Whether your priority is growing enrollment or sustaining participation, are you chasing new prospects or relying too heavily on existing relationships? Bring your experience to this conversation as we explore how credit and non-credit programs balance new audiences, repeat learners, one-time participants, and partners.

Graduate, online, continuing education, and professional learning programs often wrestle with the same strategic question: how much effort should be spent attracting new participants, retaining current learners, re-engaging past participants, or cultivating deeper partnerships? Many teams already make these decisions intuitively, but they may not have shared language for comparing the relationship strategies behind them.

This Conversation, Not Presentation session will use customer portfolio management as a simple discussion framework for examining relationship strategy across learning programs. Rather than treating growth only as a funnel problem, participants will explore how programs manage a relationship portfolio that includes strangers, acquaintances, friends, and partners. The conversation will also use the “large leaky bucket” metaphor to ask when churn is expected, when it is harmful, and when deeper investment in existing relationships may create more sustainable growth than simply recruiting more new prospects.

The session is designed for leaders, administrators, program coordinators, instructional designers, and others who help design, market, support, or sustain digital and professional learning experiences. As learning programs face increased competition, changing learner expectations, and pressure to demonstrate value, this conversation will help all in attendance to re-analyze their approaches and assumptions.

This will not be a presentation on marketing theory. The facilitators will briefly introduce a shared vocabulary using a one-page visual handout: strangers, acquaintances, friends, and partners in the context of  viewing successful firms as having a "large leaky bucket" of learners. These concepts are intentionally intuitive and will be used to help participants name patterns they may already recognize in their own work. 

The majority of the session will be spent in whole-room discussion along with a live Google Doc allowing quieter participants to also share observations and reflections for the group to see.

The three facilitators bring different perspectives on relationship strategy across learning experiences. These perspectives will be used only to seed the conversation when needed. The Director of Camps and Conferences partners with faculty and staff to host nearly 10,000 campers each summer from arts to athletics to STEM.  He has used AI to segment campers by relationship to determine which changes might move them "upward" in terms of loyalty while still keeping a large number of new campers coming in each year to generate sufficient revenue.  The faculty program coordinator has often focused on segmenting prospects to determine how successful the program will be in helping them to meet career goals, but the stackable certificates on which it is built allow for a bit of a "larger but leaky" bucket to increase program enrollments ethically.  The graduate dean will speak to the tension of bringing in an increasing number of new graduate students to meet sustainability goals while also striving to retain the students.  Segmentation in terms of employer has allowed for some "loyal friends" to be turned into partners.

The goal is for participants to compare how relationship strategy changes across different kinds of learning experiences, from one-day or one-week programs to multi-year graduate programs and long-term institutional partnerships.

Conversation Design and Interactivity

Participants will be invited into the conversation during the first few minutes. The facilitators will use brief prompts and whole-group discussion to ensure that attendees can contribute whether they prefer speaking aloud or writing. A shared document will be available for participants who want to add examples, questions, or takeaways during the session; participation in the document will be optional so that attendees can engage without a device.

Participant Takeaways

Participants will leave with:

• A practical vocabulary for discussing relationship segmentation in learning programs.

• A clearer understanding of how acquisition, retention, loyalty, churn, and partnership development interact.

• Examples of how the same framework can apply across short-term and long-term learning experiences.

• At least one question or strategy to bring back to their own team.

Opening Prompt: How do you currently segment the people connected to your learning programs?

Participants will begin by reflecting on the kinds of learners, participants, alumni, prospects, employers, faculty, staff, or partners they serve. They will discuss how they currently segment these groups, whether by program interest, modality, age, career goal, enrollment stage, prior participation, employer relationship, or level of loyalty.

Prompt 2: Where do you see strangers, acquaintances, friends, and partners in your own work?  Have you used AI to help identify these segments?

After a brief introduction to the relationship segments, participants will identify examples from their own learning ecosystems. For some, “strangers” may be prospective learners reached through broad digital marketing. “Acquaintances” may be webinar attendees, applicants who did not enroll, or participants who choose based on convenience or price. “Friends” may be alumni, repeat learners, current students, or past participants who seek out the program again. “Partners” may be employers, school districts, advisory board members, alumni advocates, faculty champions, or organizations that help co-create future offerings.

Participants will discuss where their programs may be overinvesting or underinvesting across these groups.

Prompt 3: What does the “large leaky bucket” look like in your context?

Participants will discuss the idea that successful learning programs may need both ongoing acquisition and meaningful retention. Some programs may need a steady flow of first-time participants because the experience is intentionally short-term. Others may view leakage after enrollment as a serious concern because persistence and completion are central to the learner promise. Still others may benefit from stackable credentials, short programs, or one-time experiences that allow people to participate without committing to a full degree or long-term pathway.

Prompt 4: What should your program rethink?

In the final discussion, participants will identify one relationship segment they may need to understand better and one strategy they may want to reconsider. The session will close with participants sharing possible next steps, such as improving communication with acquaintances, inviting alumni or repeat learners into advocacy roles, identifying true partners, reducing harmful leaks, or accepting some churn as part of a sustainable learning model.

Resources

Shaw, S. (n.d.). Customer portfolio management: An interview with Michael D. Johnson, marketing department chair, Wisconsin School of Business. Customer First Thinking. Retrieved May 29, 2026, from https://www.customerfirstthinking.ca/customer-portfolio-management-an-interview-with-michael-d-johnson-marketing-department-chair-wisconsin-school-of-business/

Selnes, F., & Johnson, M. D. (2025). Customer portfolio management: Creating value with a large leaky bucket of customers. The MIT Press. DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/15411.001.0001

Matthew Vick, Ph.D.

Dean at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Dr. Matt Vick is a professor of curriculum and instruction and dean for the School of Graduate Studies and Continuing Education at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He participated in the 2020 IELOL cohort. Matt has presented at numerous OLC conferences on topics such as adaptive learning, leadership challenges, and financially managing online programs as a non-business-trained dean/director. UW-Whitewater’s 1500 graduate students are mostly served through online programming. Several innovative programs have blended synchronous learning to expand the reach of their human service programs to rural and underserved populations. He values the access to education that online and digital formats provide to many different populations of students.

Nicole Weber, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Educational Foundations at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Dr. Nicole Weber is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Foundations Department at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she also coordinates the Instructional Design and Learning Technology (IDLT) master’s degree program. Prior to her current position, she served as the Associate Vice President (AVP) of Learning with the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), working closely with staff and global partners to advance professional learning opportunities, continuous improvement efforts, and research in support of quality digital, blended, and online learning. Before joining OLC, she was the Director of Learning Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she led online and blended faculty development efforts, technology training for the digital learning ecosystem, and emerging technology exploration and evaluation, collaborating across the institution to support student learning and success.

With a depth of experience leading global, national, and campus initiatives that support continuous improvement of digital, blended, and online learning, Dr. Weber has presented widely at conferences in the field, as well as published various blogs, reports, playbooks, and articles sharing her work.

Dr. Weber holds a B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, a M.S. in Cultural Foundations of Education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in Urban Education specializing in Social Foundations of Education with an emphasis on designing engaging digital learning environments. Her research interests focus on the impact of technology on the learning environment and research-driven practices for effective digital, blended, and online learning, support, and leadership.

Lucas Peterson

Director, Camps and Conferences at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater