You’ve spent months looking for the perfect LMS solution for your organization or company. Maybe you sent out a lengthy RFP and went through that process. Maybe you spent months talking to so many salespeople your head is still spinning, or maybe you spent countless hours on Google and analyst sites. Now the search is over; you did it. You selected Litmos! Now what?

Figuring out how to get your learners excited for specific training topics is one thing, but how do you get them excited for an entirely new training program when some of your learners have never even been introduced to an LMS? That was the question Litmos customer, PRA, a business event management firm, was asking themselves. Their answer? Create an entire launch campaign around the Litmos mascot, Lenny.

What was this unique Litmos rollout plan?

It started four weeks before their go-live date. Curt Kendall, Senior Director of Talent Management, and his team sent out “Lenny is Coming” mailers. “We mailed random individuals sheets of paper that just said “Lenny is Coming, Educate Yourself” or “Lenny is Coming, What do you want to know.” Envelopes were mailed USPS to different people in every PRA office. No explanation!!  Everyone was freaking out because they did not know who it came from or what it meant,” says Kendall. In addition to not having an explanation, the return address was just “Lenny.” This started the wheels turning as everyone tried to figure out who or what is Lenny?!

Two weeks later, the training team at PRA followed up with promotional boxes. These boxes were again mailed to each of their 28 offices. This time the mailers included the popular Smarties candy and Dum-Dum Suckers with mailers that said “Don’t be a Dum-Dum, Be a Smartie. PRA University Coming Soon.” It was then that learners started associating the first mailing, Lenny, and PRA University.

It was finally time. The week of the PRA University launch. To build on the momentum created through the mailers, the training team hosted an all-hands company Zoom where they introduced PRA University. “Everyone on the call wore PRA University T-shirts (including the CEO) and we waved pompoms in PRA U Colors (green and blue),” says Kendall. They mailed pompoms to every office along with posters to hang around the office to get everyone excited about PRA U. Additionally, all PRA University communication came from Lenny, who even has his own email, lenny@pra.com.

To get learners even more involved during launch week, PRA held a contest. If you took five classes, you would win a custom PRA University t-shirt. This worked well for Kendall and his team. I mean, who doesn’t love a t-shirt? The learners were then asked to send back a picture of themselves wearing their t-shirts, which Curt’s team then used for even more promotional material.

How to keep the momentum going?

After the initial launch, the PRA team hosted numerous other contests that were used to encourage learners to participate in different courses. They chose not to launch the entire Litmos catalog all at once. Instead, they held different categories back, in order to have a new topic to introduce each month, for six months. One month they leveraged the new learning topic to send out PRA U bottle openers to all learners who completed their assignments.

PRA is a business events company, so while things have slowed down a bit for them due to COVID, they are starting to pick back up and look forward to onboarding all their new hires in what I don’t doubt will be another incredibly creative rollout.

Congrats to this fantastic member of the Litmos community and cheers to your continued creativity and success!