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Become the official learning center of your niche. Create a User University within your SaaS company. Offer a blend of learning paths, helping your users and company stakeholders to learn more about your platform and/or acquire industry-related skills and knowledge.
There are SaaS companies that:
SaaS leaders can choose whether they want to simply build learning programs or create an entire knowledge identity around their customer education strategy.
A User University requires having at least one learning program.
► Quick note: Companies may refer to User Universities under different names such as Schools, Institutes, or Academies.
Compared to simply offering learning programs, building a full-fledged User University involves positioning your SaaS brand as a knowledge hub, which can later, under certain circumstances, bring recognition and industry authority.
► Quick note: Your Knowledge Center containing product-related guidelines is not a User University.
📓 Customer education: A growth practice focused on helping users, community members, or other company stakeholders achieve their desired results, whether by using your platform or acquiring new industry-related knowledge and skills.
📓 Customer learning programs: A wide variety and formats of learning initiatives. Learning programs include live facilitated training, workshops, masterclasses, courses, email classes, and more.
📓 User University: A learning center created by a SaaS company dedicated to its users, community members, and other company stakeholders. User Universities are focused on teaching people how to make the most out of a platform or acquire industry-related skills and knowledge. Usually, User Universities provide certifications for the completion of the learning program, validating the newly-acquired knowledge of its students.
📓 Certification: A proof of someone’s expertise, mastery, or proficiency measured against a standard, aka an exam.
📓 Corporate University: A learning center within a SaaS company dedicated to providing learning experiences to its employees.
By building a User University around your product, you’ll access multiple growth opportunities, such as:
Product-oriented, Miro Academy offers both on-demand and weekly live training sessions. People can access live sessions with Miro’s experts focused on agile events, strategy, planning, and brainstorming.
Commsor built the C School, a knowledge hub that offers multiple free and monetized learning programs. As the School’s page indicates:
“From self-paced courses to quarter-long, cohort-based courses, C School helps career changers and community professionals alike build skills and success in the community industry.”
Product-oriented, the Swapcard Academy offers one learning program in 4 different languages: Spanish, English, Italian, and French. The Event Studio Training is 60-90 minutes long, and it’s focused on transforming professionals into event tech experts who use the Swapcard platform.
Containing more than 15 micro-courses, the ClickUp University teaches users how to make the most out of the platform. People can filter courses by:
People have to register as members of the ClickUp platform before accessing the courses.
The Piktochart Academy was built around one course titled “Fundamentals of Visual Storytelling.” According to Piktochart:
“This course covers everything you need to know to make your story stick — from content, typography, and color psychology to images.”
People can enroll for free by creating a free Picktochart account.
Product-based, The Guru Academy offers multiple micro-courses. People can access them for free by creating a Guru account.
The Slab University provides two micro-courses. The first one teaches the basics of the platform, while the second one is focused on best practices. This example shows that you can build a User University based on tiny micro-courses.
The Webflow University offers a great variety of product-oriented and designing courses. From Webflow 101 crash course to Freelance website design bootcamps, the company provides learning programs for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced users.
The Bubble Academy offers multiple learning resources that aim to teach users how to build no-code software with Bubble. For example, people can choose to learn:
More than 1,800 students across 50+ countries have completed the Bubble Bootcamps. Registering to Bubble Bootcamps include $300 Bubble Credits as an incentive.
The Ontraport University provides more than 150+ training videos on marketing, sales, payments, membership, and web apps.
📒 Choose the type of User University you want to build:
► Product-oriented: It makes sense if you have an intricate SaaS product that involves achieving different proficiency levels. In this case, you can launch:
If you go with this type of User University/learning program, make sure to differentiate your courses based on elements such as the user:
► Industry-oriented: By choosing this User University type, you’ll be able to better position your brand as an industry authority. In this case, you can launch courses focused on teaching:
► Mixed: If you have the resources to launch multiple learning programs.
📒 Create one learning program. Ensure this learning program allows people to pass an exam and get a certification.
📒 Once you have the learning program, you can launch your User University page and publish it on it.
📒 Keep growing your User University by adding new learning programs.
📒 Track KPIs focused on the number of people who:
Also, track the adoption and churn rates before and after launching your SaaS University.
These numbers will provide you with more information regarding your SaaS University’s impact on your business growth.
