Collab365 Academy Update: Week 4
Here's what's been happening with the Collab365 Academy...
? What's gone well?
Member Growth: We've just welcomed our 823rd Member to the Collab365 Academy. Yay! Our ads are currently working well on Facebook. The cost varies, as usual, ranging from 8$ - $19 to get a person (who has never heard of us) to take our 7$ bundle. Order bumps and upsells take it to an average of 23$.
New 5-day Challenge: We've launched our brand new 5-Day Power Platform Challenge. This Challenge is our live-coached event that sees you build a vacation booking app in 5-days. So far, we've got four registered, which is brilliant as it's a new event format for us, BUT we have identified many improvements to the Offer (see below).
Migration of existing members: We've now started to invite people who bought in the "old way" into the Academy to enjoy the new experience! Fraser had to create a pretty complex onboarding automation that looks at previous purchases and then adds them to the correct Spaces.
Microsoft 365 Foundation Micro Course is live: Jon and Connor created a complete (short) course in record time! We've now launched this and already had 60 members go through it. If people pass the quiz at the end of the course, they're given access to our secret "Member Perks" area.
? What needs improvement?
The 5-Day Challenge registration page isn't converting as well as we hoped, which usually means we've missed something. However, we had a great team brainstorm and documented every worry/objection that someone could have. As a result, we've come up with a much-improved offer (which I am very excited about). (Note: we used a simple exercise for this doing this. If you'd like to know more, let me know).
Engagement in the Academy isn't where we want it to be. For members to get the best experience, member interaction needs to be encouraged. We also would love to members take the learning on Offer. So our plan for next week is to kick off regular events to give people a reason to join us.
?? What's happening this week?
Go Live in the Academy: Connor goes live in our first community event. He's going to be sharing a range of Power Apps UI tips.
New Events: We're going to discuss and announce the date of Solutions Day #2, plus organise more Workshops.
Member Perks: We will contact more Microsoft partners to see if they'd like to offer a "deal" in our Member Perks area. I see this as a win/win. The partner gets brand awareness, and the Member receives a good deal.
More email: Email is still the most effective way to stay in touch no matter what anyone says. We are planning to create a few email series aimed at different segments. People on our list who aren't in the Academy will be invited. People in the Academy who haven't taken the Microsoft 365 Foundation Course will be made aware.
Google Ads: We launched some search ads last week on a budget of ￡25 a day. No sales. We need to spend time understanding what we can do to improve this. I suspect the audience is off as the ad and Offer are fantastic, plus it converts well on Facebook.
?? Big things on my mind
Subscription Plan: Our goal with the Collab365 Academy is to offer training with a difference. We want to help live coach people to learn the Power Platform, which will require us to develop Challenges. To do this, we need more income. We've already been asked many times if we have a "subscription" plan, which we don't. However, we know that having a regular recurring income will unlock our potential, so this has to be something we will work on soon.
MI Dashboard: To make informed decisions, we need to understand our data much better. I need to know which ads/traffic sources are working on getting people signed up. We need to find time to create a Power BI dashboard that's always up to date and allows us to get some "Business Intelligence".
Until next week,
Mark