Whether you're relaunching your program to make way for a new cohort, or relaunching to inject some new energy into an Always-On program, here's a guide to making sure your relaunch goes as smoothly as possible. 

1. Clean up the program

Close existing loops

Existing loops may need to be closed before you relaunch your program with new matches. Be sure to communicate to your participants that they can do this themselves as it gives your participants a chance to wrap up with their mentoring partners, send thank you messages, and exchange contact information should they want to.

• Give participants plenty of notice, otherwise have a set date of when you will close all active loop directly from your Loops page.

Removing participants

If your program allows for participants to continue participation upon relaunch, it's best to make sure you find out who wants to continue and who wants to drop out.

• First, check if your program has participants that have remained unmatched. Find them using your filters, tag them, and send a bulk message to confirm if they want to continue in the next program so that they can be prioritised for matching when the program relaunches
• Tagging them as the responses come in allow you to remove those who have decided to opt out in one go later on.
• Alternatively, for Always-On programs or if you want to keep all the participants in the program even if they don't wish to be matched, you can ask them to mark themselves appropriately as "Available" or "Unavailable" for matching before the program closes.

Tip: For scenarios where you would prefer mentors to stay and have new mentees, it's best to communicate with mentors and mentees separately.

Advice from our Customer Success team:

This might also be a good time to invite your mentees to level up and become a mentor for the next intake!

Export relevant data

It's good to have historical information about your program so we recommend exporting it. You can do this periodically or just at the end.

The way you do this depends on your program and how you run it. Some programs require more regular reporting to stakeholders or maybe you as a program coordinator just want regular reports for your own evaluation. Other programs just require reports at the end. 

Generally, we recommend you do this at least twice within the duration of the program - one at the middle and one towards the end. This is so you have the ability to review participants and how they are interacting mid-program and make changes where needed, for example if a participant has not been interactive since signing up, you can use exported data to clean up the participant list! 

Remember that you do not lose historical data when you relaunch. As long as participants remain part of the program, all closed Loops data remain accessible to PCs. However, if someone leaves the program permanently (rather than become unavailable/removed), their data will be deleted.

Disable your signup form

If you need to ensure no new participants sign up as you prepare to relaunch, temporarily disable your signup form. 

2. Marketing & Recruitment

From here, you can restart marketing and recruitment for your program as normal. To add a little more sparkle to your efforts, you can grab a couple of participants from the last intake and ask them to share their experiences and what they got out of the program. These mentoring champions can help you make the program that much more attractive to potential participants.

Make intake dates clear

If you're running your program in Cohorts or in an On-Off format, make sure you've made start and end dates clear from the beginning. This allows you to set clear expectations on how your program runs and what participants should expect from their mentoring partners and relationships. 

If your program runs on a set timeline, it doesn't hurt to make your participants aware of it. When will signups open? When will you start matching? 

Advice from our Customer Success team:

"We have had programs that run in Cohorts create a clear timeline of events either on a simply word document or Google slides, before the launch of the program and included the specific comms that need to be communicated on certain dates so that participants of the program are made aware. Some have had set mentors stay on for each cohort of mentoring, and therefore they would only need to invite a new cohort of mentees!"

For a refresher on running a mentoring program with only 30 minutes a week, click here. 

3. Communication Templates

Struggling to think of what to say? Try out some of our message templates below!

Closing loops

• Hi, 
  
  {Program Name} and Mentorloop would like to thank you for your participation in the {Cohort/Year} {Program Name}.
  
  We had {number of participants / number of matches / average MQS} in the mentoring program, highlighting the value this program provides.
  
  In preparation for the next iteration of the program, We recommend you log in to Mentorloop one final time to contact your mentoring partner, thank them for their time and close your existing loops. Don't forget to fill in the close loop survey, so that we can get some feedback on how your mentoring relationships went this time around. If you plan to keep in touch, it might also be worthwhile asking for their contact details.
  
  Otherwise, we will be closing out all existing loops in order to facilitate another round of matching on {DATE}.
  
  We hope that you have enjoyed participating in the program and we look forward to setting up your next mentoring relationship. Alternatively, If you would like to take a break please reply to this email and we can remove your account.
  
  Thanks,

Manually Matching/Algorithm Matching

• Hi,
  
  It's time to meet your match! On {DATE}, we'll be matching you with someone from within your program! It may be worthwhile allowing some time in your schedule, for the first meeting.
  
  We're hopeful that this match is a life changing connection but it may also just be the step in building out your personal advisory board. 
  
  Don't forget to review your profile and make any necessary updates before {DATE}, so that we can match you to the best of our ability! 
  
  Thanks,

Matching Opt Out 

• Hi,
  
  {Program Name} and Mentorloop would like to thank you for your participation in the {Cohort/Year} {Program Name}.
  
  We had {number of participants / number of matches / average MQS} in the mentoring program, highlighting the value this program provides.
  
  We hope that you have enjoyed participating in the program and we look forward to setting up your next mentoring relationship!
  
  Alternatively, If you would like to take a break simply mark your status as Unavailable.
  
  Thanks,

4. Map out your timeline

Mapping out a clear timeline of events in advance, including any key dates in your relaunch, helps you communicate clearly with both existing and new participants, as well as any other stakeholders that are involved in the relaunch, such as your marketing team.

Although each program will be different depending on their resources, unique program structure and who’s involved in executing a program relaunch, the below example timeline shows us how you can effectively plan key milestones and organise your program relaunch to set yourself up for success: