Email
Enterprise

Remote training experience for enterprise software

Summary

I led the design and strategy for an overhauled user training series that produced 115% increase in attendance and 75% reduction in directly related support time.

Company
FilmTrack (acquired by City National Bank in 2019)
Role
Designer & strategist
Timeline
9 months
Completed
December 2015
Role & Activities

I worked with a Product Marketing Manager, VP of Marketing, three Product Managers and stakeholders in Sales and Support. I made continual updates and changes in response to testing, feedback, and business goals during the 9April 2016-month lifecycle of the project.

Enterprise design
HTML/CSS
Visual Design
Wireframing
Content strategy

Background

FilmTrack is an enterprise SaaS company that primarily serves the global media and entertainment industry. The company’s software facilitates intellectual property management and allows its clients to maintain complex contracts and recognize untapped revenue. I managed a variety of projects for FilmTrack during my time there working in a cross-functional role as a marketing project manager. I was responsible for marketing-related web properties as well as transactional and product email templates. This role required a holistic understanding of the user experience for a user’s time inside and outside our product.

Challenge

This project aimed to serve a shared need between product, marketing, and support teams. Users needed a streamlined way to learn more about lesser-known product features and to get live demonstrations on new features. A group of account managers trialed several ad hoc Skype training sessions and wanted to develop a more manageable solution. The original series was not reaching the desired audience and did not have a consistent, professional communication strategy. Working with stakeholders, I developed three goals for this project:

  1. Increase weekly registrations by at least 20%.
  2. Reduce the number of requests to support/account managers about the series.
  3. Create an iterable communication strategy.

Due to constraints on development resources, I needed to find an external platform to host the webinars, provide access to past recordings, and manage reminders and general communications about the series. The teams wanted the series to be single opt-in and not to be publicly visible. These constraints prevented initial in-app integration, so the solution needed to be grounded externally but integrate seamlessly with a user’s normal workflow.

Approach

Before moving to the day-to-day series, we looked at the current training method users experienced. Users whose company opted for full implementation could receive instructor-lead training onsite. In other instances training was conducted on a 1:1 basis remotely or onsite. To reduce mutual strain on resources and to get users more comfortable with exploring and using new functionality, the team opted for a broadcast training method. This training method offered the best balance between 1:1 coaching and a knowledge base. We tabled a knowledge base early on since creating one wouldn’t solve the need for human-led training and Q&A and the resources required to create such a tool would far outweigh the benefits to users or reduction in support time. Working with the product experts, I outlined a process for the user to learn about, request, and register for training sessions. The marketing team and I settled on an email-focused communication strategy.

I outlined a series introduction emails which could be repurposed as the autoresponder welcome email for new series subscribers. Next, I conducted research on industry standard practice for email frequency for webinars. Based on this research of six webinar series for similar SaaS platforms, I planned to A/B test the two most common approaches once the series had begun. I completed mockups of training landing pages, emails, and presentation materials. Using a branding guideline established in an earlier project, I created custom illustrations to develop a cohesive mini brand around the training series. This branding helped users recognize the series. As the branding developed during the course of the program, we experienced better retention, less confusion, and ease in onboarding new users.

Outcome

Over the course of the project we learned a number of things that helped improve the training program. The primary industry served by the software showed better registration and attendance rates when the sessions occurred on a Thursday. Performance and program abandon rate were best when reminder emails were staggered at 2 week, 1 week, 1 day intervals. I worked with the original stakeholders to integrate the training program into the account implementation process. Overall, the training program led to increased user confidence, reduced strain on support, and a collection of templates to pull from for future user-focused programs. We produced the following deliverables:

  1. Increased registrations YoY by 115% and attendance by 75%
  2. Decreased support calls/account manager emails by 75% by adding information in email about the most frequently asked questions
  3. Produced emails templates, workflows, and iterable event templates.
  4. Increased confidence in using and knowledge of new features based on direct feedback