The Personal Plan pilot is expanding globally

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The Personal Plan pilot is expanding globally

ChrystieV
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi all,

 

We've been running the Personal Plan pilot in the English market for nearly four months now. We're still learning and growing carefully, comparing learner behavior and business results between the groups that do and don't have the option to subscribe. However, the early results have been very promising. So, we're getting ready to extend the pilot to a broader global audience.

 

In the next few weeks, we'll open up the option to enroll in Personal Plan to select students in a few new markets with new language offerings, including content in Portuguese, Spanish, French, and German. You can read more about the international expansion and recap some of the key details of the pilot in the Teaching Center.

 

As always, we welcome your questions and feedback here in the Community.

16 Comments
DanielEvans
Specialist Specialist
Specialist

@ChrystieV 

 

' However, the early results have been very promising. So, we're getting ready to extend the pilot to a broader global audience.'

 

Your link 'early results', links to a thread which does not contain results.

 

In the original post (to where you link), it includes the following information and a link:

 

'Check out our update in the Teaching Center to learn more about:

  • The (very!) early performance of the pilot'

 

The link 'Teaching Center' again, does not link to a page with actual 'results'.

 

The page: https://teach.udemy.com/personal-plan-update-june/

 

.....with regards to context, merely states:

 

'The limited exposure of Personal Plan means that we’re not drawing any firm conclusions just yet. However, early signs are promising, with all the above measurements meeting or exceeding our expectations.'

 

 

As such, it would appear that 'results' is a term being used to justify rolling out the subscription model, carrying people in the march, yet despite you and other Udemy reps stating 'results', none are actually stipulated.  What are the 'early signs'? What were your expectations?  Namely; what were the measurements? This would qualify as a 'result'.

 

With this considered, please can you actually share the result(s) herein.  I'm sure many instructors are as excited as Udemy staff about how the subscription pilots performed...

 

 

ChrystieV
Community Manager
Community Manager

@DanielEvans You are correct, the link takes you to a former announcement when we stated that our early results were promising and they continue to be promising. It's not our policy to reveal what those results are, however, you can be sure that our having our instructor's best interest and growing the business are at the forefront of these decisions.

DanielEvans
Specialist Specialist
Specialist

@ChrystieV 

 

'...you can be sure that our having our instructor's best interest and growing the business are at the forefront of these decisions'.

 

From the consensus here in the community, it's safe to say that many instructors adopt a best interest of earning more revenue in reflection of the hard work they put into course production and student support.  

 

Can we therefore conclude that the pilot has rendered more revenue for the majority of instructors involved?

 

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

"When a student refunds their subscription, their payment and any consumption are removed from the overall instructor pool."

 

It makes sense that the payment is removed, but why is the consumption removed from the pool? If someone watched my course for an hour (and potentially asked questions), shouldn't I be rewarded for that by getting a bigger cut of the pool? I.e. even though the pool is smaller, instructors whose content was viewed by students who refunded, are still rewarded for that. In my mind that would make sense - especially since I might have had to answer questions, respond to assignments, etc.

Shigeru_M
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

Wow! Great! I wish it will start in Japan market soon! Thanks Udemy!

ChrystieV
Community Manager
Community Manager

@DanielEvans 

 

First, thank you for your patience while I followed up with the team to see what we could share.

 

It's still too early to make a definitive statement, but the good news is that signs are promising and suggest instructors could earn more revenue over time with the addition of a subscription option.

 

The reason we can't make a definitive statement just yet is due to the difference in the way direct purchase and subscription models generate revenue. In a direct purchase model, you get the full value of the purchase upfront. In a subscription model, you get the value over time. The full value is determined by the retention rates of your subscribers.

 

We have strong reads on the metrics we can measure right away: conversions to trial and from trial to subscription. Where retention is concerned, the early numbers are strong too. But because we've been exposing only a limited portion of traffic in certain markets, we don't yet have a large number of subscribers who have had several months to stick with or drop their subscription, so we don't have every piece of the puzzle.

 

Launching internationally lets us start collecting this data in other markets and understanding the unique economic dynamics for each one.

 

So in a nutshell, we don't have all the answers yet, but the answers we do have are encouraging, so we're expanding the pilot to continue to learn and plant the seeds for future growth.

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @ba0708, good question!

 

Introducing any free way to change the composition of the payout pool makes the system gameable -- someone could create trial accounts without intent to purchase (or encourage their following to do so) and use them to skew the consumption pool towards their own content. This is why today, we don't count refunded minutes or free trial minutes in the revenue calculation for Personal Plan.

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community 

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

That makes sense! Thank you for the answer, @Bella! 🙂 

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

My pleasure, @ba0708. Have a great rest of the week! 😊

MichaelPog
Mentor Mentor
Mentor

Hi @ChrystieV,

I have a few questions:

1) What's going to happen with promotions?

Today I can send promotional emails to students and I can use coupons to encourage them to enroll, in the personal subscription plan what would it look like? Will I still be able to send promotional emails to my existing students? And what incentives can I offer them?

 

2)Another question I have is instructor coupons. Today if I bring traffic from outside of Udemy to my website and encourage people to buy my Udemy course I can get 97% of the revenue by using an instructor coupon. With the personal subscription plan how will I be rewarded for bringing traffic to to my website and subsequently subscribing to Udemy to consume my courses (and others)?

Will I have to become Udemy's affiliate or there will be some kind of reward system for bringing new students to the platform?

 

Rahul Iyer
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

I am absolutely looking forward to this... I have been with Udemy since 2016 and seen myself and Udemy grow consistently with the different initiatives... UfB was definitely a great add-on in this space back then and has been growing consistently.. And now Personal Plan... this is EXCITING!

I love the fact that Udemy flexes its marketing muscle through these various initiatives and we (instructors) can focus on creating content and serving our audience.
💪

MichaelPog
Mentor Mentor
Mentor

Hi @ChrystieV I wonder if my questions above were ignored because you didn't see my post or these topics are something Udemy is but yet ready to discuss?

Thank you.

ChrystieV
Community Manager
Community Manager

@MichaelPog Hi! I apologize, I didn't see the tag. I believe your questions were originally directed to Bella and I know that she was working to get you answers to your questions. Let me follow up with the team and get you a response 🙂

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @MichaelPog, sorry for the delay here, I wanted to check in with the team to get the most up-to-date information. Those are good questions -- both ones our team is actively working through as the data comes in from the pilot. Here's what they said:

 

1. Currently, we don't allow any individual instructor to send announcements/emails to students who are enrolled via the subscription, though students can view educational announcements on the course level. Unlike on the marketplace, where students make a pretty definitive selection of a small number of courses, on a subscription students are often consuming little parts of a lot of courses without that same level of intent. Receiving announcements from every instructor they've taken any amount of content from would be overwhelming (imagine you get an announcement from someone on whose course you only watched the preview video). This approach takes cues from what we see on announcement opt-in behavior from students who enroll in more than a few marketplace courses.

 

We do want to understand how instructors can help students stay engaged in subscriptions and drive engagement with their own content. This could potentially mean introducing other ways for instructors to reach out or interact with students in the subscription context or allowing instructors to segment their announcements between subscription and transactional learners. Promotional announcements are also complex since it could make sense to upsell to courses outside the subscription, but the message would of course need to be different if the student already had access. In short, we don't think that announcements, as they work on the marketplace, make sense in subscriptions, and we're looking into what might help meet the same need of helping learners get more and helping instructors engage with the learners in their courses.
 
2. Great question, and one that our Product and Data Science teams are currently looking at very closely. As you may know, we currently have an interim program to ensure that the revenue you drive with your promotions is kept steady during the pilot. In the long term, though, we envision a system where instructors get a bonus amount or higher share when they drive a student to become a paying subscriber, just as you get a higher share when you drive a student to make a direct purchase. You should expect to hear more about this within the next few months as the pilot progresses.
 
This work is all in very early stages, so if you have thoughts about what would add value for students and for you, we'd love to hear them. 🙂
 
Bella Almeida
Udemy Community 
Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thank you for your kind words, @Rahul Iyer. We're happy to hear that you're looking forward to seeing more of the Personal Plan pilot! 😊

Robin_Slee
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

Hows the trial going? Any updates 🙂