Sales & CRM

How to track renewals and expansions as Educators, Coaches, and Course Creators

Sales & CRMFor Educators, Coaches, and Course Creators2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

You run cohort-based courses or ongoing coaching programs where students renew annually, upgrade from a self-paced tier to live coaching, or let their access lapse without warning. Right now, you're tracking this in a Google Sheet with color-coded rows and a Calendly export you update manually every few weeks. Stripe shows you who paid, but not when their access window expires. Kajabi or Teachable knows who's enrolled, but doesn't flag the person whose annual membership runs out in 11 days. You find out a student churned when they email asking why they're locked out. Every renewal conversation you have is reactive, not planned.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

Sales & CRMFor Educators, Coaches, and Course Creators2 apps10 steps~20 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live renewal dashboard that pulls Stripe subscription data and flags every student whose access expires in the next 30, 60, and 90 days — so you can reach out before they churn, not after

An automated email sequence that sends personalized renewal reminders and upgrade nudges through your existing email tool, triggered by the dates in Stripe

A CRM that tracks each student's enrollment tier, renewal history, and whether you've had a check-in conversation with them — so you know who to call this week

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

CRM Sales Agent CRM

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule — subscriptions, charges, customers, and invoice history feed directly into the CRM so renewal dates are always current. Gmail or Outlook is connected from Starch's integration catalog so the agent can read email thread history and surface when you last contacted a student. Calendly is connected directly by Starch so session history ties back to each contact record. For course platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, or Thinkific that don't have a scheduled-sync integration, Starch automates them through your browser — no API needed — to pull enrollment status and last login data.

Prompts to copy

Build me a student renewal CRM. Each contact should have: enrollment tier (self-paced, group coaching, 1:1), enrollment start date, renewal date, last check-in date, lifetime revenue from Stripe, and a notes field for what they said in their last session. Flag anyone whose renewal date is within 30 days in red.

Every Monday morning, show me a list of students whose Stripe subscriptions renew in the next 14 days. For each one, tell me when I last emailed them and whether they've logged into the course platform in the last 30 days.

Draft a renewal outreach email for a student who's been in the group coaching tier for 11 months, has completed 80% of the curriculum, but hasn't attended a live session in 6 weeks. Offer them a discount on the annual renewal and mention the new module launching next month.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Stripe as a scheduled-sync provider. Starch pulls your full customer list, subscription plans, renewal dates, and payment history. This is the source of truth for who has active access and when it expires.

2 Connect Gmail or Outlook from Starch's integration catalog. The agent indexes your email history with each student so the CRM can show you when you last had a real conversation — not just an automated receipt.

3 Connect Calendly directly through Starch so every 1:1 session booking ties back to the student's contact record. You'll see at a glance who's booked a call in the last 60 days and who hasn't.

4 If you use Kajabi, Teachable, or Thinkific, tell Starch to automate your course platform through the browser. It logs in and pulls enrollment status and last-login dates for each student into their CRM record.

5 Ask Starch to build your student renewal CRM. Describe the fields that matter to you: enrollment tier, renewal date, last check-in, Stripe LTV, course completion percentage, and a red-flag field for anyone expiring within 30 days.

6 Set up a weekly automation: every Monday, Starch queries Stripe for upcoming renewals in the next 14 days, checks Gmail for recent contact, checks Calendly for recent sessions, and surfaces a prioritized list of students to reach out to this week.

7 For students in the 30-day renewal window, ask Starch to draft personalized outreach emails based on each student's completion rate, session attendance, and enrollment tier. Review and send in one pass — the Email Agent handles drafts and follow-up reminders.

8 Track upgrade opportunities separately. Ask Starch to flag self-paced students who have completed over 70% of the curriculum and haven't attended a live session — these are your best candidates for a coaching upsell conversation.

9 After each renewal conversation, log the outcome in the CRM with a note. Starch uses this history to improve future drafts and to identify patterns — which students renew after a personal call vs. after an email discount.

10 At the end of each cohort or quarter, ask Starch for a renewal summary: how many students were up for renewal, what percentage renewed, what percentage upgraded, and what the average time-to-renewal was from first outreach. Use this to refine your next cohort's pricing and communication cadence.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

April 2026 Renewal Week — 12 students expiring

Sample numbers from a real run

Group coaching annual renewals (8 students × $1,200)	9,600
Self-paced → group coaching upgrades (2 students × $800 upgrade fee)	1,600
Lapsed / did not renew (2 students)	0
Total April renewal revenue	11,200

Going into the first week of April, Starch flagged 12 students expiring before April 30. Eight were on annual group coaching plans at $1,200. Two had never booked a 1:1 and were quiet in the Slack community — Starch drafted a check-in email for each, not a renewal push, just asking how things were going. Both replied within 48 hours; one upgraded to the 1:1 tier mid-conversation. Two students hadn't logged into the course platform in over 90 days and didn't respond to two outreach attempts — they lapsed, but you already knew that was likely from the engagement data. Total renewal revenue for the week: $11,200. Without the dashboard, the two quiet students would have hit their renewal date, gotten an automated Stripe receipt, ignored it, and churned. The outreach took about 25 minutes because the drafts were already written.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Net Revenue Retention (NRR) by cohort — what percentage of last year's subscription revenue renewed or expanded

Days-to-contact before renewal date — are you reaching students 30 days out or 3 days out

Upgrade rate from self-paced to live coaching tiers

Course completion rate as a leading indicator of renewal likelihood

Churn by enrollment tier — are 1:1 students renewing at a different rate than group coaching students

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Google Sheets + Stripe dashboard

Works until you have more than 40-50 active students; after that, manually updating renewal dates and tracking outreach history across a spreadsheet and your inbox becomes the part-time job you didn't hire for.

HubSpot Starter

Handles CRM and email sequences well, but requires real configuration time, doesn't have a native Stripe sync at the lower tiers, and costs more per month than most solo coaches want to spend before they've proven the retention workflow.

Kajabi's built-in CRM

Good if your entire stack lives inside Kajabi, but the moment you're taking payments through Stripe separately, running live sessions through Zoom, and managing relationships in email, you're back to copying data between tools by hand.

Notion database + Zapier automations

Flexible and familiar for course creators who already live in Notion, but building and maintaining Zaps for Stripe webhook triggers, Gmail lookups, and Calendly syncs takes real ops time and breaks silently when any one integration changes.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — crm, sales agent crm all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My course is on Kajabi and Kajabi doesn't have an API connector in Starch. Can I still use this?

Yes. Starch automates Kajabi through your browser — no API needed. You stay logged in to Kajabi, and Starch navigates it to pull enrollment status and last-login data for each student. It's the same approach Starch uses for any web-based platform that doesn't have a formal API connector.

Stripe is my source of truth for payments, but I also use Teachable's built-in payment processing for some courses. Can Starch handle both?

Starch syncs your Stripe data on a schedule for direct Stripe payments. For Teachable's internal payment system, Starch can automate Teachable through the browser to pull transaction and enrollment data. It won't be as deep as the Stripe sync, but the renewal dates and student records will still populate in your CRM.

I don't have a formal 'subscription' — students pay once a year and I manually re-enroll them. Does this still work?

Yes. Tell Starch how your enrollment cycle works when you're building the CRM — for example, 'annual access starts on the date of the Stripe charge and expires 12 months later.' Starch calculates expiration dates from payment history and flags upcoming ones the same way it would for a formal subscription.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? My coaching clients sometimes share sensitive personal information.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If your students share health, financial, or other sensitive personal information in your coaching context, check whether that data will flow through Starch before connecting those sources. For most course and group coaching businesses — where the data is enrollment status, payment history, and email threads about course content — this isn't a blocker, but it's worth knowing.

What about Contract Lifecycle Management for annual coaching contracts?

Contract Lifecycle Management — which would handle drafting, e-signature, and renewal alerts for formal coaching agreements — is currently in development. You can request beta access to get notified when it launches. In the meantime, the CRM tracks renewal dates and the Email Agent handles outreach; you'd manage contract signing through your current tool (DocuSign, HelloSign, etc.) and log the status as a field in the CRM.

I already use ConvertKit or Mailchimp for email sequences. Do I have to replace them?

No. Connect ConvertKit or Mailchimp from Starch's integration catalog — the agent queries them live when your automations run. Starch can trigger sequences in your existing email tool based on renewal dates from Stripe, rather than replacing your email platform. You keep your templates and subscriber lists; Starch adds the logic that decides who gets what and when.