How to do online training using AWeber

By Rob Madden July 21, 2022

Most of us have sat through company-wide mandatory training sessions at some point. Everyone files into a large conference room at a set time. There’s one or maybe several presenters lecturing at the front. The content is usually a topic that can be a bit ‘dry.’ There might be several remote team members on a simulcast video conference.

These sessions often repeat over several days or weeks in order to get everyone trained. It requires a constant cadence of work to schedule, deliver, track attendance, report to management, and more.

Alternatively, you may have been asked to do some online training, usually through a very expensive education portal where all you want to do is click through the slides as fast as you can to get to the quiz at the end which you already got the correct answers to from your work buddy.

While this method does allow for self-service training which gets rid of the need for everyone to be in the same place at the same time, it can be seen as a chore for team members due to the restrictive nature of the workflow.

The good news is, there’s a better way. Using AWeber’s tools, you can easily set up and manage your own virtual training course. Here’s how we do it for annual security awareness training.

Record once, train indefinitely

Make a video. Be in the video. Talk like you’re training a single person. Use “you” and “your” and “we” words. This creates a personal connection between the viewer and the content and provides a more intimate feeling where the presenter is talking directly to an individual. 

Always have visuals to support the dialogue. There are a number of tools to accomplish this, including Google Slides. Find one that works for you and feel free to experiment. At AWeber, we host these videos internally so they are easily accessible from a shared URL.

Let team members own their time

Next, add your virtual team members to your AWeber list and build a campaign. Our training campaigns include an initial message with a link to the aforementioned video. 

Set up click automations on the link to capture who engaged with the email. Allow time for team members to consume the information in their own time when it’s most convenient for them. 

Using click automations, tag team members who watched the video and remove them from the campaign, so they aren’t bothered with reminders. For those who haven’t watched, send reminders at specified intervals leading up to the deadline.

You could also try using AMP for Email to produce interactive examples, feedback forms directly in the message itself, or provide a follow-up quiz if necessary.

Create remarkable experiences

Keep your video focused on the most important aspects of what you’re trying to convey. Nobody wants to sit through an hour-long lecture. 

Host an AWeber Landing page with reference material, additional links, and details. Link to it from your messages and direct team members to it in your video and campaign messages.

Provide a feedback mechanism. This can be as simple as directing team members to a Slack channel, email address, or another method of contact. Try adding a survey directly into your message using additional click automations. Make it easy to provide feedback in real-time.

Celebrate achievements. Make it special and unexpected. After a training completion, we use tag automations within messages and landing pages to send a thank you and a certificate of excellence to team members who followed instructions on how to record their training participation. 

Personalization variables within the message make it unique to the team member without having to hand-write each certificate. You can do all this within the AWeber’s message editor. We consistently get delighted feedback from our team on the personal touches.

Gain insights

No need to spend time manually determining who has been trained and who has not. Build segments of your team members (subscribers) using the campaign automation tags to show you instantly who has completed the training.

…and who has not.

Use Team Hub to grant access to other managers who will need to review these reports.

Use Reports to track how effective your campaigns are over time. Was engagement better in one training campaign vs. another? Use that to influence how you continue to create content. You can even split test trainings between groups!

Get training!

You’ve done it! You’ve created a repeatable, consistent, automated, self-service training all within AWeber. You created and delivered the content once, saving time and money. You’ve established automatic reporting on engagement to fulfill compliance needs. You’ve allowed team members to learn at their own pace and provided a personalized experience that will empower your team.

Even better, you can go get started on your campaign quickly with our Mini-Course campaign template right now!