In this blog post, we’ll discuss how to measure the ROI of training as used for customer marketing. First, what does “training for customer marketing” mean?

Content marketers are entrusted with the responsibility of educating potential and existing customers with valuable resources related to their industry, but the content marketing toolbox hasn’t changed in recent years—ebooks, webinars, blogs, and videos.

Today’s customers are expecting more interactive experiences and are also looking to get demonstrated value from the time they spend with your company. According to Demand Gen Report’s 2015 Content Preferences survey, 91% of buyers prefer content that is visual and has an element of interactivity.

So, innovative marketers are experimenting with the next evolution of content marketing – offering on-demand training. This strategy provides your prospects with demonstrated value from the time they spend with your company, even prior to entering a buying cycle.

Increase your brand awareness by offering industry thought leadership that is scalable, convenient, and interactive. You can even offer industry certifications and accredited professional development hours.

Customer success, training, and education teams are frequently challenged on how to measure the ROI of their activities. It's not as simple as measuring new revenue for sales, or number of tickets and resolution time for support. Customer training is highly cross-functional and pays dividends over a longer period of time, with improved product usage, customer value, and ultimately renewals and revenue.

Whether you’re an experienced trainer, a customer success executive, or an innovative content marketer – this eBook is for you. You’ll find helpful information on how to define, implement, and measure the success and ROI of your customer training program. These metrics are vital to ensuring customer success, as well as demonstrating the business case for training to your stakeholders. 

In our previous blog post, we introduced the concept of customer lifecycle training. Customer lifecycle training is a useful strategy that you can employ to raise initial awareness with prospects, onboard converted customers, and increase ongoing customer renewals.

In this article, we discuss the first phase of the customer lifecycle - marketing (or "lead generation"). By offering training as marketing, you can inform potential customers about what your company has to offer, and how they can benefit from your products and services.

We recently started using Hubspot to track potential customers as they evaluate Skilljar's online training platform. While investigating the Twitter ad platform, I was surprised to find that Hubspot isn't listed as an integrated CRM or marketing automation provider (for the supported list, including Marketo and Salesforce, see https://business.twitter.com/help/lead-campaigns-faq-best-practices).

This is a major inconvenience, as we'd otherwise need to periodically download CSVs from each Twitter lead generation card in order to track signups.

Fortunately, Twitter provides an optional endpoint that I was able to successfully configure to work with Hubspot. Read on to learn how!