Since the internet and education converged to give people the opportunity to pick up new skills, e-learning has seen unprecedented growth. Most learners in the post-pandemic era are now online, from college students to Industry professionals looking for educational programs, and communities of enthusiasts picking up self-taught skills from DIY tutorials.

Learning management systems (LMS) are increasingly being used, enhancing the student experience and making it easier for teachers to run their courses. SaaS learning management systems are renowned for being user-friendly, adaptable, and customizable. Over 87% of people use web-based LMS today.

Subscriptions offer a tailored and adaptable experience, this is why e-learning programs are currently providing stable content in favor of providing each student with a customized e-learning experience and individual learning pathways.

Despite the growing use of subscriptions by e-learning platforms, it has also faced some challenges.

Growth challenges of e-learning subscription business

Expanding an e-learning businesses while trying to deliver a flawless customer experience has its share of obstacles, some of which are:

‍Unavailability of easy-to-use payment methods

Most e-learning platforms pay more attention to providing exceptional learning content and experience, and they forget to ensure that their customers have a seamless payment experience by providing several relevant payment options. Ignoring this crucial aspect of customer experience will simply cause your e-learning platform to be unnecessarily difficult to use and lead to an increase in the number of abandoned carts and cancellation.

‍rigid systems

A comprehensive database that encourages quick exploration with subscription plans, course bundles, free trials, etc. is necessary to provide and manage a steady service. However, rigid systems present a barrier to turning your business into a test platform that offers various subscription plans that can capture different customer demographics and add more value to your overall customer experience.

‍use of manual subscription management and billing

There are certain intricacies in the billing procedures that cannot be handled by manual billing. For example, when customers switch plans, add updates, or cancel their subscription it becomes difficult and takes a longer time to make the proper account reconciliations and refunds or create a new bill if necessary when using a manual billing system.

The friction that will arise between customers and the brand as a result of manual processes of billing and subscription management can affect the customer experience, but even worse, the brand will potentially risk losing the customer or some profits.

‍Poor revenue insights

With little to no data on the reasons for customer cancellations, it is impossible to carry out a proper evaluation of the performance of your e-learning business. But it doesn't end there; the lack of data also leaves your revenue to chance.          

Businesses that provide e-learning subscriptions and never have a clear understanding of their revenue cycle, often have difficulty finding a remedy to customer churn and revenue loss. The importance of gaining insight into your revenue trends cannot be understated. When running a subscription business, you constantly need to know why and when you're experiencing loss. It's essential for optimizing your marketing efforts and your overall bottom line.

‍global growth obstacles

Although e-learning businesses have the potential to go global, unfortunately, the possibility of global expansion faces an ongoing impediments. Enabling multiple translations, supporting multiple currencies, or providing local payment gateways, and tax laws remain a challenge for most Edtech businesses.

How to grow your e-learning business utilizing an integrated subscription billing software

The good news is that the limitations of the e-learning subscription business can be mitigated, and here are some of the solutions that we found useful:

Make decisions guided by revenue insights

To keep your company focused on growth, it's important to make decisions based on your revenue analytics.

Unfortunately, there will be no analytics for your subscription if your operation is manual, and hence the need for a subscription solution that won't merely handle recurring billing but also provide actionable insights into your revenue.

With a detailed analytics dashboard like that of Chargezen, you can easily monitor your revenue trends and make data-driven business decisions that is assumption-free.

Make efforts to promote customer retention for business growth

Retaining existing customers has recently become as important as acquiring new ones, particularly because it cost less. And if you're already selling subscriptions, you don't need an introduction to customer churn, it is certainly on your radar, but let's go over a few things you can do to manage it:

• Put an end to involuntary churn

When customers churn due to friction created as a result of missed payments(that can be a result of a blocked card from fraud attempt, insufficient funds, etc) or expired credit cards, it is regarded as involuntary churn. On the other hand, with Chargezen's dunning management system, you can prevent failed payment before it happens by automatically sending customers notification to update their card information before it expires, or retrying failed payments as many times as you wish. This will significantly help reduce this type of churn and prevent revenue loss.To learn more about involuntary churn and how to manage it, click here: https://www.chargezen.com/blog/how-to-cut-down-involuntary-churn-substantially

• Self-service portals

Ease of use is an age-old approach to customer acquisition and retention, and it's no surprise that it helps reduce churn. By using a subscription management solution like Chargezen which comes with a self-serve portal for your customers will significantly reduce the back and forth in customer-to-brand communication, and increase retention since customers know they can easily manage their subscriptions by themselves without calling sales. Customers will be able to instantly and easily interact with your brand through self-service customer portals, and independently modify their subscription. With the self-service portal they can control processes like payment options, billing intervals, or subscription changes like upgrades or downgrades using self-serve portals. It will also lessen the additional workload on customer support team, so they can focus on more important matters.

• Targeted marketing

To improve customer retention, you need to implement customized marketing strategies that appeal to your target audience. It is more effective to run targeted advertising based on customer category. For instance, your approach to advertising to one-time customers will differ from the method you will typically use to engage your subscribers and prevent them from canceling their subscription.. As an e-learning subscription business, you can recommend courses that complement the ones they are purchasing or offer course bundles at a discounted price, to discourage existing subscription customers from leaving if they are likely to churn. And on the other hand, you can offer freemium to encourage new registrations or recover dormant customers.

Automate your accounting processes

With an automated accounting process, you can ensure that everything from invoicing to bookkeeping comply with general accounting rules and standards for financial reporting to save time and simplify reconciliation. A good billing software you can also handle your numerous tax requirements in addition to billing to make sure you adhere to all tax policies and requirements.

Build a global customer base

The e-learning market is quickly growing across continents, and you too can grow with it by doing the following:

• Increase sales by offering flexible trials and free courses
• Make your inventory suitable for new markets
• Offer localized payment experience

Summary

The e-learning subscription business has seen substantial growth over the years, and it is anticipated that this system of learning will continue to make significant advancements as more people choose it over traditional classroom learning. However, this growth has come with unique challenges, but these obstacles can be solved using sustainable strategies that have gained popularity through time.

Making your administration software for e-learning subscriptions more effective and easy demands integrating a billing software. Fortunately, Chargezen provides an integrated subscription billing solution that has enabled several e-learning subscription platforms make insightful business decisions from hard-earned data and help them scale subscriptions the easy way.

Schedule a demo today, to learn how Chargezen can help you scale your e-learning business.

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