Engage with your learners

Being an instructor is about more than just publishing a course. It’s important that you build a connection with your learners through an online setting. Successful instructors are more than just content creators, they spend time interacting with their learners. We encourage you to build a base of loyal learners. Reach out to them for feedback, respond to their questions or reviews, and interact with them to help you improve your course.

Ways to connect with your learners

There are several ways to communicate directly with your learners. You can create announcements and promotional emails, send direct messages, and interact with learners in the Q&A forum in your course.

Many instructors find it easier to manage their communications via our mobile app. Once you download the app, open it and tap your avatar to get to the instructor experience.

Educational announcements

Educational announcements are meant to activate and re-engage your learners to bring them back to your course. Use them to send updates about your course or share free resources related to your course topic to supplement the course material. Announcements are sent by email and also show up in your learners’ Udemy account message center.

You can send up to 4 announcements per month and should only feature free resources related to your course material (Udemy links are not allowed). Do not direct learners to promotional material as that is a violation of our policy. Learn more about our rules for educational announcements.

Here are some tips for writing educational announcements:

• Include a contest or call-to-action and challenge learners to finish certain lectures or sections of the course
• Inspire your learners with news from the field and keep them engaged with the subject matter
• Let learners know when you’ve updated or added content to your course, your investment in the course will grab their attention

Promotions

Use promotional announcements to market your new courses to your existing learners or to share coupon codes for your existing course that people can forward onto their friends and family.

You can send promotional emails up to twice a month for each of your courses. Promotional emails should include links to your Udemy courses (external links are not allowed). Learn more about rules for promotional announcements.

Here are some tips for writing promotional announcements:

• For promotional purposes, you may want to send a series of emails to build up the interest. For example, to announce the launch of a new course, send a 2-email sequence over the course of a week to your existing Udemy learner list
• You can even include a discount if you’re feeling generous. But don’t forget to set a promotional deadline and mention it clearly.
• Run a seasonal sale or temporary deal in conjunction with a holiday
• Quote real learner feedback (after asking for permission) about the courses you want to promote

Direct messages

This lets you privately communicate with your learners or other instructors. When you send a direct message, learners receive an in-product message. Depending on their settings, they may also receive an email. Learn more about sending direct messages and about Udemy direct message rules and guidelines.

Q&A

This is an in-product forum where your learners registered for your course can ask questions, read your responses, and respond to one another. You can also pin or highlight frequently asked questions. Learn more about how to feature questions.

Best practices for subject lines

A clear and compelling subject line can draw the attention of your students and prompt them to open and read your messages. Follow these rules to write impactful subject lines for your announcement and promotional emails:

• Keep it short and concise
• Don’t write your subject lines in all capital letters
• Avoid subject lines with exclamation marks or phrases
• Give your learners a compelling reason to open the email but avoid overused words that may trigger spam filters like free, sale, % off. Instead, use the occasion or time of year (birthday, a personal achievement, or a holiday)
• Consider framing subject lines as questions to build curiosity
• Avoid using the same subject lines multiple times. This might make your learners lose interest in your emails
• Test different subject lines