To maximize retail associate engagement with your content, follow these guidelines on how often to launch courses and when to inactivate them.
One of the most common questions we hear from clients, aside from how to build a successful award strategy, is how long a course should remain active.
After working with brands for over five years, we've consistently seen that the most successful ones, those whose SellPro content receives the highest user engagement, take a hybrid approach to this by launching new content on a regular schedule, as well as finding the "sweet spot" for their specific program. While finding that "sweet spot" can take a bit of time, we have some general guidelines that can help you get there faster.
When to inactivate a course
At a high level, we have found that courses reach their peak number of completions on the 30–45-day mark. After a course is active for this time period, completions will continue to trickle in, however, to get the most out of this content slot, a brand would be better off launching a new course or relaunching a new version of the course.
Using the 30-45-day timeline as a baseline, brands will then monitor the completions of each of their courses to find what that ideal time period is for their specific content to be active. This may end up being a set amount of time for all of their content or, more often, a brand will continuously monitor engagement and completions and take action when they start to see a dip in engagement. In these cases, it is imperative for brands to have a backlog of courses built and ready to go so they have the ability to be flexible with the timing of new content.
How often to launch new courses
Along with finding the ideal length of time for courses to be active, the most effective way to keep sales associates engaged with your brand and to attract more to your content is to constantly release new content on SellPro. This can be in the form of courses, awards, events, campaigns, etc. Since we are focusing on courses, the best practice is to release a new course on a weekly basis.
You can see this strategy in action in the data below. Both brands have the same number of courses active, however, Brand A launches courses on a weekly basis and monitors course completions to ensure they aren’t leaving content active past its peak. Brand B, on the other hand, has an inconsistent course launch schedule and courses remain active well past 30-45 days.
To summarize, to create a successful program, brands need to constantly rotate their content to provide sales associates with plenty of new material to consume.