Disney+, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime—you can bet a few of these names show up every month on members’ credit card statements. Yet they’re still buying professional development from you one transaction at a time. You’re processing registrations like it’s 2010 while members are clicking ‘subscribe’ for everything from meal kits to meditation apps. Instead of operating a transactional learning business, adopt a model that helps you build long-term relationships with your professional development customers. With learning subscriptions, you support professional growth, deepen engagement, generate revenue, and make a bigger impact on the lives of your members and customers. Learning subscriptions turn occasional purchasers into lifelong learners.
Why Do Learning Subscriptions Appeal to Members and Customers?
For subscribers, learning is no longer a sporadic event. Learning subscriptions help them embark and stay on a continuous journey of professional growth. When they want to indulge their curiosity or address workplace challenges, they have immediate access to self-directed learning in your content library.
With a subscription, learners explore programs without risk. They can repeat a program. If life gets in the way, they can quit a program without guilt, knowing they can return to it another time without incurring any additional expense.
Subscribers only have to get budget approval from their employers once, not every time a new need or desire arises. Learning subscriptions are especially valuable for people whose employers don’t pay for association memberships but will pay for professional development.
Why Do Employers Pay for Learning Subscriptions?
Some employers have a hard time seeing how association membership benefits their company, but they understand the value of skills training for their employees. Employers appreciate having access to a reliable, trusted source of training for new hires and employees. By making an investment in learning subscriptions, they demonstrate their commitment to employee growth, which enhances their talent recruitment and retention efforts.
A single annual purchase is much easier for everyone involved, from supervisors to HR and accounts payable teams. Employees access learning without having to make repeated authorization requests.
What Are the Benefits of Learning Subscriptions for Associations?
Learning subscriptions help your association fulfill its mission by:
- Supporting professional growth
- Deepening member/customer engagement
- Generating non-dues revenue
- Making a bigger impact on the lives of industry professionals
Learning subscriptions enhance the membership value proposition when offered as part of a membership tier.
As you shift from a transaction- to relationship-based model, subscriptions strengthen a learner’s loyalty to your association. Why would they go elsewhere if they’ve already prepaid for education?
Associations CFOs love the recurring revenue—and starting the year with predictable (deferred) revenue already in hand. In an ASAE Collaborate forum discussion, a trade association CEO said their growing six-figure subscription revenue stream is “like printing money.” Revenue is up 300% and learner engagement is up 200% for another association after launching its learning subscription.
Here’s a simple exercise that shows how they’re printing money: How many of your customers buy from you one year but not the next? Imagine retaining just 25% more of them, year after year. That’s the compound power of subscriptions.
Subscriptions also present new sponsorship opportunities. For example, industry partners could sponsor learning subscriptions (or scholarships) for early-career or rising star professionals.
With a steady stream of learner data, you’ll finally have the insights to decide what courses to develop next and which ones to sunset.
How Do Associations Price Learning Subscriptions?
Survey members about their learning and content consumption preferences and their willingness to pay. Many associations base their initial subscription pricing on the average annual customer spend on educational products.
Start with one subscription option or consider offering tiers (basic, pro, and premium) if the needs and desires of different member and customer segments vary widely.
Charge non-members more for learning subscriptions. Use the same pricing differential as your other products and events.
Offer corporate pricing to encourage training partnerships with industry employers—a lucrative source of revenue for many associations.
How Do Associations Select the Content Included in Learning Subscriptions?
Many associations include their entire learning catalog (with a few exceptions) in the subscription. If you offer a tiered subscription, you might only include compliance, entry-level, and foundational programs, including early-career microcredentials, in the basic tier.
Typical exceptions include:
- Advanced certifications
- Live events—offer a subscriber discount instead
- Recently recorded conference sessions—if you sell recordings as part of a registration package, schedule a 30-day embargo before giving access to subscribers
What Are the Essential Features of a Learning Subscription?
Netflix wouldn’t last long if they only updated their catalog once a year. Subscribers expect a fresh catalog of content. Schedule regular content development, releases, and updates throughout the year.
Send out monthly targeted ‘new release’ notifications, just like Netflix, except yours feature AI skills instead of true crime documentaries. Make personalized recommendations based on member/customer behavioral and demographic data.
Make sure your learning management system (LMS) is mobile-friendly, so subscribers can learn on the go, whenever and wherever it’s convenient for them.
Ask subscribers to opt in to automatic subscription renewals, like other subscription services. Send automated reminders of their approaching renewal date.
What’s Involved in Launching Learning Subscriptions?
You don’t need 3,000 hours of content to start. One association launched its subscription with just 5 courses and generated $25,000 in new revenue. Start where you are.
Gather a cross-functional team—colleagues from the education, membership, IT, marketing, and finance departments—to help you assess the viability and design of your subscription program.
- Conduct member research and competitive analysis.
- Develop a business case with conservative projections.
- Audit your content library—on-demand courses, and session and webinar recordings.
- Create a minimum viable subscription offering—a subscription that bundles your existing on-demand courses at a competitive price point—then expand features and content based on feedback and usage data.
- Develop success metrics.
Improve content metadata, such as titles, descriptions, and tags to improve search functionality and personalized recommendations. Eventually, create thematic collections and learning pathways for different market segments.
Develop marketing messaging that emphasizes the value proposition for different segments of prospective learners and their employers.
Develop a plan to regularly add and update content. Deliver new content more quickly with the financial investment of industry partners and the help of external learning design firms, like Apti.
Ensure your LMS and/or association management system is capable of managing subscriptions, including purchases and renewals.
With learning subscriptions, you’re not just making a pricing model change. You’re shifting how your association thinks about and serves its education customers. Instead of one-off sales, you’re building ongoing relationships by engaging and nurturing subscribers throughout the year. Your team has to think differently about success. Instead of focusing on courses sold, your success metric is subscribers recruited and retained.
Let’s Discuss Your Association’s Learning Plan
Every association that’s breaking revenue records with subscriptions started exactly where you are now—curious but cautious. If you’d like to discuss your current learning business and possible paths forward, please contact us for a free 20-minute consultation.