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Setting up trial period for subscription products

Did you know that you can offer trial on your products to your customers? This can specifically come in handy if you want to coax customers whose hesitating to subscribe to your product(s) for whatever reason. If done correctly, this can work wonders on your conversion rate

Video tutorial

This article is explaining how to offer trial inside the product setup to customers of your store on Subbly. If you're looking into setting up a trial account with Subbly, you can follow this link to sign up. 

Before you proceed, we have a video tutorial on how you can achieve similar setup to what Netflix has in the video below:

What is trial and how it can benefit me?

Trials are limited offers which you can offer to the subscribers of your store if they are hesitant on whether they should be subscribing or not. You can use the trial functionality to offer them a discounted first month or even X days of free trial on your service (similar to what Subbly offers, for example). 

Historically, we've seen a large increase of revenue to some of the Subbly merchants who introduced a trial offer to their customers where they were receiving their first box for a discounted amount, just so they can test whether the product is suitable for them or not. 

Just for the sake of giving an example, let's say that you're running a fashion box, priced at $50 on a monthly basis. If your customers are hesitant on the quality of the box and items included, you might want to consider giving them a 15 days of trial offer where they will pay $25 for the intro box, just so they can test the quality of items. At any point, they can simply cancel their subscription after receiving the intro box. If they are satisfied, their subscription will roll onto regular monthly subscription after expiration of the trial. 
Also, using trials is part of a solid marketing strategy, check our blog post here!

How to setup the trial offer? 

Trial days and trial price can be added directly on the product creation wizard, on Step 1, right after you specify billing and shipping and actual regular price for your product. 

If you don't want to offer trial to your customers, that's OK as well, just make sure to leave those fields empty in that case.
For a complete guide on how you can create a subscription product please see HERE. 

Example

Product setup

  • Billing/shipping: monthly/monthly (ad-hoc)
  • Regular monthly price: $30
  • Trial period price: $10
  • Trial period days: 10

Implications:

  • Customer subscribes to this product on 14th of March
  • His trial period is initiated and he is billed for $10 on the checkout
  • His trial order is generated and is queued up in the Orders section
Customer is able to cancel his subscription at any point during the trial from his customer login area, unless the product has set commitment period which will prevent the customer from cancelling even during the trial. 
  • Customer didn't cancel his subscription for the 10 days of trial, and on 24th of March (after 10 days of trial period) his subscription rolls over to regular monthly subscription and he is charged for $30. Order is generated.
  • Subscription continues following the monthly ad hoc schedule until cancelled.

FAQ

Can I add trial to one-time products?

No, these are applicable only to subscriptions. 

Is trial available for specific billing/shipping setups?

It's not, given that trial period can end on a day that doesn't necessarily match the billing date you set. Therefore trial can only be set for ad-hoc billing & shipping. 

Can trial be utilized for pre-ordering products?

No. If your products are set as available for pre-order, trial period won't apply to them (as subscriptions associated with these products are set to begin in the future).

How will customers see that this is a trial offer?

If you'd want the information about the trials to be presented on the checkouts for the customer, you will need to go here and to enable the following toggle


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