📂 How Teachable generated $10M ARR from online events

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When the world went into lockdown and we all hunkered down in our home offices (or couches), a massive new marketing channel opened up:

Online events.

They've always been a thing. Just not nearly as large and impactful as it is now.

Teachable, a platform for selling courses and memberships online, made online events one of their primary acquisition methods.

In fact, CEO Ankur Nagpal tweeted that they've driven $10M+ ARR from online events. 🤯

Ankur Nagpal 🔥🔥

@ankurnagpal

Online events are our secret weapon for acquiring new creators at @teachable 

Over the years, we have hosted 10+ major events that have been attended by over half a million people!

And ultimately driven $10M+ in recurring annualized revenue

Here's how we run them 👇👇

March 18th 2021

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Here's what Ankur said:

~The Structure~

After experimentation, we settled on an online 3 day event running from Tuesday to Thursday

Each day is packed with 4-6 live online events + recorded content scattered through the day

It’s intense but @jess_catorc is incredible ~The Content~

We find 25-50 incredible speakers that are ideally customers or subject matter experts

We’re fortunate that most @teachable customers are super charismatic and great on camera

We divvy it between keynotes, panels and recordings based on the speaker ~The Distribution~

We set a registrant goal of 50k - 70k signups. Big numbers!

But these events are dope and free so it’s a no brainer for people to join

This breaks down roughly:

1/3 from our own audience 1/3 from speakers + affiliates promoting 1/3 from paid marketing ~The Distribution, pt. 2~

Since the speakers are celebrities in their own right, they end up driving a large amount of distribution

And for us, paid marketing to an event works far better than any other paid marketing because it’s a dope thing people get for free ~The Offer~

At the end of the event, we extend an offer to the attendees to try a paid @teachable plan

In return, they also get free bonus content from the speakers

This works super well, but important to not be pushy here!

And ensure people have an amazing experience always.

Their last event had 40,000 signups. 🖐️🎤

—Corey

p.s. did you see that I launched my new course, Marketing Like A Media Company? Would love for you to check it out →

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📂 How Teachable generated $10M ARR from online events

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