Punchpass allows you to create a free trial period for your memberships, which is a great way to entice customers to 'try before they buy.' Here's how to set them up, and some important points to understand about how they work.
What is a Free Trial?
A free trial provides the customer with the membership for free for a set amount of time before it starts charging them, so it is like having an active unlimited membership pass on the account.
Trial periods appear on the membership details page (Customer account > membership) as a separate pass.
How Trial Membership Passes Work
When a customer purchases the membership (or is assigned it by you), Punchpass issues them a trial pass (valid for the length of the trial) and stores their payment information in your Stripe account.
Note: The trial membership pass DOES NOT count against the number of renewals for a membership.
The day after a free trial membership pass ends, the customer's credit card is charged for the first paid membership pass.
Setting Up a Free Trial
To enable a free trial you can create a new membership or edit an existing one (Manage > Passes). From the membership setup page, you'll see an option near the bottom of the form:
Choose the length of the free trial period in number of days and click Save.
A couple of important points to keep in mind
You cannot override the free trial for specific customers. Instead you'll have to define a new membership that does not have a free trial.
You can edit the free trial settings for the membership, here's how!
You can define a free trial period up to 30 days in length. Because this cannot be overridden, we recommend you keep the free trial period short.
The free trial starts when the membership 'starts'. For example, if you assign a membership to start at the beginning of next month, that is when the free trial period will start.
The membership's RENEWAL date will be determined by the date after the free trial ends because most likely the free trial period will not match the length of the membership's renewal periods.
Recurring memberships are a great tool to provide your business with a steady, predictable cash flow.
Adding a free trial is a way to reduce the risk for customers who are interested in what you offer!