How to put growth on Autopilot

Being a creator is hard work, but growing your business shouldn’t be. That’s why we built Autopilot — a bundle of promotional features, like free member discounts and, most recently, paid membership teaser campaigns, that help you grow without the heavy lifting.

We’re breaking down how Autopilot works and how you can get the most out of it.

Why target free members?

They’re interested in your work, and they’re here because they want to stay updated in a way they can’t on social media.

In looking at the 400,000+ free membership upgrades that happen across Patreon each month, we’ve learned a couple things:

• Free members who are earlier in their membership with a creator are more likely to upgrade than those who are further along.

• Free members who have access to public and free posts on Patreon are more likely to upgrade to a paid membership.

This means that by reaching free members at the right time in their journey with the right incentives, there’s an opportunity to encourage more of them to upgrade. So we started with two approaches:

• A series of free posts to give them a taste of your membership.

• Discounts on their first month of paid membership.
  

Paid membership teaser campaigns

To make it easier for your free members to get a taste of your paid membership, you can now select up to 5 paid posts to give away as teasers. As free members join, we’ll share these posts throughout their first week and encourage them to upgrade for more. Teasers are currently in beta to All Ages creators, and you can try them out now by selecting which posts to include.

Free member upgrade offers

You can also encourage free members to join your paid membership with a discount on their first month. Leave it to Autopilot to optimize your discounts or choose your own. If you select smart discounts, you can now set a maximum discount so that Autopilot knows not to send a discount above what you’re comfortable with. In early testing, Autopilot discounts improved the rate of free-to-paid membership upgrades by an average of 19%.

To help you get a better sense of how Autopilot is working, you’ll also see how many free members engaged with your offer and later upgraded to a paid membership.

Getting started

Worlds Beyond Number — a Dungeons and Dragons podcast — says Autopilot is “the perfect business partner.” Go to your Promotions tab and start using it in seconds:

• Toggle on a free member upgrade offer. Let us optimize the discount amount, or set your own.

• Choose up to 5 posts to share in paid membership teaser campaigns.
  

Autopilot is available to all creators on subscription billing.

Have questions? Check out our help center for more information on how Autopilot works.