Table of Contents

Introduction

The ed-tech industry is going under the digital revolution with support from the latest technologies. It has a current market size of $800 million and is estimated to reach $181.3 billion in the coming five years.  

Today, we can see more than 4,500 ed-tech startups trying to grab this huge market. So, this is high time for ed-tech brands to engage and retain users to withstand competition. 

What is the Need Of User Engagement For Ed-tech Brands?

The pandemic situation in the last year has contributed to the significant growth of these ed-tech sites. It has uplifted the user base dramatically and advanced the Ed-tech sector ahead of 5 years in the market.

We need to have a good user engagement rate that creates positive impressions of brands and brings more conversions. Before diving into the strategies, let us know the reasons to boost customer engagement for ed-tech brands.

  • To maintain a continuous connection with your users.
  • Build customer loyalty by asking for feedback and communicating the brand values.
  • Boost brand conversions through the TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content assets.
  • To create a positive user experience on the website.
  • To reduce the subscriber's churn rate.

Strategies to Improve User Engagement for Ed-tech Brands

We are aware that acquiring new users is a tedious task and 5 times more expensive than retaining the existing ones. So, with the increase in competition, ed-tech startups need to plan their customer engagement strategies.

To engage the users, there are various ways to do so. We have curated six effective user engagement strategies for the ed-tech industry below.

1. Push Notifications for Ed-tech Marketing

Push notifications play a key role in driving user engagement. There are numerous ways an ed-tech brand can send updates and alerts to its audience. An ed-tech brand serves a wider audience. It could vary from students to working professionals, universities and colleges, and more. 

For an ed-tech, it’s important to send push updates that cater to your different audience segments. These clickable notifications can minimize the search process by directly landing users on your websites. Push notifications have 10-15 times higher view and open rates than any other engagement tool. According to research by Truepush on ed-tech notifications, the best time to engage the ed-tech users is from 12 pm to 2 pm and the best ed-tech push notifications frequency is 10 to 20 notifications a day. 

Here are a few ways an ed-tech brand can send push notifications to its audiences. 

Retargeting Users for New Courses

It is a common use case scenario when users complete their preferred courses, they are unlikely to return to the ed-tech website. Now, to keep the engagement continuous, push notifications can be a great tool to retarget them.

You can send ed-tech alerts on upcoming courses or any related advanced course than their previously completed courses. 

For Example

Suppose an ed-tech brand provides a basic course for business language to its audience. They can further re-target the same audience with more advanced courses on business language.

Sending Universities Related Updates & Offers

An ed-tech brand mostly has tie-ups with partnered universities to serve multiple courses, provide any scholarship if any, and much other crucial information. Even the universities provide course discounts from time to time for students. 

So, one can send universities related updates through push notifications. 

Here is an example of ed-tech push notifications, which is depicting information about university scholarships and programs.

Marketing Ed-tech Content Through Push Alerts

An ed-tech brand has abundant content to share with its audience (as mentioned in the 5th point below). There are different content formats such as Topper’s case studies and interviews, informational blogs on career counseling, course preparation materials and guides, and so on. 

Sending these informational content assets through push notifications makes it a reliable source of continuous traffic. And the ed-tech subscribers would associate with your brand for further content consumption. Thus, making push notifications a strong engagement channel. 

Here is an example of a blog notification about exam preparation and tips. 

You can use a free push notification tool that helps you reach your targeted users with customized messages.

2. Engaging Existing Users With Emails

Emails are an effective way for ed-tech companies to engage their potential users and make more conversions. Through emails, ed-tech brands can send in-depth information with rich- content.

An email campaign is successful when you are able to encourage customer engagement using the emails. When your ed-tech users know you send relevant emails on educational updates, your subscribers stay connected with your brand and the churn rates will become low.

Engaging your email subscribers is important to turn them into loyal customers, which increases the brand conversion rate. So, here are a few tactics that you can add to your emails to re-engage your users.

Welcoming Emails for Ed-tech Users

Ensure to engage users from the first day when they have signed up with your email service. Invest your time in creating an email onboarding campaign as your first impression can boost positive user experiences. The ed-tech companies can send these types of information in their welcoming emails.

  • Ed-tech brands can send detailed steps of using products and services without any hassle.
  • Include details about the free courses, classes, demo sessions, and more.
  • Send case studies on how your ed-tech brand helped students to achieve their goals.
  • Provide reasons why they should join your ed-tech brand.

For Example

This ed-tech onboarding email shows details about their courses, program period, and includes CTA buttons for easier site navigation and increasing site traffic. 

Below is another email example describing the benefits of joining a course in your ed-tech brand. Here, the ed-tech brand is convincing the existing customer to join the course with the salary hike benefit.

Targeted Subject Lines

Ed-tech brands should convey the email content with a subject line alone to maximize the open rate which is a positive sign of user engagement. You should keep your subject lines short and descriptive about the course information, discounts, or live classes that give a reason to click on the emails.

For Example

Here, you can see the crispy subject lines with program details that are creating urgency and provide complete information.

Some of the common best practices for email subject lines for better engagement are as follows.

  • Include words that evoke user emotions through useful words like ‘Benefits’, ‘Upgrade’, ‘Learn’, etc.
  • You can also use words that create urgency among your ed-tech users like ‘Hurry Up’, ‘Offer valid till today’, ‘Don’t miss out’, ‘Grab Now’, etc. 
  • Maintain an ideal word count of 6 or a character count of 41 for your subject line. So, it is optimized for desktop and mobile devices.
  • Include the targeted words in the subject lines of your emails.

For Example
Instead of saying ‘We have an offer for you, check it now and apply’, you can use ‘Offer For You- Apply Now’

Promotional Emails On New Courses, Rewards & Offers

The discount offer on the first-course enrollment can be the primary reason why ed-tech users subscribe to the email services. You can engage the audience by sending regular updates about the new courses, promo codes, scholarships, and more. 

For Example

The below ed-tech email sends new course details straight to the inbox.

Follow Up Your Ed-tech Users

When your users receive your mails, they may likely forget to read them among a crowd of other emails and promotions in their inbox. Ed-tech brands should timely follow up with subscribers to gently remind them of your previous emails and offers. The optimal number of sending follow-up emails is 2-3 as overdoing this may increase the unsubscription rate.

A survey states that you can increase the reply rate by around 13% with one follow-up email. Make sure you prolong the time gap between consecutive follow-up emails to avoid chances of being marked spam.

For Example

Here you can see the difference of 7 days and 10 days between consecutive emails from an ed-tech brand, which is a good practice.

3. Social Media for Ed-tech brand User Engagement

Social media platforms are excellent networks to engage users and build relationships. The students and learners, who are potential customers for the ed-tech brands mostly depend on social media to search for educational and informational updates. You can make regular posts of new courses, sharing best tips for careers, university collaborations, and student success stories to grab the attention of the audience.

With a lot of social media channels, you need to plan your right postings frequency and timings to build engagement with audiences. As per research, here are the best timings and days to make posts on different channels.

  • To attain maximum engagement with Facebook users can make postings on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8 AM to 12 PM.
  • To get a high rate view on Instagram feed, the ideal time to post is 11 AM on Wednesdays.
  • Make Tweets on Mondays around 8 AM to attract more students, learners, etc.
  • To engage followers on Linkedin, post on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 9 AM.
  • The ideal count of posts is 2-3 per day for one social media platform.

Social media engagement is measured with parameters such as the number of shares, likes, comments, and so on. So, to maintain good engagement metrics we have mentioned few ways below with examples.

Ensure Continuous Communication with Social Media Users

Social media is a unique platform to communicate with the users using posts of images, videos, or content. Ed-tech brands can give an early sneak peek about products, success stories, course offers, and more. Here are few ways to have a continuous engagement with your followers.

  • Always make a habit of giving immediate replies to the comments in the post which will boost the follower engagement and positive user experience.

For Example

Here you can see ed-tech brands actively replying to their users.

  • Conduct polls and surveys that engages your users such as opinion on new course launch, rate satisfaction level with the ed-tech brand, voting for additional features, and more.

Here is an example showing an ed-tech brand taking opinions from its users.

  • You can re-post the survey results and highlight stories on your social media platform.
  •  Organize contests on coding, vocabulary, class quiz, and more and give away discounts and offers to winners.

For Example

You can see an ed-etch brand conducting scrambling word contests to engage its students through a social media platform.

Build User Generated Content

User engagement with social media is always a two-way street. You should listen to your followers and ask them to share their experiences, benefits of using your products and services. User-generated content goes a long way in creating brand image and trust among potential audiences. Moreover, user-generated content endorses a brand’s products/services straight from the existing customer’s end, strengthening brand credibility. The ed-tech brands can share the opinions of students, awards, news articles, blogs, and more on social media platforms. 

For Example

This is a social media post of a user expressing the contribution of an ed-tech brand in his success.

Join Similar Groups & Communities Where Your Audiences Present

Social media engagement is all about brand visibility on the platforms. The ed-tech brands can join discussion forums of top universities and colleges on social media to provide useful insights for the students. It will help you to engage with existing users and also creates interest among the generic audiences.

Build Your Social Media Visibility with SEO

Yes, we can increase social media engagement with the help of some simple SEO tricks. You can achieve a two-way benefit by driving organic traffic to your website using these platforms.

With a lot of competitors, the ed-tech brands should perform specific keyword searches to target users while adding the post title or description.

For Example

  • Get existing discount offer on our new course launch
  • Enroll our new VFX course & get 50% discount

The second post title targets the users searching for the VFX course and helps your ed-tech brand stand top in searches.

Hashtags improve the visibility of your posts on social media platforms. You can create hashtags for a specific campaign, discussion, or trend. Check out for social media tools to look up trending topics in ed-tech and use relevant hashtags for your posts. You can also create a hashtag with your ed-tech brand.

Here are few popular hashtags for ed-tech on social media platforms

#edtech

#education

#elearning

#onlinelearning

#edchat

#digitallearning

4. Implement Chatbots To Engage With Ed-tech Users

Introducing chatbots in the ed-tech industry has a large scope of boosting customer engagement. These can help to provide remarkable support for students in suggesting courses, counseling appointments, the onboarding process, scholarships, and everything. Ed-tech brands mostly use automated responses to filter down user queries and finally communicate with them through humanized responses.

The millennial generation which comprises students, learners, etc looks for quick assistance for their queries on the website. And chatbots are the immediate customer support for them.

You can use chatbot software like Drift, Hubspot, Intercom to facilitate online communication for ed-tech users.

Here are some of the common ways you can utilize chatbots services to assist and engage your ed-tech audiences.

  • You can provide details about webinars, master classes, live sessions, scholarship exams, job fairs, and more.
  • Ed-tech is not only about students but can also provide career opportunities for tutors. You can use chatbots to provide complete details about the qualifications and interview process for mentors, masters, team leaders, and more at your ed-tech brand.

5. Engage Users with Informative Blogs

Research says that blogging can attract 80% of online audiences to your website. Content marketing is the best way to improve user engagement, which is possible with informative blogs. The idea behind any blog post must be to engage users and give a message that your ed-tech blogs are a bank of knowledge. To rank your blogs well on search engines provide unique and engaging content for your users. 

Today, the ed-tech brands not only rely on a single content format like sharing generic blogs. But, there is varied information that the ed-tech audience looks for on such websites.

For Example

Here is how Byju’s, an ed-tech brand provides information through its blog resources based on various categories like informative material on different board exams, government exams, academic questions, kids-specific learning resources, and many more. Thus, serving wider audiences. 

Here are some tips to provide different types of content to keep your users engaged. 

  • You can include student case studies and interviews to build strong brand authority. And how the users will be benefited in the same way. 
  • For Example
  • You can create blogs for specific universities and talk about the important parameters that your users may consider before taking admissions. 
  • You can include career counseling blogs sharing useful insights on the scope and future of their career. And sharing the best tips and tricks.
  • You can also provide educational news-related latest insights on competitive examinations, news related to exams, sample papers for bank jobs, engineering entrances, and more.

6. Engage Users for Asking Reviews & Ratings

A survey by Learn Hub G2 has stated that about 93% of users check for reviews and ratings before subscribing to online services. The user testimonials will further help to build brand credibility among your new users. Ed-tech brands can ask their students, teachers, or universities to share reviews on various review channels like G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, etc.

You can checklist these few tips to encourage your users to provide feedback and ratings to your brand.

  • Engage users in writing feedback by providing them rewards and loyalty points to redeem on new course enrollments.
  • Respond to positive feedbacks with kind gestures and resolve concerns if any.
  • Storytelling helps to evoke customer emotions. Ed-tech brands can ask their users to share their growth stories/experiences.

Here are few examples of reviews on different ed-tech websites.

For Example

Here, is another example of students ratings for an ed-tech brand and reviews about the teachers.

We hope you find this article helpful to boost user engagement for ed-tech brands. If you have more ideas, share them with us!