In light of recent events, I've made a small change to my at-home desk setup - I moved it to face the front window. It's given me a new perspective and time to reflect on the changes that have happened to all of us since the pandemic.
Lately, I've been contemplating the importance of badge hygiene (similar to hand hygiene). If, like me, you're constantly washing your hands and you also have a badge system, now is the perfect opportunity to give it a thorough clean. Allow me to provide some guidance through a series of questions as you embark on this cleaning process.
How are your badges performing?
This is akin to asking if you have soap in the house; it is an easy win. Take a look at the analytics for your badge program. You can break this down by dates, collections, or look to compare one template against another.
If you want to know which template performs the best, once you have clicked into Analytics, download the summary data. Then sort the spreadsheet by acceptance rate and you’ll see.
Across the board, you can see whether your audience is following through and accepting your badges. If you want to take it a step further, you may pull a detailed report to hone in on earner behavior and drill down in an effort to determine any overarching themes. For example, do the majority of earners create their accounts on Credly's Acclaim platform but do not actually go on to accept their badges? Perhaps they may not understand the value or benefits of digital badging. Is there some additional marketing campaign you should be implementing? If you need ideas, check out our recent webinars on marketing.
Scrub!
If you were to find dirt under your nails while washing your hands, you’d scrub harder or dig a little deeper. If you find a template that isn’t performing, you can perform a different kind of scrub. Yes, you could archive it (the ultimate scrub), but you could also look carefully at the metadata.
- Is this achievement badge-worthy? Is it something a person would share on their resume, for example?
- Is the description earner-focused, stating clearly what the person can do?
- Are the skills tags yielding results? Could there be more effective tags applied?
- Is the criteria easy to read and comprehend for an outsider? Have you used a hyperlink? (Hyperlinks allow a reader to drill down without making your metadata look junky.)
- Have you provided additional contextual cues through the skills attributes of type, level, time to earn, and cost?
Are you using all the features?
There are additional features you might consider with your metadata. Depending on when launched your digital badging program, you may not have known they existed! Discover a range of Acclaim's features.
Recommendations: Only the earner sees this feature on their badge, but recommendations allow you to layer on suggestions and nudge behavior. You can direct earners toward a next badge or an experience you are offering or just plain old good information. Learn more about recommendations here. An additional bonus is that you can get detailed analytics about who has clicked through to look at your recommendation.
Collections: You can organize your badges into collections, and these can be made public so earners can search for like-badges. Here is an example of a public collection.
Standards: If your badge template meets specific published standards, you might want to use that field. Take a look at how this example connects to two standards. It’s a way to throw some extra weight around.
Certificate Maker: If you have an audience who continues to value printing, we have a feature that allows for custom and printed certificates. A Customer Success Manager can help you with this feature.
Who else are you coming into contact with?
My last point is that you should be coming into contact with your Customer Success Manager (CSM). We can help you with badge hygiene by providing best practices, reviews, and so on. Additionally, we've compiled a variety of resources to support you in the meantime.
Now is a perfect time to engage in a little badge hygiene to make certain your program is performing as you want.
Credly
4
min read
