Give your audience a taste of membership with free trials

By offering a free trial, you can invite your audience to try out one of your paid membership levels for free for seven days, before committing. This short, but immersive, experience gives curious fans a real taste of your membership — one that can inspire them to sign up for the long term.

In this episode of Backstage with Patreon, Norma O’Mahony, a product manager on Patreon’s Growth team, walks through how free trials work, data illustrating how free trials improve creators’ earnings, and tips for getting started.

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Episode transcript

Brian Keller:
Hello, creators. You are Backstage with Patreon, where we open the curtain on how to build a thriving business on Patreon. I'm Brian Keller from the Creator Success Team.

And today's guest is Norma O'Mahony, Product Manager on our Growth Team. She's worked on a range of different creator product areas at Patreon, from payments to member benefit delivery to member signup. And before that, she worked on product and as a co-founder at startups focused on software solutions for small businesses. And Norma and the Growth Team have rolled out a long awaited feature for creators, allowing them to offer free trials to their audience to get a short taste of the benefits on the tiers before paying for monthly membership. And free trials are great growth and engagement tools for lots of creators.

So let's get started with Norma O'Mahony on Backstage with Patreon. And Norma, why was now the right time for free trials? I'm sure creators have been asking us for this for quite a while.

Norma O'Mahony:
Hi, Brian. Yes, thanks for having me on. For sure, there's a number of reasons why now it was the right time to get free trials into creators hands. For one, we're always looking for new ways to help creators to grow their membership, to help them to acquire more members. And free trials is one such great way to do that. It's a way that creators can really authentically market themselves, which is really convincing to us. It allows creators to lead with the content that they create and the value that they have in their membership, which is so powerful. And we've seen that with the results of the experiments as well, that there's been such a rise in the authenticity that creators can talk about their membership and therefore it's much easier for them to do it.

On top of that, it's just something creators have asked us for, which you've pointed to as well. It's something that we've heard from creators an awful lot. They want to do free trials. It's a really common membership acquisition tactic, and now something that we can do. And fortunately with the simplified billing update that we shipped last year, that set foundations to allow us to build features like free trials. So it's really exciting to get it into creators hands.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, I'm so excited about it. With my team working with creators, we hear this all the time. They've been looking for this kind of potential on Patreon. And that's an important point, that so for any creator that has started recently, they're already on this simplified billing or subscription billing kind of model. That's just the natural way on Patreon now, where people start their one-month subscription on whatever day of the month.

For creators that have already been on Patreon on our other billing models, can you clarify for them if they're interested in free trials, if that's the thing that makes them excited to try this out, what is that step in terms of setting up their billing model?

Norma O'Mahony:
Yeah, absolutely. Free trials is only available on subscription billing, but it's pretty straightforward for a creator to make that move. All of their existing members will stay on the same billing date that they have, so they won't even notice a change. And it's just for new members signing up. They'll have probably what they're more likely to expect, in that their re-billing date will be a month from the date that they sign up.

So it's a pretty easy move to subscription billing, and you'll get access to new features like free trials as part of that.

Brian Keller:
Perfect. And so free trials could be done in a lot of different ways. What are the choices we've made for creators and what are the things that they can customize in setting it up?

Norma O'Mahony:
Yeah, that's a great question. We did an awful lot of research on what was possible with free trials and what would be most powerful with creators. And we also ran experiments with different functionality too, to see what resonated the most with creators and what actually drove the most value for creators as well. And that led us to what free trials is today in its first variation, which is a seven-day free trial. And the creator has the power to choose which tier that trial is on, and they can turn it on and off as they want as well. So really excited to get that into creators' hands.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, that makes sense. And finding that balance of customization. Definitely some creators will say, only certain tiers, I'm okay with offering that. But that we've actually helped them simplify. You don't need to choose, is it seven days, 14 days, a certain number of days. We've actually found through research what we think is that sweet spot there.

How about in terms of the way free trials interact with the benefits and back catalog items that creators have available?

Norma O'Mahony:
That was something that we spent an awful lot of time thinking about and talking about. Back catalog protection was probably one of the things that we were most vigilant of how fans and trialers interacted with the back catalog while we were running experiments, because we wanted to make sure we were setting creators up for success and that there wasn't anybody misusing free trials as a way to take advantage of the back catalog. So that was something that we spoke to a lot of creators about and we watched really closely during the experiment as well to see what happened.

When we ran the experiment, we actually were thinking, would we get started with free trials without back catalog? Or would we potentially, based on the experiment results, follow on with a follow on experiment where back catalog protection was in place? But the results that we saw were so encouraging that we couldn't wait to add more functionality. We needed to get this feature into creators' hands as is. So we saw nothing concerning around back catalog protection, but it's certainly something that we'll keep an eye on for the future and are doing some explorations on it already, to see how that can add on as another benefit as well.

Brian Keller:
And let's translate that a little bit for creators there. So if someone is on a free trial, they're treated just like a full member with access to any new posts, old posts, et cetera. Is there anything else that a creator should think about with their own benefits and what they offer, whether free trials are the right fit for them?

Norma O'Mahony:
Yes. There's a couple of things. So the entire back catalog of posts, of videos, of podcast episodes are all things that the patron will ... or the free-trialer will have access to as part of the free trial. There's a couple of things they won't have access to. Things like merch for membership aren't eligible for free-trialers, and also special offers aren't eligible as well. So those added benefits still are tied to the payment happening in the system as well, and that's all automatic.

What we've seen from creators when choosing which tier to offer free trials to, typically, most creators have chosen tiers that have more scalable benefits. So things like that one-to-many posts works really well for a free trial. While creators who have one-to-one benefits tend to not offer a free trial on those, because obviously it takes them a bit more time to deliver on that, which makes a lot of sense.

Brian Keller:
And you talked about experiments a couple of times and what we did there. Can you say more about how we approached that with creators, and then actually some of the results that we saw that were so encouraging?

Norma O'Mahony:
Yeah, totally. It was really exciting to be part of, and the research team and the data team were really thoughtful in how they approached this. It all started with a lot of conversations with creators and with creator-facing teams like yourself and your team, to understand what creators' want was, what concerns they might have around free trials, and even thinking of what other features we can build to help creators grow their membership. So it started off with a lot of interviews with creators to better understand where they are at today and what the opportunity is, before moving into an actual experiment that we ran over a couple of months.

So there was a number of creators, a couple of hundred of creators were part of an experiment that had access to free trials for three months. And we watched how fans engaged with that feature over time. It was really important for us to not just look at the initial conversion from free trial to paid membership, but we wanted to see how that member behaved after that conversion point as well. Looking at the 30-day retention, for example, if those folks who started on a free trial stayed around for a period of time. We saw really great results. There's a couple that really stood out to me.

The first thing was for creators who had free trials, we saw an increase in the traffic to their page. And we heard this from creators as well, that it was easier for them to talk about their Patreon when they had free trials. It didn't need to be a thing where they spoke about a bonus episode and felt bad when a fan got there and realized it was $5 a month. Now fans could engage with that content that they were excited about straight away and get a feel for what that paid membership was like, which translated into really amazing conversion from free trial to paid membership.

To be honest, it was even better than we anticipated. Actually, we had a couple of creators in the experiment who offer free trials on other platforms as well. And the conversion they saw on Patreon was much higher than what they see elsewhere, which really is an exciting nod to a sense of community and what value there is to membership on Patreon. So it was really exciting to see, on the whole, a really healthy conversion from free trial to paid member. But also anecdotally, creators are seeing a really exciting behavior here on Patreon as well versus other platforms.

And then as I mentioned, the retention that we saw of paid members was really healthy as well. So across the board, saw some really great numbers there. Which as always, makes my life easier when that happens.

Brian Keller:
That's great to hear. It's on all those stages of the member funnel, traffic, conversion, retention there. So if a creator turns on free trials, what is the kind of data and insights that they'll be able to see in their dashboards?

Norma O'Mahony:
So it was really important to us that creators are empowered with the insights that they need to have in order to make a call on if free trials are right for them, and what tier free trials works best for them as well. So in the insights section of creators' dashboards, on the same tab as their membership, they'll see a breakdown of all of the tiers that they're offering free trials on and how each of them are performing.

So they'll see how many trialers are signing up over any period of time, how many of them are converting to a paid membership, and how many of them are canceling as well. So creators are empowered with that knowledge of if it's working, what's working well, and how that all ties together to help the creator grow their business in the best way.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, I'm really excited for that as well. Because there's some creators who they just will make the decision, they'll just turn on trials. You never have to touch, it'll just help you run your business. But it sounds like this is an area where there is actually a lot of control and data and information for a creator to understand what is performing better, to tweak it, to do it over time in a way that I think is pretty powerful for them. Were you even seeing creators respond to that or interact with that kind of feature during your testing?

Norma O'Mahony:
Yeah, totally. The piece that I was particularly surprised about was some creators using it as more of a promotional point-in-time tactic, rather than a consistent, always-on tactic. The majority of creators chose a tier, turned it on, some of them tweaked it a little bit, but there was some creators who ran the free trial as a promotion. So they let their fans know, for this many days, if you sign up, you get a seven-day free trial. And it really caused a spike in the activity that they saw there of folks wanting to take advantage of that, which was pretty cool to see.

But as you said, the majority of the creators turned it on, monitored that it was effective and the right move for them. And then left it work its way as they continued to promote their Patreon and promote the bonus content that was there.

Brian Keller:
That's really cool, that ability to use it as the seasonal or temporary promotion tactic. Because as we know, there's not that many ways you can run these kind of time-based promotions in Patreon. So it's great to know that we have another new tool for them like that.

Anything else you saw from these creators? The way they're promoting free trials, the way they were able to make it part of their page, that were really nice examples?

Norma O'Mahony:
I think that one of the stories that stood out to me really strongly was Ken Goshen. He, I think, sums up a lot of what I am really happy about free trials being able to do for creators. For him, he found it challenging to explain what the benefits of his membership was. He offers educational videos around illustration and art. And a lot of creators face that challenge, where it's difficult to sum up what this paid membership is and why people should be part of it. And free trials allowed him to change the narrative, that people could experience it. And it's a real, show, don't tell tactic, which I think is just a much more authentic way of marketing. And that's how we saw it used most effectively.

A lot of creators, very rightly so when they turned on free trials, made a big deal out of it. And absolutely, that is a great thing to do, but you're not going to every week talk about a free trial, necessarily. But what you can do is as your normal free content is going out, this is a great way to let people know if they want more of that exclusive content, the bonus episodes, the behind the scenes, there is that free trial so they can try it out. And it really helped those fans that were interested, on the fence but not sure if they were ready to pay yet, try it out and see what it was like. And I think the conversion metrics let us know that the experience the creators created in those spaces kept people around after that.

Brian Keller:
Great. Now you mentioned earlier, we didn't see a lot of issues with misuse, abuse of the free trials and doing it, but I think creators still might want to know a little bit of the aspects. How do we put in protections around that? How does it actually work to prevent those kind of situations?

Norma O'Mahony:
Yeah, absolutely. The back catalog protection was something that we monitored really closely to ensure that wasn't happening. And also ensured that creators had insights to monitor free trials on their page as well. But the other things that we've done are things like ensuring that a fan can only use free trials to a campaign once, so we don't have folks signing up to free trial after free trial. I think that's the key one to call out.

Brian Keller:
Well, now that free trials has been launched and is out available for all creators here, tell us a little bit about what your team, your area of the product has planned and what else we can be building in the future.

Norma O'Mahony:
Really exciting to continue to get to work in this space. So as I mentioned, the team is continuing to explore back catalog protection, allowing creators to choose how much of their months and years worth of content that new trialers or even potentially new members get access to. That is something that's being explored, but we're also looking at how can we make free trials even better. Seeing, as you said, free trials live now and seeing how creators use it is always inspiration for how we can push a feature further to make it even more powerful for creators. As well as looking for other tools to help creators to grow their membership in a way that is authentic to who they are, and allows those fans to get a taste of what that value is like.

I personally am working on the creator onboarding part of the product right now. So really excited to help more creators who are just getting started on Patreon, figure out where to get started. We have so much data on what works and what the right place to get started with. We have so much knowledge shared by creators on where to get started, so really excited to help new creators to start that journey on Patreon and take advantage of the great features that we have, like free trials.

Brian Keller:
Yeah. Since you spend a lot of time with these brand new creators and in their launch process, what are some of the things that your team has found about what makes for the most successful launches that set up creators for long term success? And even our existing creators might want to think about making sure they've taken those steps as well.

Norma O'Mahony:
I think a key thing that I have seen is all around the membership setup. So we see so many creators on the platform that have multiple tiers that they have to deliver benefits on every month, and there may be a small number of patrons signed up to that tier, which makes it very time intensive for a creator to deliver on that. So what we would recommend is getting started with one tier. Figure out what product market fit is for one tier before adding on more tiers. And it allows you to ensure that return on investment is working well for you, and you can put your effort into that core product before adding on extra pieces there.

So that would be a core bit of advice. Your audience loves you for the content that you produce, so more of that is going to be a really effective way for those folks to follow you to paid membership. And then, as I mentioned, that show, don't tell mentality can be a really effective way to get folks to know what paid membership is for you. Exactly like Ken Goshen said, it can be challenging to explain what membership is, but showing the content that's there can be a really effective way to bring your audience over to Patreon and get started on paid membership.

Brian Keller:
Yeah, I'm glad we've ended up talking a little bit about tier structure in that aspect too. My team is often recommending that with creators. It's fine, it's actually good to think about the tiers that you offer, to revamp them periodically. Give your members more of what they love and more of what is a good fit for you and your time. But it's also fine to retire a tier, modify what you're doing there, really give that some thought. And free trials may be a good instigator of that. If you want to do free trials on a tier, think about what you want to offer there. Does that help you rethink how you approach it? So thanks for digging into that part of it.

When you think about the future of free trials and that, one of the things that I was realizing is right now it sounds like anyone who joins in that free trial, it's just as if they are a regular paid member. Do we envision that there might be a different trial experience that has different aspects to it, knowing that member is in that phase of having done the trial but not yet decided to pay on a monthly basis?

Norma O'Mahony:
Yeah. I think a key part of it for me is that person is still in the sales funnel. They haven't converted to that paid member stage yet. So to be honest, similarly with any new member, to treat them with a really warm welcome into your community and into your Patreon is such a powerful step to take. We have a feature in the product called Welcome Notes. It allows you to say hello to those new people who are joining your membership. Things like that can just be really effective to get people excited as they're joining your Patreon. Whether it's a free-trialer or whether it is a first time member, it can be a really special moment to get welcomed into that new community. And so that's definitely something I'd recommend.

Brian Keller:
Great. Well, we've covered a lot of ground there, not just on free trials, but some other aspects of membership and tiers there. So to recap on some of that, with free trials, which are now available, they're seven days that you offer your members. It accesses all the benefits that you have on those particular tiers. And we're really finding it helps creators authentically market what they have to offer. It makes it easier to promote and just encourage people to check it out. And I love this metaphor, show, don't tell. Let them see and experience the things that you have to offer there.

We've seen it have a positive effect on each of these stages of the member funnel. It helps you drive more traffic to your page. It helps you convert them from that trial to paid membership. And actually, we're seeing strong retention. So those members that go from that first month of paying into subsequent months. There's lots of exciting performance metrics that creators can check out. They can even dive into which tiers on which free trials are actually performing better, and use that to really customize. And even to do it potentially as a point-in-time or a seasonal tactic to offer free trials at certain points and really promote around that.

We've also got protections built in. Members can't keep reusing free trials. We've already thought through that side of it. We're building more options around back catalog protection and different ways creators might want to use that. And then this encouragement, use Welcome Notes. Make sure that your free-trialers, as well as any new members really are getting a nice, special, warm experience when they join.

So Norma, this is great. Thanks for walking people through free trials and new features we have available on Backstage with Patreon.

Norma O'Mahony:
Thanks, Brian.

Brian Keller:
Tune in next week to Backstage with Patreon, when our guest is Ethan Saks, co-host of the Lords of Limited podcast, about the collectible card game, Magic Gathering. He pivoted from an acting career to full-time content creation, across podcasting, streaming, YouTube, writing, and coaching. And we dive into how membership and community have helped navigate the many changes that come from life as a creator.

To catch every episode of Backstage with Patreon, follow or subscribe in your podcast app and leave us a review. We also have transcripts available at patreon.com/backstage. You're growing as a creator by listening to the show, so why not share the insights from this episode with another creator on Patreon, or who's running a creator business? We'd love to have you as an active collaborator with Backstage with Patreon. We are on Twitter, @PatreonPodcast, and in the Patreon Creator Community on Discord. Follow the link in the episode notes, and you can get answers to your follow-up questions directly from the guests, and weigh in on what topics we'll be covering next. Editing by Tyler Morrisette. I'm Brian Keller. See you next time, Backstage.