How an Integrated Toolset Creates a Better Client Experience at Code Camp

Code Camp’s mission is to inspire young people to be creators of technology.

They try to promote “positive screen time,” which means learning how to use technology in a productive way. Code Camp offers holiday camps as their main product, but also provides after-school activities for students and professional development for teachers. 

Code Camp has taught hundreds of thousands of kids across Australia and Europe in their school holiday activities and after-school programs. Their experienced Education Team has been working hard to distill their regular after-school program into an online format as well. Code Camp’s fun and engaging content ensures that students not only learn the fundamental concepts of coding, but are also challenged with more advanced concepts as the term progresses.

Each week, students work with Code Camp Facilitators to build awesome creations using Code Camp World, an online educational coding platform developed exclusively by Code Camp. Code Camp World lets students truly focus on the fun aspects of coding and the students can continue to code at home!

Keep reading to learn how Code Camp:

• Chose ActiveCampaign to make their marketing more genuine and personal at scale
• Integrates their entire marketing toolset to create a better experience for parents and students
• Uses automation and segmentation to send customers the right information at the right time

Looking for a platform to take marketing to the next level

When Code Camp first started in 2013 with an email database of about 3000 parents, they didn’t have a marketing team. Email was their number one source of revenue, and they needed to grow their email list rapidly. Code Camp relied on marketing at schools; they used posters, fliers, assemblies, and word of mouth to capture parents’ emails and generate revenue.

Once parents subscribed to their email list, Code Camp used Mailchimp to send communications. Mailchimp was a great starting point and easy to use, but Code Camp began to outgrow it. Before working with ActiveCampaign, the Code Camp team had to segment contacts within spreadsheets, then paste those email addresses back into Mailchimp. 

Everything was done manually, and they weren’t able to get the level of detail that they needed, such as students’ experience with coding, location, and preferences. The Code Camp team wanted a platform with more robust automation and segmenting features — so they chose ActiveCampaign.

Using automation, segmentation, and integrations to build a better customer experience

“I love ActiveCampaign because it allows me to save time and that’s really hard to quantify. The simplest explanation of the value is that it allows me more time to do other parts of my job.” –Josh Young, Marketing Manager

ActiveCampaign lets Code Camp build out unique segments and automations that save time and create more genuine customer communications.

Connecting the marketing toolset

Before ActiveCampaign, Code Camp had to use Zapier to connect all of their tools to their email platform. Now, using ActiveCampaign’s Deep Data integrations, they can connect their in-house backend system, Lola, to ActiveCampaign. Lola is Code Camp’s booking system and lists all of Code Camp’s camp times, dates and locations. It also manages staffing and provision of Code Camp World accounts for students. When customers go through the booking process, their information is added to Lola — then automatically uploaded to ActiveCampaign.

Another example of connecting different marketing tools is the use of WisePops, a pop-up builder that integrates directly with ActiveCampaign:

1. Code Camp offers a $15 promotion via WisePops pop-up on the website
2. Customers click on the promotion and provide their email
3. An automation in ActiveCampaign will send the promo to the customer

Sending the right message at the right time

When it comes to communicating with customers, the Code Camp team wants to make sure they provide relevant information in every email. To do this, they need to know their customers’ locations.

The Code Camp team created a custom app that takes users postcodes from ActiveCampaign and returns data about nearby venues. This lets Code Camp track promote upcoming courses to the customers that live nearby with early bird discounts.

Code Camp also collects information about a student’s last-attended camp, the products they purchased, and age. Being a seasonal business means that after every season, the Code Camp team can take that data and understand what’s next for a student — then automatically share that with parents: “The next step for Max is Code Camp Ignite. The next one is happening only 3KM away at this venue. Click here to enroll now!” These emails also have a breakdown of the courses that have been taken already and explain why the team recommends the next course.

Providing the best customer support

Code Camp has a large customer support team across phones, live chat, and email. To provide the best service, the support team has easy access to customer information from ActiveCampaign via the Help Scout customer support platform. Team members can quickly pull up a customer profile from ActiveCampaign, including any applicable promo codes.

Customer support also plays a role in the abandoned cart automations that Code Camp uses to re-engage customers who didn’t complete their registrations:

1. The first email in the series is branded and looks like a polished, designed email, with logos and banners
2. The second email in the series is personalized and comes from the customer support team

This abandoned cart email series has been highly successful for Code Camp, and response rates to the second email are “amazing.”