The making of Mailchimp Academy
Discover how we worked with Mailchimp to upskill their advertisers. Mailchimp reached out to us for our learning experience expertise. Together, we developed an online learning hub for users to deepen their knowledge and earn Mailchimp certification.
Bottling Mailchimp’s magic
To create the Mailchimp Academy curriculum, there were a couple of things to be done straight away. First, we needed to get inside a future learner’s head, and marry their questions with Mailchimp’s expectations for expertise — from this, we’d analyse potential knowledge gaps and work out how best to fill them. Second, we needed full sight of Mailchimp’s existing content so we could begin work on their bedrock certification, "Mailchimp Foundations".
So, we started by considering a Mailchimp agency user, and created a learner profile for them, drawing on conclusions from ours and others’ research. And we conducted a full audit of Mailchimp’s content, so we fully understood our launch point.
Creating compelling content
Then, working with Mailchimp’s partner, design and marketing teams, we produced that content on a rolling basis. From wireframes to animated GIFs, we mapped out content production and learner interaction. This included testing content on real-world learners to gain feedback and iterate rapidly to meet their needs.
By using agile methodologies and maintaining our product mindset, we worked at pace to keep up with product releases and updates. And we continued to view Mailchimp Academy as a standalone product – applying development principles to set the programme up for scalable success.
Good-looking learning
Mailchimp is a playful brand, and we were careful to keep that sense of play front and centre in our designs for its Academy platform. Use of abstract patterns and fun, hand-drawn illustrations created an approachable visual language that still made sense alongside Mailchimp’s overall brand identity.
Making marketing champs
Our initial work with Mailchimp in spring 2020 generated over five hours of educational material, including:
- Engaging micro-modules.
- Interactive learning activities.
- Bite-sized pop quizzes.
- Challenging assessments.
Since Mailchimp Academy launched, we’ve continued our partnership with Mailchimp, fine-tuning the learning experience to make it even more engaging and useful.
Plus, we’re delighted to have won a platinum Hermes award for our work on Mailchimp Academy. We’re even more delighted that within months of the initial launch, over 1,800 users enrolled, and more than 100 achieved Mailchimp-certified status.
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Intuit Mailchimp
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