Tips for Improving Recipient Engagement

Encouraging your recipients to engage with their credentials is a great strategy for brand awareness. Here's how you can increase it.

We know that one of the key objectives of any company or organization is brand awareness. Getting your recipients to share the experiences you created for them as a business and brand is extremely valuable.

We have some recommendations based on what successful credential programs have done to market and scale simply through their recipients. 

1. My Recipients' Experience Settings

You can customize how you would like your recipients to engage with their credentials in many ways, but their experience should be your priority.

Leaving your recipient options set to public increases the chances of your recipients engaging with their credentials upon receiving them, especially when returning to their credentials. By hiding these options, there is less chance that your recipients see their desired action (share, download PDF, etc.) and do that action.

Accredible recommends leaving all these options public - so they are easily visible. Even options like 'Request a name change,' which will require a returning viewer to sign in, can be visible as options but will still require a sign-in. This way, they are still secure, and they are more likely to engage. If you really must hide some options, we recommend leaving at least 4 options public - especially sharing.

You can find these options in the Department settings of your account. 

2. Branding is Important

Having your branding on the experience helps encourage interaction by giving the recipient confidence that they are receiving something important from you. It looks like something they want to share and take pride in.

Since most credentials are delivered to their owners by email, branding the emails Accredible sense on your behalf has a huge impact: Issuers that customize their emails get 50% more engagement than those who do not.

You can also set up a custom domain where your credentials will have your logo on the navbar by purchasing our basic branding package*, making credentials look and feel like they came directly from you.

For more information about our branding package, click here. 

3. Customize Your Email Content

The first email delivered after your recipients earn their credential is KEY. 

You should customize your template with one, or at most two, clear call-to-actions (CTAs) that will get your recipients' attention right away. The email should be short and concise so that it does not look like spam or lost interest with too much information. A couple of successful examples are shown below: 

4. Educate Your Recipients

This is one of the most important factors that affect engagement. The more you work with your recipients to educate them on the features and benefits of their new digital credential, the more likely they are to engage. Some ideas for helping to educate them to include:

• A webpage on your site/course pages dedicated to Accredible credentials.
  Need help getting started with this? We have some copy you can direct students to or customize to communicate how your recipients should engage with their credentials: https://www.accredible.com/accredible-issuing-partners/
  A great example from one of our customers who have had recipient engagement success can be found here: https://www.iiba.org/certification/certification-digital-badge-program-and-directory/
• Please send an email blast before the certificate is sent to advise your recipients when it will arrive and what to do with it. You can do this with the email provider/method that you use to communicate with your recipients. 
• Take some time before & during your course to explain Accredible credentials to your recipients. 

Still Low engagement numbers? Bonus tips:

1. Make your credentials public by default:

On average, issuers who leave their credentials to the public experience more than TWICE as much engagement as those who set their credentials to private. There may be some privacy reasons you can't make your credentials public. If at all possible, we recommend leaving your credentials public. This will make a huge difference in how your credentials are interacted with. For reference, make sure the first option in your groups' Visibility settings is toggled off:

2. Resend your credentials.

You can filter the credentials that have not been engaged with through your groups or Credentials List:

After using the filters on the top of the Credentials List, select all the credentials at the top and hit Resend Email. That way, only those who have not opened the email will receive this email again. 

3. Try testing variations of your email content

After changing your content, track the engagement through the analytics section. You'll be able to filter the analytics on the date after the changes were made and see if there was any impact. 

4. Get feedback from your recipients

You can export the same list of unengaged credentials or engaged credentials from your Accredible account and send a custom message with your email provider asking them for feedback. This can give your insight into making your programs better and getting their attention for higher engagement! 

Let us know your feedback if you are still experiencing low engagement rates. You can see how you're doing in comparison with others in your industry here. 

Has this article helped you? Let us know!

If you would like to tell us about any improvements you feel could be made to this page, you can email us at support@accredible.com.