Upcoming changes to the coupon system

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Upcoming changes to the coupon system

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hello Instructors!

 

It's October, which means you're probably thinking about how to launch new content, promote what you've already published, and set yourself up for success for Black Friday and beyond.

 

Since we know you're already planning your coupons for November, we wanted to announce some coupon system updates that will be rolling out soon. We designed these changes after conducting analysis, running tests, and reviewing feedback to better understand how learners and instructors use coupons. 

 

 Here's what we found:

  • Free coupons can be valuable for learners and instructors when used in a targeted, thoughtful way, but...
  • "Viral" free coupons tend not to lead to much learner engagement or instructor benefit, and can actually make it harder for new instructors to compete
  • Coupon creation today is clunky and time-consuming (as you've told us many times)

 

And here's what's changing:

  • Later this month, we plan to replace the "Unlimited" free coupon with an "Open" free coupon that has a lower redemption cap but a longer redemption window.
  • As part of that same change, we plan to replace the "Limited" free coupon with a "Targeted" free coupon that can be redeemed by more people.
  • In early 2022, we plan to introduce a bulk upload tool for coupon creation that will let you create coupons for multiple courses in one place. It will also let you schedule coupons to go live at a later date/time.

 

These changes are designed to encourage more thoughtful use of free coupons, and to make it easier for you to manage all coupon types across your courses. For the full scoop, including more about the research behind these changes, read on in the Teaching Center.

6 Comments
Parker
Storyteller Storyteller
Storyteller

I love the new changes and look forward to the new coupon tool!

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

By far the most important thing you could change about the promotional system is that we still have no way of tagging our traffic to figure out which channels drive the most sales. Sure we could create different coupons, but the system is too constrained for that to work in practice. Specifically because we cannot create enough coupons. And doing that also means that the referral link wouldn't be an option, since that's just sending traffic into a black box. Which, by the way, doesn't work very well; I've moved away from that link since it doesn't convert traffic very well, and gives me less revenue than using coupon codes. In a perfect world, I'd be able to tag my URLs with a source, just as with utm_source, and the referral link would be reliable. That would enable me to figure out which channels drive the most sales, plus save me the hassle of rotating coupon codes every month, updating links, etc.

Rahul Iyer
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

These are fantastic changes. It is 100% correct that free coupons add little value to instructors. In my opinion, Udemy has moved away from a culture of sharing free coupons (which was prevalent many years ago). These new changes are further solidifying that stance (which is excellent). The feature of adding bulk coupons for multiple courses is a much needed upgrade. Thank you for bringing these through.

😀

CarlosDeLeon
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

Any improvement is welcome, but we need Udemy to pay more attention to the other limitations we currently face with non-free coupons.

 

There are two main things I think could be improved, without affecting the workings of the pricing system:

 

1) I understand that Udemy doesn't want instructors to have their courses discounted to the current best price permanently, so, I think "Current best price" coupons need to be limited in number per month, but I think Udemy could safely leave "Custom price" coupons unlimited.

 

"Custom price" coupons already allow us to have our courses permanently discounted, but since they are limited, we need to use the same coupon code in all channels (our site, YouTube, Facebook pages, etc.), and that prevents us from knowing which channels are performing better and make optimizations to our marketing efforts.

 

Having unlimited (or at least a higher) number of custom price coupons doesn't negatively affect Udemy, because we are already offering the same discount in all those channels, so, the only difference is that we could know what channel the sales are coming from.

 

coupons.png

 

2) If I remember correctly, the main reason why Udemy doesn't want coupons to live for more than one month, is that the pricing system regularly analyzes how prices and discounts are performing to make changes, which means that the "current best price" and lowest "custom price" could change from one month to the next.

 

I think, however, that they could create a third coupon type that would be similar to the "custom price" type, but without an expiration date (or at least one that lasted several months).  They could design it so that it automatically changes the lower limit monthly, which in consequence would update coupons to the new lowest limit in case the price the instructor set originally is now outside the new limits.

 

Instructors willing to use this coupon type would have to understand that we could not safely mention a specific price in our marketing, if we decide to use this coupon type with the lowest allowed price.  I don't know about others, but I would happily use it.

 

This will free us from having to update our links every month.

 

What do others think?

ismailkhuz16
Observer
Observer

great update 

GaneshPadal341
Traveler Traveler
Traveler

Thanks for the great new features. It will be helpful to all the Instructors