Merit America may not look like one of Halda’s traditional K-12 and higher ed partners, but they all share one very important characteristic: A focus on the learner.

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“We’re a non-profit organization focused on providing alternative career pathways to workers stuck in low wage jobs.” explains Cody Ortiz, Digital Marketing Specialist at Merit America. “Traditionally, they get left behind because they can’t afford a 4-year degree, but we offer efficient training in career tracks that provide great wages and the ability to grow.” 

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And the entire journey begins with connecting with the learners.

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How Halda Provides Learners With Quick and Personalized Information

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“One thing I’m working with Halda on is telling our story.” Ortiz continues. “Our learners have usually tried other options, but they come on our website and might not know about things like IT support and data analytics. We work with Halda to communicate what learners will experience in each of our career tracks.”

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Halda helps Merit America answer those initial questions that can be huge roadblocks for potential learners. “With Halda we communicate how many hours a week learners can expect to work, what their technology needs will be, what career options will be available afterward, and what the average growth is for people after the program. We also give a high-level overview of the flexibility of our financial agreement that helps keep the risk really low for learners.”

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Providing specific, efficient answers in the moment has led to some dramatic results. “My goal was to get a 3% overall conversion rate of our traffic,” Ortiz explains. “With Halda, we’re at a 4% conversion rate”

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That’s night-and-day compared to other RFIs they’ve used “With other RFIs, conversion rates were around 1%,” continues Ortiz. “We were trying to come up with our own solution, we’ve tried other avenues and forms, but they didn’t have the same features and possibilities as Halda. Finally I was like ‘Ok, I gotta go with Halda.’” 

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How Personal Connection Drives Action

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Ortiz knows his target population well–he himself is even an alumnus of Merit America’s programs–and he thinks that success starts with connecting personally with his learners. 

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“We’re all about showing people that there are other paths to a career that you would want, and Halda adds transparency to this process.” Ortiz sees Halda as key in helping learners visualize their path to a new career.

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“There’s something about answering these personal questions like "What are my goals?”, “What kind of commitment is this?”. They put people in that role and help them picture themselves there. The interaction turns into an experience where they say, ‘I can see the information I need, and it’s in a format that I can see myself moving forward with.’”

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Ortiz, as an astute curator of these personalized experiences, deploys them for the greatest effect. 

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“I’m able to set the frequency of where the Halda interaction appears. I’m able to put it on specific URLs, and with the global script I can inject it anywhere, and have any interaction I want in place quickly.”

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Halda’s ease of implementation and integration makes this process even easier, Ortiz explains. “The integration is great. We can leverage the power of Halda while limiting the tech stack to reduce cost and reduce the workload that we have on our website.”

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It’s an efficient, forward-thinking, learner-first approach to interaction that quickly generates down-funnel conversions.

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“Within our nurture campaign we’re seeing a 30% application rate since we started using Halda. We’ve never had numbers like that before. We’re really excited to track these learners’ progress as they continue their journey.”

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