Graphic Change was founded in 2006 to help individuals and organizations benefit from the power of visual communication.
Founded by business and life partners Natasha Holland and Cara Holland, author of the book “Draw a Better Business”.
Together they work in partnership with awesome organizations of all sizes and types. Some of the more well-known companies they’ve worked with include Google, Microsoft, Barclays, Sony, Virgin Unite, TimeWarner, and Accenture.
They are a leading graphic recording and visual thinking training studio in the UK, helping people and organizations communicate and engage.
Like many businesses before the pandemic, Graphic Change’s in-person offerings were a significant source of revenue.
In 2018, Natasha started adding online courses and programs to complement the in-person training business they had built.
She chose to use the AccessAlly plugin for WordPress. According to Natasha, the reason they chose it was:
“We chose AccessAlly because of YOU. Because, as adult women, we look up to you as a role model for us, for our female friends, and most importantly for our nieces.
We chose AccessAlly because we’d heard of you first and thought it was just amazing what you’ve achieved.”
Natasha shared her successes with us:
“We’ve been able to use AccessAlly to just take the biggest sales we’ve ever had for one of our big course launches!
It means I don’t have to go to work for the MAN anymore – which is reward enough, I’m sure you’ll agree!!”
Pivoting to Online Programs Only
When the pandemic hit, in-person training and drawing became impossible due to social distancing measures.
Now it was time to move all of their training online while working from a shed at the bottom of their garden.
Natasha and Cara were ahead of the curve because they had already established their online training programs. This turned out to be a business-saving decision.
With an existing online foundation, Graphic Change was able to pivot to fully digital delivery of its training.
This move ended up offering Natasha and Cara even more flexibility and revenue growth.
This allowed them to continue providing valuable training to their clients, despite the pandemic.
Offering Individual and Group Training
In addition, the AccessAlly plugin provided Graphic Change with a variety of tools and features that helped increase revenue.
One such feature was the Teams functionality, designed for group licensing of courses and training programs.
This is ideal for selling training to corporations and companies.
For example, a Learning and Development Leader can sign up for 30 seats, and then assign each employee to the training, and monitor their progress.
This functionality led to bigger contracts, and lots of raving client experiences:
“Oh, and by the way, our two relaunched courses on our new AccessAlly platform? Clients just love it, and we’ve just won a MAJOR UK consultancy/accountant contract to do team licensing… in no small part thanks to the platform we can now offer.”
Overall, the AccessAlly plugin was a game-changer for Graphic Change, allowing Natasha and Cara to pivot their business model and continue providing valuable services to clients during the pandemic.
Providing Personalization At Scale
Another big reason that Natasha and Cara have enjoyed the power that AccessAlly provides is the ability to personalize the user experience at scale.
While working from home is nice, they enjoy being able to take a walk and not spend their whole days stuck behind their computers.
That means being able to automate things, without removing the personal touch.
“For us, the notion of an abandoned cart email that wasn’t pushy has been quite revelatory in our business.
Automation can start personalized discussions and from there lead to things like… one person brought their team in to be trained after a discussion that started from an abandoned cart email.”
That’s where personalization has played a big part and AccessAlly’s integration with their email marketing platform, too.
This way, they can send personalized messages automatically and also review students’ questions through AccessAlly’s private notes feature. This allows them to deliver asynchronous feedback.
Blended Learning with AccessAlly
“We teach people to draw and do visual work in their work.”
Another thing that sets Graphic Change apart from other online course creators is their approach to blended learning.
They often kick off group training with live sessions.
Then they include videos, but many of the lessons focus on written and visual instructions for getting students in action and drawing their own images.
With AccessAlly’s progress tracking and Private Notes, they can see how well students are progressing.
Their community area also helps their students gain mastery and momentum.
In the end, with all of the flexibility and functionality AccessAlly provides, Natasha and Cara recommend AccessAlly by saying:
“Big love to you all at AccessAlly for enabling women (and men) like us to do what only the Big Boys used to do!”
