Coupon update: Schedule your coupons ahead of time

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Coupon update: Schedule your coupons ahead of time

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hello Instructors!

 

As part of a larger effort to improve the coupon creation process, we’re excited to share that you will now be able to schedule coupons for a future date and time within the current calendar month. This is one of the ways we plan to address feedback we’ve heard from you about the work it takes to create coupons. For more information about this new capability, feel free to refer to this Help Center article.

 

Beyond this, in the coming months we will be adding a bulk upload tool for coupon creation that will let you create coupons for multiple courses in one place. We’re excited to share more with you as we get closer to launch.

 

Teach on,

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community

16 Comments
ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

For my particular use case, the limitation that the start date must be within the current month makes the feature useless, unfortunately. I do see other scenarios where it is helpful, though — those are just not relevant to me. Will the upcoming bulk tool make it possible to create coupons further into the future? Or will the limitations be the same, such that it just enables coupon creation for multiple courses?

 

The monthly coupon rotation continues...

PhilEbiner
Storyteller Storyteller
Storyteller

This is a great next step towards improving coupon creation for instructors. I just noticed it today as I was creating a promotional email for an upcoming course, as well as a promotion tied to a YouTube video going live tomorrow. The ability to schedule these out helps a ton.

 

I agree with Bo, that limiting it to within the month isn't as helpful as this feature could be. While this helps the days or week before a big launch/promotion, it doesn't help for long term promotions. An example of this is running a monthly promotion for my courses on my YouTube channel tied to specific videos that are scheduled in the future. I often batch create content months ahead of making them live. To be able to schedule Udemy promotions at the same time that I create my other content would be super helpful. I also don't see many downsides of this ability, so I encourage the team to look at this again and hopefully let us create coupons for future months. 


I also think the bulk course coupon creation tool that we've been asking for... for years now... would be a great next feature to add 😉

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thanks for the feedback, Bo (@ba0708) and Phil (@PhilEbiner)! We've shared it with the team.

 

For a bit more background on the design of the scheduling capability, one of the reasons why the scheduling is limited to within the current calendar month is because our pricing and coupon system is constantly changing over time.

 

We understand the feature is limited in its current state, but we're trying to account for the fact that sometimes the options you have for prices right now may not be the options you have for prices in two months. This doesn't necessarily apply all the time (like when you're trying to create coupons on the 30th for the 1st), but by keeping it within the month we’re trying to ensure you get the most optimal coupon options for your courses.

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community 

SharonRamel
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

Thanks @Bella , it is a great start to streamlining workflow that is welcomed however there is still a way to go. Like @PhilEbiner I prepare well in advance. The tool I am really looking for is the bulk coupon creation tool - that handy one we have been asking for.... select the course(s) and voila - the coupon generates across them all. 

Looking forward to more improvements coming soon.

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

Thank you for the clarification, @Bella. I do understand and acknowledge the challenges behind that design decision. In my particular use case, I would be fine with just being able to select "Best price" at coupon creation time without knowing the exact price ahead of time. For other use cases it might be important to know the exact price when planning campaigns. So yes, it is a bit tricky.

 

But for a lot of instructors I think it makes sense to take a step back and look at why they need to create coupons ahead of time in the first place. Surely some do plan "real" marketing campaigns. But many (including myself) create coupons regularly as a workaround because we are limited by the coupon system. We create coupons to know which channels drive our sales (source attribution). One coupon code for YouTube, one for our website, etc. (e.g. YOUTUBE_JAN, YOUTUBE_FEB, WEBSITE_JAN, WEBSITE_FEB, ...) The referral link makes sense but there are two major problems with it; it doesn't give us insight into which channels drive sales, and personally I have found it highly unreliable in terms of pricing.

 

So, many instructors "rotate" coupon codes every month as a hack to get sales channel attribution, which is something Udemy caused us to do with a previous update to the coupon system that resulted in a maximum coupon lifetime of 30 days (which again is not a problem if we had channel attribution). A lot of us have been asking for a way to segment our own promotions by channel for years. If only we could get a way of attributing our sales somehow other than naming schemes for our coupon codes, a lot of things would be solved. So we hack around the coupon system this way, getting all creative, because there is a fundamental need that Udemy hasn't solved for us, despite us asking for years.

 

So at least for me, the reason I would like to create coupon codes months in advance is because of this attribution problem. If I had a way to attribute my own sales to a marketing channel, I wouldn't have this need in the first place. I know many instructors do this, so it might be worth looking at the root cause for why we are asking for this. Having to do this also takes up time which we would be better off spending on our courses.

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thank you @ba0708, I appreciate the additional details. I've forwarded this to our Product team, as it is definitely helpful to have more context as to why this feature would be important to you.

 

We do know that many instructors are interested in a tool that allows them to track the success of their own promotions across every channel where they shared their coupons. The request for this feature is currently being monitored internally, so if we plan on adding this to our roadmap in the future, we will be sure to let the community know! 

 

Again, many thanks for your helpful feedback! Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions. 

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

I'm so glad you liked our new coupons feature, @SharonRamel! We're also looking forward to future updates and to continuing to improve the instructor experience! 😊

AxelRittershaus
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

Thanks @Bella I appreciate this improvement. It's a step in the right direction, even if I agree with @PhilEbiner and @ba0708 only being able to define coupons for the current month.

For me it helps, since the coupons for loyal customers are defined and get re-defined in the middle of the month. Now I have 14 days to prepare them before they have to go live and this reduces the time pressure.

Now I'm looking forward to multiple course coupon creation. I'm already struggling with 17 courses, and can handly imagine what it means to the folks with 100+ courses.

Thor
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

@Bella It would be nice to be able to edit the coupons after creation up until they are live, what is we schedule one wrong, there is no way to align that course with the rest of our courses.

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hey @Thor, at the moment it is still not possible to edit or delete a coupon, only deactivate it. But this sounds like a really useful feature to have along with the scheduling coupons function. I have recorded it internally and will let you know if we have any plans to implement it. Thank you for your feedback!

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community 

LizBrownUX
Storyteller Storyteller
Storyteller

I second what @ba0708 said, knowing where my coupon traffic is coming from is extremely valuable. It would be great if Udemy could offer this in the future.

In case this is helpful for any other instructors - This is my current workaround to get this info:

I have a Linktree site, and anywhere I would post my coupon link, I instead post the Linktree URL. So all of my traffic goes through that site. (And it's nice having only a single place to update my coupons each month, vs. trying to track down every place I've ever posted my promo links to swap out the code.) Then Linktree gives me all the analytics I want: How many people are coming from where (youtube, facebook, linkedIn, twitter, etc.), how many views, how many clicks, what countries/cities people are coming from, are they on mobile or web, etc, etc. 
(Same thing could be done with a Wordpress page that has an analytics plugin - but I don't have all of that, so for me, it was easier and cheaper to just get Linktree Pro.)

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

@Bella I have criticised the coupon system for a while, so here's a positive comment for once. 🙂 

 

As part of my monthly routine, I spent a moment creating a spreadsheet, which - together with the new Bulk Coupon tool - can automate most of the work of creating coupons every month. I still have to do it every month, but the process is now a bit smoother and faster. It doesn't solve the problems with the coupon system that I outlined in a previous comment, though. But it's a win - and although it's a small one, I'll take it! 🙌

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @ba0708, that's great to hear! I'm happy the recent updates have been helpful for you, even if it's just a little bit. 

 

We really appreciate your feedback and @LizBrownUX's feedback. We'll continue to take note of the improvements you'd like to see and pass them on to our Product team for consideration. 

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community 

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

@Bella The multiple coupon tool seems broken. It gives a blank screen when uploading a CSV. Inspecting the network request within the browser, it results in a 403 forbidden status code, even though I am logged in.

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @ba0708, thanks for reporting this! When there's an issue with the CSV file and it cannot be uploaded, it is normal for an error notification to appear. Here you can review how to resolve CSV file upload errors for the bulk coupons tool.

 

If this doesn't resolve the problem, please reach out to Instructor Support directly, our team will be happy to assist you further!

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community

SebiGloeckner
Storyteller Storyteller
Storyteller

Hi @Bella, there is a feature I am urgently waiting for regarding promotional announcements.

 

How can I copy&paste a list of 50-90 courses into the promotional announcement instead of selecting each one?

Usually I spend longer on selecting the courses rather than writing the actual email. Because I need to be really careful not to select the wrong courses, sometimes I need really long time to select the courses and each time I wish I could just paste a list of the courses.

 

Can you help me with that by any chance?

Kind regards
Sebastian