Eventbrite | Case Study
How Aurora Training Advantage Grew Revenue 10X by Leveraging Automation
The popularity of online training and education is growing – the industry is booming, and expected to reach over $275 billion by 2022. Despite growing competition in the space, Aurora Training Advantage remains at the top of their class. Their accredited programs help business professionals improve their skill sets in human resources, accounting, payroll, and general business skills.
When the business started out in 2011, Aurora Training Advantage was hosting just a couple of live events each month. In 2018, Aurora is on pace to host almost 200 live events and over 180 online video recordings of their webinars, on top of the custom on-site programs that they offer as well.
But before their small but mighty team could scale their business from a couple of webinars to over 16 events each month, they needed to solve some major operational inefficiencies.
The Challenge: Finding the right technology to grow the business
Each member of the Aurora team wears many, many hats. The owner, Isaac Freeman, takes on a range of responsibilities himself, from registration management and customer service to reporting on performance and developing strategies for growth. In their first year of operation, he recognized that the team was spending far too much time on burdensome tasks that had little impact on the business.
This was because their registration solution didn’t integrate well with other tools that they relied on, including their internal back-end and their CRM. “At the time, we relied on at least seven different systems and plugins to host events,” says Freeman. “The end result was that our registration process was limited in functionality and very clunky, especially from the customer’s perspective.”
For a company that operates completely online, a poor registration experience was a threat to their sales and their brand. Plus, if the Aurora team was tied down by low-impact tasks, there would be no chance that the business could grow. They needed to take action — before their small team was too burned out.
“Before we made the switch to Eventbrite, we had maxed out our capabilities because our technology wasn’t scalable. Nothing was automated, which meant there was a lot of manual intervention — and too many errors.”
– Isaac Freeman, President
Freeman knew that they needed a solution that would automate the most time-consuming processes of their workflow and allow them to scale their business. He set out to find a registration solution that would:
• Easily integrate with the tools they rely on
• Maximize the team’s efficiency
• Improve the registration experience
Aurora Training Advantage by the numbers
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10X
revenue growth since 2011
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7X
growth in number of events hosted each year
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2 hires
saved because of technology
Integrating with the tools they rely on
At first, Freeman considered hiring an internal team of developers to build their registration solution, but ultimately determined that this cost was both too high, and unnecessary. “We were a small company and didn’t have a large development staff that could dedicate the time to build this,” Freeman shares.“
We wanted to invest in technology that would allow us to get up and running quickly, and pay off for us in the long term. To us, this meant leveraging proven technology that would adapt as we grew our business.”
Aurora turned to Eventbrite’s flexible platform to list their live webinars. “We chose Eventbrite for the ease with which the technology would work with other tools, especially our CRM,” says Freeman. “Eventbrite’s integration with Salesforce allowed us to sync the two systems together seamlessly.”
“We would have needed at least two full-time hires on staff if we had not gone with Eventbrite. That’s a huge saving for us.”
– Isaac Freeman, President
Maximizing team efficiency
Aurora Training Advantage’s sole developer took advantage of Eventbrite’s open application program interface (API) to build their own programs, which connects their internal system with Eventbrite.
“As our business became more robust, we were looking for ways to simplify our workflows,” explains Freeman. “With Eventbrite’s API, we’ve been able to automate almost everything.” The Aurora team built a custom integration that automatically creates event listings from information on their website, eliminating the need to log into multiple systems or repeatedly enter the same information by hand.
That was just one of many time-saving (and error-eliminating) tasks that their developer automated. They also automated reporting, email communications with registrants, and parts of their affiliate marketing program.
“The technology has allowed us to set ourselves up to be super scalable. Between our team and Eventbrite, everything is set up to help us grow. Automation helped us get there.”
– Isaac Freeman, President
The efficiency gains have paid off, big time. Since switching to Eventbrite, Aurora Training Advantage has increased the number of events that they host by nearly 7X, while their team stayed the same size. Freeman says that this year they are approaching 10X revenue growth.
Improving the registration experience
Now, with operational efficiencies in place, they are laser-focused on the customer experience. Unlike in-person classes, workshops, and seminars, Aurora Training Advantage only interacts with their registrants online, so they needed their website’s user experience to be first-class.
“Not only does our team love Eventbrite’s intuitive interface, but our customers love it too. The purchase process is so smooth that we almost never get customer service complaints.“
– Isaac Freeman, President
“Even though our business has quadrupled, our customer support needs haven’t,” says Freeman. He attributes that to automation across all of their technology platforms, including Eventbrite.
Aurora relies on the seamless experience to keep registrants satisfied. A customer registers for their webinar in three easy steps, and their confirmation is automatically sent to their email. The day before the webinar, they’re sent another automatic email with all of the details they need to access the event.
All of the communication with their attendees is automated. “Our customers rarely contact us with questions or have trouble finding their registrations,” shares Freeman. “It’s so smooth and easy that we almost forget that it’s there sometimes.”
Investing in a partnership that supports their growth
To Aurora, the key to growth has been spending their time and money in the most efficient way possible. This allows the team to focus on more important and impactful parts of the business. Freeman says, “It’s how we can continue to grow the business and increase revenue.”
“We really do think of Eventbrite as our partner. It’s allowed us to focus on growing the business, rather than us building our own technology or dealing with too many different vendors.”
– Isaac Freeman, President
Aurora still has their eyes set on growth — and they plan to continue to leverage technology to get there. “We’ve only partially tapped into what we can do on Eventbrite,” Freeman says. “There’s so much more that we want to do through social tools and other integrations. We can’t wait to see how much more we can grow when we do.”
