Discounting Subscription or Recurring-Payment Products

To discount a "membership" product - or ANY product - set as a recurring or installment "Subscription Product" (see image below) it's important to understand a few rules:

-Rule to Apply Discount to FIRST payment only

To apply the discount to the FIRST payment only - the discount code must be applied manually. (ie: the customer needs to input the discount code themselves in the checkout.)

To do this - leave the "Apply automatically" checkmark UNCHECKED within the Discount Code settings screen.

-Rule to Apply Discount to ALL RECURRING PAYMENTS:

To apply the discount to ALL payments in the subscription or installment payment plan - both the first AND recurring payments - the discount code should be set to "apply automatically".

Note: this also applies if discounting or changing the price of a Subscription product that is being sold as an "Upsell" or "Downsell" product within a Funnel.  

If you select to "Overwrite the price" within the Settings window for the Upsell/Downsell Widget - then the DISCOUNTED PRICE will be charged on each subscription payment for those that purchase the Upsell/Downsell product. (see below)

No. Unfortunately, you cannot set the first month of your subscription/membership as 100% free (ie: with a Discount Code set to 100% discount percentage) as this means that no billing/credit card information will be collected during checkout. You NEED to collect billing information/credit card info for any subscription-type product so that you can charge for subsequent recurring payments.

A few options:

Option A:

Instead of setting your "First Month Free" - consider charging a discounted rate for your first month - even as low as $1, $5 or $7. ie: "First Month Only $7!"

(To do this - see above - when you set the discount code, set it for a flat rate or a percentage to drastically bring down the price to the desired amount but do NOT set it to "apply automatically" )

This allows you to capture billing/credit card information on the first month (discounted amount) in order to charge subsequent months and collect payment (at the regular amount).

Option B:

Instead of running the sign-ups for your membership thru the store/checkout process, instead, give them initial free access to your membership via the "Member Login/Registration" Widget.

Add this widget to the page:

This allows you to grant "Member Group" access to any user. It also allows you to TAG any of these people coming thru this form as well as add them to an email list as a "subscriber".

Tips To Set up This Widget within the Settings window:

- Click "Enable Registrations"

-Select your Member Group from the dropdown list to "Add new Members to Group"

-Click "Select Lists" from the "Connect to Email Marketing" button and select the email list or lists you'd like to add them to (this makes them not only a "contact" and "member" in your system - but also a "subscriber". 

See the below article to see the difference. 

-Select "Tag new members" and create or choose the tag of your choice

You can then use Automations to email them at various intervals letting them know their membership will be "ending" at 30 days, encouraging them to upgrade (send them a link to a payment /checkout page) - and tagging them as "Not upgraded" if they do not upgrade - allowing you to get a notification to manually remove them from the Member Group (thus removing access to any of their members-only content pages).

(see an example of automation below)

It's important to note that whatever parameters are set for the Subscription Product at the time of purchase is how it will run for the "life" of the subscription. 

This means that price, discount setup etc. are all "locked in" for that purchase and future payments will be based on the originally-purchased Subscription's parameters.  

If you change the product's price or if you would like to change the way discounts are applied  - only NEW purchaser/subscriber will be "locked in" at that NEW rate.

​

​Given, this, deleting a discount code will not affect an existing subscription. The product will remain discounted if it was originally set to have a discount apply to each payment (automatically applied vs. manually applied).

​

​If you want your customer to pay a different price or get a different discount, they will need to cancel their subscription and re-purchase the item.