MasterClass grew so popular and influential so quickly that trying to tie things back to a plan—any plan—was a constant struggle. When they decided to shift from a monthly choice to an annual commitment, our ronin joined product, operations, and other teams with a two-fold mission. Together we focused all forthcoming features and development on those that reinforced the value of an always-available, lifelong path to self growth and improvement. After that took hold and the massive audience was on-board, we used those same focal points to re-define success for the company, its board, and its investors.
Growth project:
Migrate a massive and enthusiastic customer base from month-to-month to annual subscriptions without significant attrition or dissatisfaction.
Approach and results:
With two-plus years of integration into the product and operations teams, completed a full transition to annual subscription that included significant customer growth including extremely high retention.
Three key phases of action:
- Product and service feature enhancements to ensure always-ready access to classes and materials, reinforcing learning-as-a-lifestyle.
- Migrate KPIs from video-as-a-service to lifestyle product measurements and targets. Rather than hours watched per month (i.e., Netflix competitor), we shifted the company and its investors to monitor overall engagement and sharing as indicators of the importance of MC in the customer’s life.
- Features to support higher engagement and sharing, pushing those KPIs forward.
Together we focused all forthcoming features and development on those that reinforced the value of an always-available, lifelong path to self growth and improvement.
Through deep integration across product, operations, and growth, ronin helped MasterClass evolve from a fast-scaling content company into a lifelong learning platform. By focusing every new feature and metric on sustained engagement, ronin guided the company’s transition to annual subscriptions—boosting retention, redefining success, and aligning teams and investors around long-term value.
