

You can include an online form immediately after completing the course to request feedback on the classes. Even bad reviews can help. Here, you can ask what they thought about the didactics, format, class times, and duration, for example. 

You can also use this moment to ask about people’s interests.

If you offered a beginner’s gardening course, how about checking to see if your students are interested in delving deeper into a related topic, such as pest control or advanced gardening techniques?

This feedback can become a major reference for your next courses!

If you have any feedback to share with your students, take advantage of this moment as well.

Share your perceptions of the class’s involvement, offer additional materials for the top questions that arose during the course, and make yourself available for future contacts.

2. Issue a course certificate

The course certificate can be used to enrich resumes or even LinkedIn profiles. For the participants, it’s a way to demonstrate that they have certain knowledge and/or skills.

But this is also good for online teachers, those who produce the courses! After all, certificates can serve as advertising for your work and attract people interested in what you teach.

So consider creating and providing certificates for people who complete your courses. 

It’s important that the document contains the date the course was taken and completed, your complete information, and also the information of those who attended. 

3. Send emails regularly

Email marketing is an excellent way of maintaining your relationship with your former students.

You have certainly heard the saying that “if you’re not remembered, then you never existed”, right? 

If people attend your courses, then never hear from you again, how will they remember the value you can add to their lives?

Make a special effort on these emails and maintain a periodicity so that, over time, people get used to always receiving something from you on a given day and time.

But be careful! When putting this tip into practice, you must take care so as not to fill people’s inbox with irrelevant messages that will be immediately archived.

You can send emails with tips related to what you have taught in the course or news and trends in the area. 

The important thing is that the recipients feel that your emails have value and feel interested in continuing to receive them. 

When you launch a new product, such as a new course or material, your former students will have fresh memories of how valuable your content is. 

4. Create communities

This is one of the tools for distance education that can be used early on in your classes.

Communities are spaces to exchange ideas, share experiences and questions, and network. And these are just a few of the advantages of creating online communities!

Creating these groups during your classes will help increase interaction among the class, enhance learning, and bring you closer to your students.

People often have questions about the potential of online courses precisely because they think that there’s no possibility of creating bonds. 

With the communities, you create this informal and exclusive communication channel for the participants.

You can create your online community by using social media, such as Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, and apps, such as Hotmart Sparkle.

After the course has been completed, maintain the community and use it to encourage people to share how they are applying what they have learned, what are their main challenges and achievements.

Thus, you’ll have the opportunity to use it for the promotion of your upcoming courses, services, and produced materials as well.

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5. Offer additional material

Prepare content in other formats to send to your former students by email, or share them in the discussion community you’ve created.

You can use various materials, such as infographics, e-books, spreadsheets, podcasts, or whatever makes the most sense for your niche. 

The idea is to share knowledge related to your course’s topic, but that is complementary and new. 

This way, you encourage your former students to put what they have learned into practice and continue studying the subject further.

6. Create discounts and exclusive offers

Everyone likes a discount or a special offer, right?

Give those who have already participated in one of your courses special payment conditions so that they feel they’re special and become motivated to enroll in your new courses.

You can offer a better price, allow early registration with gifts, or an exclusive and special module for former students… 

Use your creativity to deliver something that really makes sense to them and attracts your former students to whatever you’re currently offering.

Start engaging your former students right now!

Boosting engagement after an online course is a valuable strategy that you need to put into practice as soon as possible! 

You can use all of the tips simultaneously since they are complementary and will help you create a very close and valuable relationship with your former students.

One of the features of the Hotmart Sparkle app is creating online communities, which are essential for bringing together those who have participated in your courses, keeping in touch, and offering additional materials.

And, as you’ve seen above, creating a community is a valuable strategy to nurture relationships with customers. I suggest you download it (iOS or Android) and check out how you can build a strong community with this free app!