Address These Three Things Before the Next Renewal Season

With so much of today’s instructional resources sold as a subscription service, renewal season is an important time of year for schools and vendors. However, the renewal process doesn’t start then— it starts a year prior, right after the initial sale (or prior renewal).

Service providers with higher adoption, engagement, and renewal rates understand this. They approach retention as an ongoing, measurable process that is less about inflating usage and more about adding value to teaching and learning.

If one waits until late in the renewal process, one is left to scramble to justify the value of your solution, and all you have to rely on is rudimentary usage data or a summary of customer service logs. Instead, start from day one of implementation by showing how you’re supporting users. What ongoing training or resources are you providing? Are you giving them material they can reuse or adapt for dissemination within their school or district? Do you have relevant instructional exemplars? (If you don’t, I suggest you consider an Engagement Booster Pack.)

From our work with clients in the last few decades, we’ve identified three key strategies that contribute to higher rates of adoption, engagement, and retention.

1. Don’t over-rely on one big onboarding session

A strong initial onboarding experience is important to ensure your customer understands the essentials of how to use your solution, where to find resources, and how to get support. However, this alone doesn’t translate automatically into adoption or engagement. 

To create sustained engagement, we find a tiered approach works best:

• Phase 1: Start with those responsible for the internal rollout within each customer. Make sure they understand what materials and resources you’re providing to help them with adoption and rollout.
• Phase 2: Deliver onboarding sessions tailored to the needs of your customers’ internal champions like instructional coaches and tech-savvy educators. This is your opportunity to “train the trainers”. 
• Phase 3 (optional): Focus on the subject matter or instructional context. Invite your customers’ internal staff help lead or contribute to this experience. 

Be sure to follow up consistently. Use the following strategies to continue engaging your customers.

• Schedule quarterly success check-ins to share concrete suggestions and tidbits that have practical use.
• Proactively share positive customer feedback or interactions with their school or district leadership.
• Collect feedback from your customers about how their onboarding experience went. Did it cover everything they needed? Were some topics too shallow while others were too deep? Your best chance at improving retention comes from this feedback. 

One way this can look is by collaboratively developing an annual engagement plan with each major customer. This approach establishes goals, creates shared commitments, and shapes the overall relationship into an ongoing partnership rather than as a vendor transaction.

2. Provide just-in-time contextual professional learning

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Even the best-designed solutions can have features go unnoticed by its users. With educators’ limited availability for learning about new tools, curricula, or instructional practices, it can be very difficult to convey what’s new and improved unless it's designed properly.

Support educators in deepening their engagement throughout the school year by:

Designing learning experiences to be short, single-topic, and immediately actionable. Roll these out over time to give educators onscreen reminders of what to try next. 

• Stage the release of new features and interface enhancements in small batches to avoid overwhelming or confusing users.
• Announce enhancements in-app or on-platform— but don’t let the news get in the way of your key workflows.
• Frame the short learning experiences around what matters: making educators’ jobs easier, saving time, or improving student learning outcomes.
• Break down professional development into a sequence of experiences that move users towards more advanced functionality as they get more familiar with your solution.

Breaking down comprehensive learning experiences into timely and relevant topics available throughout the school year increases the likelihood of educators engaging and growing their confidence with your solution. 

3. Align to instructional priorities and classroom realities

Successful solutions focus on more than just functionality. They provide resources and supports that helps educators enhance their instructional practices and improve student learning. Solutions that invest in digital pedagogy—the how, why, and when to use the tool— see greater gains in engagement and usage.

Education institutions prefer solutions that focus on improving instructional practices and contribute to better student outcomes. 

• Share real-world instructional exemplars that illustrate where your solution addresses authentic needs.
• Embed learning resources within the solution, so educators get the support they need, when they need it.
• Conduct quarterly interviews with the internal champions of your key customers to understand what’s working best and adapt your implementation strategy accordingly.
• Tailor your implementation to align with varying state or district requirements and priorities.

Educators and administrators are more likely to advocate for renewal when student outcomes improve. One client we’ve worked with uses a regional collaboration model where curriculum coordinators and educators from several districts meet quarterly to share their best practices. This evolved into an online Community of Practice that deepened and extended product use which made renewals easier for those districts to justify.

Bottom Line: Retention starts on Day One

Retention isn’t merely about offering effective onboarding—it’s about ensuring that schools and districts consistently experience the value of your solution throughout the school year. A proactive, year-round strategy that integrates ongoing support, demonstrates instructional alignment, and offers easy ways to advance understanding transforms renewals from a challenging sales conversation to a seamless continuation of a successful partnership. Doing so results in stronger adoption, deeper engagement, more internal champions, and higher renewal rates.