Episode 23: Considering Culture for Global Growth with Sanjyot P. Dunung, Founder & CEO, Atma Global

In this episode of the Subscriptions: Scaled podcast, Nick Fredrick, President of Rebar Technology Solutions, is joined by Sanjyot P. Dunung, Founder & CEO, Atma Global.

What is Atma Global/Atma Insights?

Sanjyot founded Atma Global in 2003 as a digital content creator and provider. They help companies train their workforce to do business with customers and colleagues from different countries and cultures. They also serve higher education institutions and their employees and students. 

They produce their content themselves. Starting with CD-ROMs, they transitioned to DVDs and now offer content via online streaming. They used to sell through resellers as a B2B solution, and with the shift in the way people consume content, they've now moved into a B2C, direct-to-consumer model. 

Global Customer Service Needs

It used to be that companies had senior executives focus on the global markets. But over the last ten years, Sanjyot has seen companies recognize that there needs to be more of a focus on serving international customers.

The world has become more global, so of course you have companies going to other countries. But you also have a spike in people from different countries being able to buy products and services globally. Companies are now serving a global audience, which means that anyone who's customer-facing needs to have an understanding of different cultures. 

Cultural Differences

Some companies make the mistake of believing that the only difference between local and global customers is language. But cultural differences go way beyond language. Culture affects how people communicate, how people solve problems, how people interact with each other in business settings, and so much more. 

Culture itself happens beyond and within geographical limitations. There are many cultures within cultures. How people grew up and where they currently live can be a part of their culture and behaviors. And those cultures affect how we communicate, interact, and what we expect from others. 

Creating a Subscription Channel

About two and a half years ago, Sanjyot and her team created Atma Insights as a secondary platform for the business-to-consumer market. She likes to call it the "Netflix for Global Learning." The goal was to create something easy for consumers to access. So they made a simple monthly or annual subscription which people access anytime for $24.99 per month or $199 annually. 

They have two core markets: corporate business professionals and professors. The commonality of their best customers is that they're lifelong learners, but because they're two different markets, the marketing they do to each is different from the other. 

The $597M Mistake

Atma Global served more than 3,000,000 users with their content before going direct-to-consumer. However, they had a problem: their resellers kept those customers. And they don't know who those three million people are. 

At $199 per annual subscription, that's $597,000,000 of business potential. 

The advantage they have is a proven product with their content. And Atma knows how to package it, so it's valuable and accessible to their users. So even though they started from scratch with their consumer customers, they could tap into a proven product. 

Two Core Markets (and Offers)

On one side, Atma Insights serves corporate customers. That may consist of an HR Manager who needs resources for their employees. That may be an executive who wants to learn about time management. It also includes everyone who wants to learn about different cultures, and anyone corporate professional who wants to develop themselves or their team professionally. 

Corporate customers receive a special discount to make it affordable to stay subscribed for a lifetime. In addition, sometimes companies will reimburse employees for their subscription as a professional development expense. 

On the other side, Atma Insights serves educators with custom solutions for their specific curriculum needs. For example, professors submit their syllabus and get custom suggestions on what resources to integrate into their classes. 

Atma has a team that sells professors directly on subscribing to the platform. And then, students get a special discount to access the platform as well. 

They want to create a positive community of global enthusiasts, from their current business customers to professors and students who may become future business customers. 

Subscriber Acquisition Strategies

Atma mainly gains customers through email marketing and LinkedIn. Their digital marketing manager shares a lot of content on LinkedIn, then they capture email addresses for access to more in-depth content. They also notify existing users about new content on the platform to bring them back. 

They tried capturing email addresses by offering a coupon code on their website, using a tool called HotJar to track the activity on their site. They quickly learned that coupon codes did not attract their potential customers. Instead, people would click away and pay full price. 

One strategy that has worked well is tailoring different landing pages to each audience. Landing pages that speak to each market specifically are proving to work well for engaging visitors and getting subscribers. 

Some of the testing they're currently doing is through Google and LinkedIn ads. They're only testing English language audiences, but in different countries across North America, Europe, and Asia.

In-House Technology vs. Third-Party Solutions

They built their streaming platform on UScreen, and they take payments through Stripe. They would like to offer payment solutions that make it easier for customers worldwide to pay, like Google Pay and Amazon Pay. 

But in the growth phase of this part of their business, they were focused on solutions that allowed them to have a functional test. They've set internal benchmarks to evaluate how the tools they're using are working now, and how they might work for them in the future. 

Sanjyot believes in using platforms that already exist and focus on what you need versus trying to develop something in-house if you can. Their focus has been on accepting subscription payments globally and offering videos accessible in multiple languages.

Vendor Selection For Today vs. Tomorrow

When Atma was looking for vendors to meet their needs, they looked beyond just the core technology. Sanjyot wanted to work with a company where Atma mattered, in the sense where they could build an actual relationship with the company and not just use them as a platform. 

They wanted a vendor that had a responsive customer service team. They didn't want to face tech issues and not have someone they can reach promptly. 

At the same time, they also had to keep their growth in mind. That's where the internal benchmarks they set come into play. They keep an eye on capacity issues and already have their next solutions in mind. 

Sanjyot says it's critical to have one, three, and five-year plans in mind while you hope for the best and plan for the worst. You also need to know your benchmarks and how you're going to scale for growth while making sure your customers have the best experience. 

They track growth through a project management software called Pivotal Tracker. But Sanjyot says the important thing is that their project manager is very good at capturing data points, ideas and tracking whether they're ready to move forward with new solutions. 

Subscription Payments in Different Cultures

E-learning grew in popularity in 2020, with more people spending time online. Atma was able to capitalize on that growth by getting in front of a lot of new customers. 

Customers in some countries are used to platforms like Netflix and Spotify charging recurring payments. But some of their new customers are not used to renewing subscriptions. 

Atma tries to be very transparent in their initial email communication about what a subscriber is signing up for. However, they've found they've had to tweak their wording at times to make sure they're on the same page as subscribers. And if a subscriber misunderstands what they're signing up for, they'll credit a subscriber back their payment if that's the request they make. 

Their goal is to treat subscribers the way they would want to be treated.

To hear more from Sanjyot and Atma Global, tune into this episode of the Subscriptions: Scaled podcast.

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