Hi all!
We're exploring the idea of allowing our renewing subscribers to 'lock in' last season's package price during our Early Bird period, to avoid the small price increase we typically apply. We've been brainstorming to find the best way to execute this plan that creates the least cruft in the database and doesn't cause headaches all season long for exchanges, etc. More specifically, we'd like to avoid using separate price types for 'early' vs 'regular' renewals if we can, and we'd also prefer not to have to re-rollover all of the packages that don't get renewed during the Early Bird period to reset their prices.
The current frontrunner plan (though still hypothetical) is to roll over these orders at the new increased price for the 19/20 season, but then customize our renewal invoices a bit to display both the new, increased price, and the amount from last year's subscription we're actually inviting subscribers to pay. For those that opt to renew early, we'd pay off the majority of the order with their actual payment method, and then pay the remainder with a dummy payment method to fully complete the order and track how much revenue was 'sacrificed' through this offer. How this would work online is a whole other can of worms...one thing at a time!
Anyone else been through a similar experience and have words of wisdom, or warning? Many thanks!
Hi Evan,
We offer Early Bird pricing and I do actually build two price types for each subscription. When I do my rollovers I use the regular subscription price and anyone that renews during the EB period we just switch the price to the lower pricing. To handle exchanges later I just make the prices editable to that lower EB pricing. It's really not much of a headache and by doing it this way you can easily track the revenue loss just by pulling a report showing the sales for that price type. We also have a fairly small EB window - just a couple of months.
Hope this helps - good luck.