WhatsApp E-learning: What It Is & How to Use It?

Are you an ed-tech brand looking for ways to streamline your courses and send helpful resources to your students without interruptions? Many times it happens that your messages or emails will be marked as spam, especially if they contain files or multimedia elements. 

On top of that, with open rates of emails ranging between 10-20%, it feels like most of your efforts are being wasted if the recipients fail to actually utilize them. WhatsApp, on the other hand, boasts an impressive 98% open rate, ensuring your messages are always read by students. 

Also, since WhatsApp has a huge user base, allowing you to connect with most of your students using a single platform. Plus, with automating your outreach to send engaging messages to elevate your online learning to the next level. 

That being said, let’s take a look at what WhatsApp e-learning is and how you can use WhatsApp as a channel for running educational initiatives to deliver maximum results for your students. Here’s how:

What is WhatsApp e-learning?

WhatsApp e-learning can sound a bit ambiguous, but it simply means using WhatsApp to send educational resources, acting as a channel of communication between students & instructors, and optimizing the complete teaching experience for digital learners. 

As I said above, WhatsApp is a highly-used platform, with enhanced communication features and better engagement rates compared to traditional channels. Pair that with the ability to send multimedia components like images, videos, documents, and group chats to make it easier to have either a 1:1 or 1:many learning experience.

For example, by using WhatsApp, you can facilitate quick interaction, where your students can reach out to you in case of any questions, have live tutorial sessions, and get instant help from your tutors in real time – all from a messaging app that they know and use every day. 

What are the advantages of WhatsApp e-learning?

Although WhatsApp is used primarily for marketing and customer support purposes, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used by businesses working in the education sector. Having said that, here are some of the reasons why you should consider using WhatsApp for online learning:

International availability

WhatsApp is a global platform which is used in over 180 countries. Pair that with the 2.8 billion users globally, you can effectively reach out to your students without worrying about switching to multiple platforms for each country. 

This aspect of WhatsApp is a great help for digital learning platforms if you are seeking to reach out to foreign markets with a platform well-known and used by all. 

Better engagement

WhatsApp is a popular platform, used by people on a daily basis. This makes it so that your students don’t miss out on any of your messages. Plus, with its close to 100% open rates, you can make sure that your content is received properly. 

Multimedia rich conversations

Unlike SMS, which only lets you converse via basic messages, WhatsApp is a modern app with advanced media support, enabling you to share media-rich content. This way, you can gamify your learning and boost the knowledge retention of your students, ensuring your learning sticks with them for a long time. 

By leveraging WhatsApp, you can send:

• Video guides: Send informative video guides and classes straight to your students via WhatsApp.
• Audio files: You can share engaging voice lessons or lectures with your students, allowing them to revise important concepts on the go.

This way, you can make the learning process a fun experience by sharing engaging visuals, gamifying the experience and making it easy to understand.

Tailored learning recommendations

WhatsApp Business Platform comes with a powerful API to let you personalize your marketing and send customized course suggestions to your students that best match their needs. Additionally, you can send extra content like study tricks, exam tips, and time-to-time notifications about upcoming events.

Creating a learning community

On top of sending personalized one:one messages, you can create groups to build a learning WhatsApp community to boost the effectiveness of your content. In addition to that, by having a group chat with all your students as members, they can help each other with any problems that they might run into. 

Click-to WhatsApp ads

Click-to WhatsApp ads are a great way to drive traffic to your WhatsApp number and expand your reach to previously unknown markets. With these ads, you can take advantage of your Instagram and Facebook profiles to promote your courses and immediately grab

 the attention of students looking to enroll. 

Moreover, Click-to WhatsApp ads can also be used to encourage quick actions from students. For instance, you can market upcoming lessons, offer details about your courses, ask students to sign up for a workshop, and so on. 

Once a customer clicks on your ad, they will automatically be taken to WhatsApp, where they can reach out to you for more details, allowing your reps to interact with them and direct them in the right direction. 

Ways to utilize WhatsApp e-learning for your education business

As you might have understood by now, WhatsApp serves as a great platform to optimize your e-learning operations and enhance the learning experience of your students. 

Next, it’s time to take a look at the steps to integrate WhatsApp into your online learning platforms and use its capabilities to further boost your business success. 

Select a WhatsApp API provider

Before you can start using WhatsApp for your educational institute, you have to choose a WhatsApp API provider that comes with modern messaging functionalities. You have to search for a platform that offers online learning marketing and communication features, particularly built for your educational requirements.

For example, you have to think about functions like:

• Bulk messaging: By having a bulk messaging capability, you can send marketing messages at scale, allowing you to engage your learners all at once. 
• Automated initiatives: There are constant updates, alerts, and additional resources you need to send to keep your students up to date. So, your provider should have automation capabilities to let you streamline outreach without needing human efforts. 
• WhatsApp chatbots: A chatbot can manage repetitive, common student queries, saving time for your reps to focus on urgent inquiries. 
• CRM capabilities: Make sure that your API provider comes or at least, supports integration with a CRM solution to enable you to manage student data and have it readily available for your team when they need it.

Fortunately, you can enjoy all of these capabilities from a single solution, Zixflow! With Zixflow’s WhatsApp Business Messaging platform, you can make the most of WhatsApp and interact with students the way you want. 

Firstly, the intuitive nature of Zixflow makes it so you don’t have to waste time learning about the options. Plus, it is a code-free software that doesn’t require you to have technical expertise to work your way around it. 

Furthermore, the platform lets you take advantage of multiple template types, ranging from marketing to informational to WhatsApp Flows to deliver relevant content to help learners. The template builder is designed in such a way that you can design them within minutes.

On top of that, with Zixflow’s automation platform, Flows, you can automate your outreach and create a WhatsApp chatbot to take care of interactions 24/7. By having a chatbot in place, you are always one WhatsApp message away from your students. 

Again, it is super easy to use Flows. The drag-and-drop editor only requires you to decide the actions you want the chatbot to take by determining the message content, phone number, and whether you want the bot to wait for students to respond before following up. 

Furthermore, you can use the same automation builder, to set up automated messages or follow-ups to nurture leads and guide them towards signing up for a course. Here is a video to give you an idea of how to automate using Zixflow Flows:

Link WhatsApp with your Learning Management System (LMS)

The next step after choosing a WhatsApp Business Service provider is to link your LMS with WhatsApp. By having both WhatsApp and LMS connected together, you can streamline your WhatsApp outreach based on the actions performed by students in the LMS. 

For example, you can send welcoming messages along with what to do next after a student signs up for a lesson. You can also run follow-up campaigns if there are any events like webinars, seminars, or workshops, to ensure high participation. 

So, how to achieve this? You can make use of WhatsApp API to integrate with the LMS and directly engage with learners. Start by thinking about various touchpoints across the sales pipeline and design your communication accordingly. 

That being said, the process of linking WhatsApp with an LMS can differ based on the platform you are using. However, referring to the API docs of the solution can help you get started with this.

Set up automated WhatsApp messaging

Running outreach campaigns is one way to engage with students, but if you want to interact with them across all the stages of the sales pipeline, you need to create automated workflows. 

One way to do this is via a WhatsApp chatbot. A chatbot can handle frequent questions asked by students, offer relevant information about the courses, or redirect them to a sales agent if the query is too complex for the bot. 

In most cases, your WhatsApp provider should come with automation capabilities, allowing you to build a chatbot. And Zixflow provides you with just that. Being a next-gen outreach solution, Zixflow comes with a drag-and-drop chatbot builder to design a WhatsApp chatbot without any coding skills. 

You can design the bot to respond to incoming WhatsApp messages using the predetermined messaging templates. This way, your chatbot can handle multiple scenarios, and interact with learners in a much more personalized manner. 

Additionally, the messages can include engaging images, videos, and content, to send meaningful messages to enhance the learning experience. 

Monitor the performance of your efforts

Once you have started using WhatsApp for your e-learning purposes, you have to ensure you keep track of how well your efforts have been doing. 

By keeping track of the engagement and conversion metrics, you can make data-driven decisions to identify areas of improvements and further enhance the marketing initiatives for your online learning business. 

Not just that. Keeping track of your messages allows you to find out which kind of messages generate the best results, so you can keep using them for increased interaction. On top of that, you can improve the performance of your WhatsApp chatbot by collecting customer feedback, letting you deliver a more personalized experience to your learners. 

So, make sure you constantly monitor your WhatsApp e-learning efforts to elevate your conversation, and ultimately get more conversions for long-term success. 

Optimize your e-learning business with WhatsApp’s robust messaging capabilities 

With most of our needs available online, education should not be offered traditionally. Having a digital platform allows students to retain information, go over it multiple times, and access it from anywhere. And with WhatsApp, you can streamline your e-learning operations to deliver content more effectively. 

In addition to that, you can leverage the modern communication functionality of WhatsApp to set up automated responses, share meaningful resources, and interact with students in a real-time, virtual setting. 

By taking advantage of WhatsApp, you can implement a brand new marketing and conversation channel, making you stand out from the competition. 

So, start by looking into Zixflow’s WhatsApp platform, and begin interacting with students in a more personalized manner. Sign up for a free 7-day trial to check out the solution and see for yourself its amazing features designed to help you scale.