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Create upgrades, downgrades and member offers

1. About upgrades

An upgrade involves changing an existing subscription/installment payment to a larger, more expensive product. An upgrade takes effect immediately. When you upgrade from an instalment (if the buyer cannot cancel) or one-time payment, the amount from the pre-order will be credited to the next order.

Ideally, you would offer your customers the opportunity to upgrade if you want to provide them with increased performance for an existing product. Under the point member offers you can find out how your customer can add new options to an existing product.

Case studies for upgrades:

Using an upgrade, your customers can, for example, switch from standard membership to premium membership or you can offer them more comprehensive software than the one already purchased.

Case study no. 1 for an upgrade – for a subscription:

  1. You have 3 subscription products:
    • Bronze for 30 € per month
    • Silver for 60 € per month
    • Gold for 90 € per month
  2. Your customer bought your bronze subscription for just 30 € per month on 1.9. On 20.9., you convinced them to upgrade to the gold product.
  3. The old subscription of 30 € is replaced by the new subscription of 90 €. The monthly billing date is on the 20th of the month from now on, not the 1st.
  4. The remaining 10 days for the month of September will be counted: In this case, 10 € will be charged. The customer therefore needs to pay 80 € (90 € minus 10 €) in order to upgrade on 20.9. They will pay the full
  5. 90 € from the next month onwards.

Case study no. 2 for an upgrade – for an installment:

  1. Your customer bought a product for 120 € and will pay it in 12 installments of 10 €.
  2. After 6 months (they have now paid 60 euros), your customer upgrades to a new product for a total of 240 €.
  3. The vendor sets the payment options for an upgrade product. Suppose there is also the option of installments here.
  4. Your customer selects a 12-month installment scheme. They have already paid 60 € for the previous product. This 60 € will be credited to the total price. Therefore they only have to pay 180 €.
  5. 180 € divided into 12 months works out at 15 € per month. They therefore pay 15 € per month.
Note

The customer can only upgrade if they have already purchased one of your products. Otherwise, it is a new purchase, not an upgrade.

2. About downgrades

A downgrade involves changing an existing subscription/installment payment to a cheaper product:

  • Downgrade to subscription or installment: Here the downgrade does not take effect immediately. The customer will only be downgraded to the cheaper price at the next billing date. From this point on, contents/access data will also be provided.
  • Downgrade to one-time payment: Here the downgrade takes effect immediately. The customer pays the reduced price immediately and simultaneously receives access to the contents/access data.

Case studies for downgrades:

You always use downgrades if you want to “keep” a customer by offering them a lower performance if they do not need the superior and expensive service or no longer want to pay.

Case study for a downgrade – for a subscription:

  1. You have 3 subscription products:
    • Bronze for 30 € per month
    • Silver for 60 € per month
    • Gold for 90 € per month
  2. Suppose your customer bought your silver subscription for 60 € per month on 1.9. and then on 15.9. informs you that they only want a bronze subscription.
  3. You send them the so-called “Upgrade link” for the downgrade offer from silver to bronze. Your customer activates the downgrade on 22.09.
  4. On the day of the downgrade (22.09), 1 € will be owed by the customer for the transition.
  5. The old subscription of 60 € will be replaced by the new subscription of 30 € on the next billing date (here it is 01.10).
  6. The monthly billing date is the 1st of the month. On 1.10., the customer will be charged 30 € instead of 60 €.

3. About member offers

Member offers are separately created product offers that only apply to existing customers. For a customer to be able to use a member offer, they must have already bought another product. You decide which product this is when you set up the member offer.

Member offers do not change existing orders.

Case study for a member offer:

You sell software with user access. Your software costs 100 € per month, includes user access and every additional user costs 20 € per month. When adding user access, the existing 100€ software subscription should not be canceled. This is then the classic application case for a member offer: You sell further access to an existing customer via the member offer, without interrupting the original subscription.

4. Create upgrades, downgrades, member offers

Before you start setting up, make sure that you have already set up the required products in advance.

Go to the Vendor view Account > Upgrades and click on the button Create Upgrade. This also applies to the creation of downgrades and member offers.

Here you can always only create one upgrade, downgrade or member offer at a time.

Follow the steps described below:

Step-by-step guide: Set up upgrade/downgrade/member offer

Follow the steps described below to fill out the fields shown in the image:

set_up_upgrade_1.png

set_up_upgrade_2.png

  1. Specify an internal Name that will help you distinguish between the different entries.
  2. Move all the products to which the offer should apply to the appropriate columns when creating:
    • upgrades from the first column in the table to the second column Upgrade from
    • downgrades from the first column in the table to the third column Downgrade from
    • member offers from the first column in the table to the fourth column Member offer for
  3. For Product to sell:
    • for upgrades/downgrades, select the new product that should be active after the upgrade/downgrade. It will replace your customer’s previous product.
    • for member offers, select the new product that will be offered to your customers as a member offer and will also be purchased alongside the previous product. This purchase will not replace the previous product.
  4. For Replacement product, select a product that will be offered to your customers if they are not eligible for the upgrade/downgrade/member offer but still clicked on your upgrade link. All customers who have not bought any of the products specified under point 2 are not eligible for the offer.
  5. Make sure to activate the upgrade by setting the Active option.
  6. Choose one of the following options under Protect buyer information:
    • No – buyer is allowed to change email, name and address
    • Protect email only – buyer is allowed to change name and address
    • Protect email and name – buyer is allowed to change address
    • Protect email, name and address
  7. Finally, click Save.

You will now have access to the Upgrade order URL. This corresponds, depending on the offer you have created, to a Downgrade- or Member offer order URL.

There are two ways to provide your customers with the upgrade order URL:

  1. Shortcode for DigiMember: If you insert this shortcode into your DigiMember WordPress installation, DigiMember automatically converts it into a correct upgrade link for your customer who has just logged in and adds the required order ID to it.
  2. Upgrade order URL: Insert your customer’s order ID at the end of this URL or let your customer insert the order ID themselves. This way, they can upgrade their product to the new product. The order ID must be that of the product that is currently active (not the upgrade product).

You can identify your upgrade using the upgrade ID. It is part of the upgrade order URL or the upgrade shortcode.