Virtual training

Increase Customer Education Revenue with 5 Subscription Renewal Strategies

team@cloudshare.com

Dec 08, 2022 - 4 min read

Customer training is a massive factor in turning customers into product advocates and retaining them long-term.

However, many organizations fail to capitalize on this opportunity due to customer reluctance to sign up for training subscriptions.

Despite the potential for improved customer experience, most customers don’t see the value in investing in a recurring subscription service or any return on investment (ROI).

There are several reasons why this happens, and some of them include the following:

• Customers don’t have the budget for such a service
• Customers don’t understand how ongoing product education helps them
• Customers don’t have the time to partake in recurring training sessions
• They don’t see the value and expected ROI of this service
• If they do sign up, you’re not encouraging them to complete the training
• The training champion has left the company—making it harder to push for a renewal

In each of these cases, there is one common theme: you’re not using the right strategies to promote your customer training programs—leading to a loss of recurring revenue for your company.

In this article, we’ll discuss five solid strategies to transform customer education programs from a one-time professional service to an auto-renewing training subscription.

#1: Offer in-platform training to integrate product education

Customer education needs to be frictionless. But, most companies offer training programs in a different environment—making it harder for customers to invest time in product training.

To remove this friction, offer in-platform training. Instead of sending long email chains with access codes and portal credentials, keep the process within your software. This capability encourages customers to train themselves regularly. Plus, it becomes easier to prompt them to complete their sessions in the same application.

89% of customers spend more time with companies offering self-serve options than contacting support. It indicates that it’s best to offer customized training sessions that expect them to contact support for minor issues.

Learn more about solutions like CloudShare that helps you create a virtual environment that mimics the actual product usage environment.

#2: Focus the programs on specific customer education metrics and goals

Focusing customer training programs on specific goals and metrics ensures your teams are aligned and you can measure its effectiveness. 

For example, your training program should revolve around mission-critical aspects like product features, workflows, expansions, use cases, and more. It ensures customers know your product’s capabilities and how they can leverage them in their day-to-day activities.

A sure-shot way to measure success is by assessing whether your customers can do something with your product that they couldn’t do previously. You know their product knowledge has undoubtedly improved—which is the ultimate goal for such programs. 

It makes measuring customer education metrics like satisfaction and improvement in product knowledge easier. Plus, it’s a gateway to increase retention.

Ensure your training, product marketing, product development, and customer success teams are aligned on these goals. By focusing on clear objectives, you reduce misunderstandings and maximize customer benefits.

#3: Segment your customers and create custom learning paths

Training companies must deploy personalized learning paths for their customers to maximize user adoption and retention. It requires segmenting the customer base using existing customer data. It includes data like:

• Industry
• Job role
• Experience level
• Preferences
• Jobs-to-be-done
• Use case

Nobody wants to invest precious time on a program if they feel like it’s not meant for them.

By understanding how different users learn, a training company can create more effective and engaging content specific to each user. It means focusing on specific features or workflows based on the customer’s needs.

Plus, you can use email segmentation to personalize drip campaigns and prompt them to participate in their personalized learning paths. You can use in-built analytics to identify the product champions and laggards. 

Using this data, you can rectify the lack of training completion and swoop in before laggards churn the following year.

#4: Personalize customer education programs to increase adoption

There’s no point in segmenting customers and offering custom learning paths if the training is dull.

Instead, you need to focus on personalizing the entire program—from start to finish—based on the learner’s preference. By this, we mean understanding their specific goals and preferred learning mode.

It requires shifting your mindset from offering one-time training sessions to providing training as a service (TaaS).

The former focuses on offering a one-size-fits-all approach whereas the latter hones in on the user’s pain points.

TaaS is an excellent way to sustain the value of your product throughout its entire lifecycle. It involves personalizing the training program based on the learner’s/organization’s needs and goals. For example, if a customer uses a product for marketing, there’s no point showing them sales-related workflows.

In addition, some prefer self-paced sessions, while others prefer instructor-led sessions. Here, you can offer an “all-you-can-eat” service where they pay for an entire training bundle but can choose their preferred learning paths.

You can include a monthly or quarterly feedback process to ensure you’re helping them hit their goals. Based on the feedback, iterate and improve to finetune the experience.

Plus, you can use their feedback for marketing purposes—encouraging more users to sign up. Track adoption rates and show your customers how they benefit quarter-over-quarter.

Over time, this can increase your subscription revenue and incentivize companies to stay with the program. The latter happens when they see the ROI on continuous and on-demand training.

#5: Create new training content in collaboration with your customers

There’s no better place to find content ideas than your customers—more specifically, their feedback.

You get first-hand insights into what’s working for each ideal client profile (ICP), why certain aspects don’t work for them, and what gaps exist in your customer education programs. In addition, you can also get hard data on current customer trends in the industry.

Adopting an agile methodology for your customer education program leaves room for continuous improvement. This process ensures that customers continue to see the value of your service and don’t turn off their subscriptions.

Overall, this strategy can help you create tighter and more fruitful education programs that your customers will love—and will positively impact your bottom line.

Turn your customer education programs into recurring subscriptions

It’s crucial to tighten your customer education programs to turn them from one-time training services into subscription-oriented business models. 

This means ultimately improving each customer’s lifetime value (LTV), allowing for more significant ROI in the long term. 

You can use the strategies discussed in this article to achieve this successfully. You should also improve how you market and implement these training programs.If you’re looking for a solution to create a personalized training environment for your customers, book a demo with CloudShare today.