Since associations are familiar with generating nondues revenue through the sponsorship of in-person educational events and online advertising, it’s seems only natural that sponsoring e-learning programs would come next, right? However, many associations haven’t taken that next step to offer sponsorship packages for e-learning. This may be because organizations feel like they are already selling a plethora of other sponsorship opportunities, or that they haven’t seen enough success stories of other associations selling e-learning sponsorship packages.

While sponsoring an in-person event can seem more tangible because a sponsor gets facetime with attendees and typically walks away with a new list of leads, it doesn’t mean e-learning sponsorships aren’t valuable. In fact, it could be a good selling point to remind potential sponsors that they pretty much have an online learner’s undivided attention. Here are some ways to get your sponsors involved with your e-learning programs.

Develop Sponsorship Tiers

You’re probably no stranger to tiered pricing—be it with tradeshow sponsorships, memberships, and conference registrations. Do the same when it comes to selling e-learning sponsorships, especially when you first start out. There are a few different e-learning opportunities that lend themselves to sponsorship:

Webinars. Acquiring sponsors for a webinar series is a great strategy for getting multiple e-learning events picked up quickly. However, since not everyone will be willing to jump into sponsoring an entire series if you’re just starting out, it’s important to have multiple options. Consider having a first-time option for just one webinar, as well as options for quarterly to annual webinar sponsorship. You could also tier the packages within the webinar sponsorship category. Silver sponsorship could include the webinar moderator mentioning the sponsor and displaying a logo, while upgrading to gold could also include a 30-second live promo by the sponsor or a pre-recorded video that is played.

On-demand presentations. If you’ve recorded presentations from an in-person meeting, you can use the archives as an opportunity to sell on-demand sponsorships. You could sell these on a per-presentation basis or look to a few organizations to sponsor the entire on-demand event. These sponsorships could include clickable logos or ads and information about each sponsor.

Courses. In the world of associations, courses are typically related to earning continuing-education credits, certificates, or certification. This could mean more value is associated with a course versus an on-demand presentation or live webinar. And if the course is evergreen, a sponsor may associate even more value than a course that is only temporary. As you determine how much to charge for these sponsorships and how to sell them, consider if these are courses learners will access year-round or only during a certain time of year.

While sponsoring an in-person event can seem more tangible because a sponsor gets facetime with attendees and typically walks away with a new list of leads, it doesn’t mean e-learning sponsorships aren’t valuable.

E-learning portal homepage. Don’t forget about sponsoring your e-learning portal’s homepage. Just like you may have banner ads on your association’s website, your LMS homepage is a great place to sell sponsorship. You could tier the sponsorship by length of time and provide discounted pricing the longer a sponsor commits.

Provide Data

As mentioned previously, the ROI of an in-person event is often more tangible for sponsors because they walk away with a list of new leads. However, there are some ways to make your e-learning sponsors feel satisfied:

• Provide monthly pageviews to those sponsoring specific pages and programs on your LMS. While these pageviews may not be a direct correlation to new business they receive, the numbers will help reassure them that enough eyeballs are on their information.
• Encourage your sponsors to use a unique URL for their sponsored ads and logos. This will provide better tracking for them.
• Use advertisement areas within your LMS where ad code or specific image code can be added as another avenue for highly trackable sponsorship.
• Include surveys that ask learners if they’d be interested in being contacted by the sponsor. This allows for the sponsor to see potential leads very easily.

Remember that there are many ways for your association to take advantage of this mostly untapped revenue stream. The more types of e-learning programs and content you have, the more you can be creative about packaging and selling sponsorship opportunities.