LearnDash Expert on What Online Course Platform Is Right for You? Part 3

A Wordpress site with LearnDash combined with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a powerful combination. It adds needed features to the already flexible Wordpress and the best-in-breed LearnDash Learning Management System (LMS). In this article I go over the advantages of adding a CRM to the mix. As a LearnDash expert, I can tell you this drastically simplifies implementation, versus trying to build everything inside of Wordpress, and it enables you to implement features you couldn't otherwise build.

In this part 3 of my series on selecting the right platform for your online course site. I recommend visiting Part 1 and Part 2 first before going over this one. These will give you the background to best understanding this article.

LearnDash Expert System with Your CRM

As explained in Part 2, LearnDash with WooCommerce on a Wordpress platform is a good option for building your first online course site. You've got what you need to make your know-how available in course format and so your customers can access it. Let me describe what a CRM is and what new features it provides.

The term "CRM," doesn't do justice to these tools. Platforms like Keap (formerly known as Infusionsoft), ActiveCampaign and HighLevel, those are ones we know well and use in our customer implementations, are positioned in their marketing materials as marketing automation tools. Here's a list of features they provide which come in handy as you take on an online course platform.

• A database of contacts you can use to track all your prospects and contacts.
• Tagging feature so you can mark contacts. You can assign tags to mean just about anything. For example:
  • This person requested our newsletter.
  • This person downloaded a free worksheet, PDF files or saw a video you offer.
  • This person purchased one of your products.
• Email sending and broadcasting services like those provided by MailChimp, Constant Contact, GetResponse and AWeber.
• Forms and landing pages used to register people for your newsletter or for receiving a free item, often called lead magnets, to promote what you do.
• Automation sequences I will explain further on in the article.
• E-commerce functions. These are provided by Keap and HighLevel.

These CRMs offer many more features, but these are obvious features that are helpful when building online courses sites.

Giving Members Access via LearnDash Expert Implementations

Whether you offer a course for free, offer a free trial or outright sell your online course, you need a way to get these prospects into your system. Without a CRM, you can register site visitors using LearnDash's registration feature, but that offers very limited features. Many people will add a Wordpress plugin like Gravity Forms and use that for registration. Doing this requires adding one or more Wordpress plugins to your site to implement these features. That's not a terrible thing, but there is plenty of work required to get this up and running.

In a Wordpress only implementation, the entry point into the system is LearnDash's e-commerce or WooCommerce. There is really good integration between LearnDash and Woocommerce, so that's a good solution. The issue is the integration only supports selling access to LearnDash courses or groups of courses. You cannot give access to a bank of blog articles or some other Wordpress content.

What does a CRM enable you to do? All CRMs offer a form building tool so you can create a form visitors fill out to get access to something. These get connected to the CRM's automation sequences and can be used to send email or SMS notifications, tag contacts, give members access to a course, etc., etc., etc. When you integrate Wordpress with your CRM, you can have the form submission give members access to the course they requested then email them a welcome message with information and login credentials.

Courses purchases would be handled the same way. They purchase with the CRM e-commerce and that trigger a process similar what I described above.

What Specifically Does a CRM Get You?

Something like what I described can be done without a CRM. This is a minimum when you give new free or paid members access. But let me describe some scenarios a CRM allows you to implement:

1. After a member gets access, you can begin an email and/or SMS message sequence. You can monitor whether a member has logged in yet and send messages accordingly. These can be messages that get send out at the appropriate times.
   1. "Hey, We saw you completed lesson 1. Way to go."
   2. "We've noticed you haven't logged in for a week. Is everything OK? Can we do something to help you along?"
   3. "I see you completed lesson 3. It's taking your time going through the course. Are you really busy? Are you having difficulty? Is there something we can do to help?"
2. When members complete a course, your CRM gets notified. You also get notified when they are approaching the end of a course. This can begin an email and/or SMS sequence to upsell them into another product that's a natural next step to the course they are taking.
3. As they get past the mid-point in a course, you can send out a message asking your members to fill out a net promoter score (NPS) survey. You ask your members to rate their willingness to recommend your solution to others on a scale from 0 to 10. You can then ask anyone rating you 8, 9 or 10 to give you a testimonial. Those are likely to give you a raving review. You can take other actions when given lower scores. You could ask them why to get some feedback. You can even notify one of your team members to reach out to them. This is valuable for understanding your course's weaknesses and learn how to make improvements to it.

What Plugins Do I Need to Integrate Wordpress and the CRMs

I want to mention that in order to integrate Wordpress with Keap or ActiveCampaign, you need an integration plugin. We're a long time partner with Memberium. There solution is topnotch. Please use our affiliate link to purchase Memberium. We are happy to advise you as well. We also sell our Membresio plugin which enables you to integrate Wordpress with Highlevel. Contact us to get Mebresio and use or affiliate link to purchase HighLevel. FULL DISCLOSURE: WE DO GET COMMISSION WHEN YOU MAKE A PURCHASE WITH OUR AFFILIATE LINKS.

Stay tuned to part 4 of this where I'll go over selling LearnDash courses to organization using group accounts.