2026 State of Education-Led Growth Report
How Companies Turn Education Into a Strategic Growth Engine
Source: Intellum · 190 respondents · Nov 2025 – Feb 2026
Five key findings shaping education strategy in 2026
Education is expanding beyond retention into revenue growth.
While implementation, product adoption, and retention remain the most common lifecycle stages for education programs, focus on customer expansion has increased significantly year over year. This shift reflects how organizations are beginning to view education not only as a support or retention tool, but as a strategic lever for driving expansion revenue and long-term customer value.
Executive representation is increasing—and it matters.
Education leadership is gradually moving higher within organizations. Programs led by C-level or VP leaders demonstrate stronger indicators of maturity, including higher learner completion rates, broader use of analytics tools, and greater investment in emerging technologies such as AI.
AI adoption has moved from experimentation to everyday implementation.
AI is now widely used across education programs, with 92.6% of organizations reporting active use. Teams are prioritizing AI for accelerating written content creation, supporting learners through automation, and assisting with strategic planning.
Marketing and analytics capabilities are becoming key enablers of education impact.
Programs with stronger marketing support and analytics capabilities are better positioned to drive measurable business outcomes. Education data increasingly connects with systems like CRM and support platforms, expanding the analytics ecosystem around the LMS.
Measurement maturity is improving across education teams.
A growing share of teams now begin measuring outcomes within the first three months of launching a new initiative, and far fewer programs report inconsistent measurement practices compared with the previous year.
What is Education-Led Growth?
Education-Led Growth (ELG) is a strategic framework positioning employee, customer, and partner education as a primary driver of business growth. By aligning education with revenue, retention, and adoption goals, companies can create measurable business impact.
The ELG™ Framework — 7 Pillars
Continuous Improvement ↻
Who participated
190 respondents verified by name and email. Primarily U.S.-based, enterprise companies. Survey period: Nov 2025 – Feb 2026.
Industry
55.3% from Manufacturing or Technology, with the remaining 44.7% representing other industries.
27.9%
Manufacturing
27.4%
Technology
13.2%
Education
12.1%
Retail
5.8%
Software
5.3%
Business Services
3.2%
Finance / Insurance
1.6%
Consulting
1.6%
Energy
Company Size
Company Revenue
Nearly three-quarters (74.2%) reported annual revenue exceeding $100M.
25.8%
$1M–$99M
14.7%
$100M–$199M
9.5%
$200M–$299M
11.6%
$300M–$399M
7.9%
$400M–$499M
15.8%
$500M–$1B
7.4%
$1B–$5B
6.9%
>$5B
Roles Represented
15.8%
C-Level
11.6%
VP
49.5%
Director
23.2%
Manager
Education teams are embedded across the business.
The majority reported into HR/L&D (25.8%), Education Services (12.6%), or Professional Services (12.1%).
25.8%
HR / L&D
12.6%
Education Services
12.1%
Professional Services
10.5%
Customer Experience
7.4%
Marketing
7.4%
Own department
5.8%
Sales
5.3%
Customer Success
4.2%
Support
Senior-level representation matters.
22.2% report executive-level leadership. Programs with C-level or VP leadership show higher learner completion rates, greater use of data visualization tools, and stronger commitment to AI.
34.2%
Director
17.9%
Manager
13.7%
Sr. Manager
11.1%
C-Level
8.4%
Sr. Director
7.9%
VP
3.7%
Head of
3.2%
SVP
Top collaboration partners
Customer Support, Customer Success, and Product teams are the top collaboration partners.
Audience completion rates
Education programs reach a meaningful share of their audience, but rarely the entire base. Internal audiences report highest completion; external audiences (prospects, partners) report much lower participation.
Charging for education
Of those educating external audiences, less than a quarter did not charge for any of their programs.
53.6%
Both on-demand + live
26.5%
No charge
13.9%
Only live training
6%
Only on-demand
Revenue and performance metrics take priority.
Cost reduction (60%) remains the least prioritized objective, indicating most organizations position education as a growth driver rather than purely an operational efficiency tool.
Revenue = increased revenue, product activation, active users · Retention = reduced churn, improved sentiment, product adoption · Performance = improved ramp time, goal attainment, skill proficiency · Cost Reduction = reduced content creation, support, onboarding costs.
81.6%
Revenue
75.3%
Performance
68.9%
Retention
60%
Cost Reduction
Priorities shift with scale
Larger teams (51–99 and 100+ employees) are most likely to prioritize revenue growth (~55%), while also showing the strongest focus on cost reduction—especially the 51–99 group (69%). Smaller teams (5–10 employees) also track revenue and cost closely, reflecting a strong emphasis on demonstrating clear financial impact.
Which audiences do companies educate?
87.4%
Employees
63.1%
Customers
46.8%
Partners
43.1%
Prospects
Education is growing across the customer lifecycle.
Focus on expansion has climbed 20 percentage points YoY, highlighting the potential for education to impact customer growth revenue.
Top education initiatives
Skills & enablement remain the primary focus. 94.2% of respondents report skills & enablement initiatives, making it the most common education use case by a wide margin.
94.2%
Skills & Enablement
71.1%
Onboarding
66.8%
Certifications
60.5%
Compliance
Certifications and compliance scale with company size
Larger companies are significantly more likely to offer formal certification and compliance initiatives. Compliance reaches its highest levels among organizations with 20,000+ employees, while certification programs are most common in companies with 5,000–19,999 employees. Highly regulated sectors such as Finance and Insurance report the highest use of compliance initiatives.
Training methods & team structure
Structured and video-based learning dominate.
Training videos remain the most widely used content type (68.4%), followed by virtual and in-person instructor-led training.
Education team size
The largest share (22.6%) report teams of 11–20 employees, followed by 100+ (20%) and 21–50 (19.5%). Team size strongly correlates with company size.
8.4%
1–4 employees
14.2%
5–10 employees
22.6%
11–20 employees
19.5%
21–50 employees
15.3%
51–99 employees
20%
100+ employees
External vendors play a key role.
83.1% use external vendors to support education programs.
83.1%
Use external vendor
16.9%
Do not use
Top vendor use cases:
AI is now widely adopted.
92.6% of respondents report using AI — the technology has moved from experimentation to practical implementation.
92.6%
of education programs now use AI
Planned AI adoption priorities
Percentage of respondents who "Agree" or "Completely Agree" they plan to use AI for:
Marketing support varies significantly by audience.
External-only education teams report the strongest marketing support (72% dedicated marketing resources), while internal-only teams are the most resource-constrained (40% report no marketing support).
Marketing access
36.4%
Dedicated resources from marketing
33.5%
Dedicated marketer on education team
21.4%
Do own marketing (no dedicated marketer)
8.7%
No marketing resources
Promotion tactics
Personalized outreach and email lead education promotion tactics.
Learner re-engagement
Email remains the primary driver of learner re-engagement. With the rise of AI, personalized learning paths are increasingly used for re-engagement.
Measurement maturity is improving.
27% now measure impact immediately (up from 25% in 2025). 49% begin within three months (up from 35%). Programs not consistently measuring dropped from 28% to just 5%.
Time to start measuring impact
27%
Immediately
49%
Within 3 months
18%
6–12 months
16%
1 year+
5%
Not consistent
Analytics ecosystem around the LMS
The LMS remains foundational (41.1%), but education data increasingly connects with CRM (55.3%) and support platforms (51.6%).
Top measurement challenges
Integration between systems remains the top challenge (31%), but 25.8% report no major obstacles — a growing number of teams are building the processes needed to demonstrate impact.
Education is integral to go-to-market strategy.
Product alignment
68% say their programs are closely tied to product outcomes. Only 9.6% report minimal or no alignment — down from 32% in 2025.
56.4%
Very closely
34%
Somewhat closely
8.5%
Minimally
1.1%
Not at all
GTM contributions
All GTM-related roles increased year over year. Only 5.8% report education is not integrated into GTM.
How to design education programs for real business impact
Prioritize audiences and lifecycle stages with the clearest business value.
Most programs already support implementation, adoption, and retention well. Look for opportunities to extend education into expansion and other high-value moments, rather than spreading resources too thin across every stage.
Strengthen the systems around your LMS.
The LMS remains foundational, but business impact is often proven through connected data from CRM, support, and analytics platforms. Improve the integrations and reporting workflows that help you connect learning activity to customer and business outcomes.
Design programs with measurement built in from the start.
Teams that measure impact immediately typically begin with a clear plan for what success looks like. Define your success metrics before launch, ensure systems and integrations are in place, and establish reporting workflows so you can track outcomes as soon as the program goes live.
Use AI where it saves time fastest.
The most common AI use cases are written content creation, learner support, and planning. Start with high-volume, repeatable work (e.g., drafting content, summarizing material, or powering support workflows) before expanding into more advanced use cases.
Use outside expertise selectively.
Organizations most often use partners for content development, instructional design, and platform support. If internal bandwidth is limited, prioritize external help in the areas that are hardest to scale alone.
Education is infrastructure, not campaign.
merahki.ai provides the end-to-end infrastructure to design, produce, scale, and certify education programs that drive measurable business outcomes — aligned to the ELG framework.
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