Discount-led trial conversion to a different plan

Overview

Customers on trial who feel misaligned with their current plan are more likely to convert when offered a discount on a better-suited plan. A trial conversion + discount offer defined in Chargebee Growth lets you convert an in-trial subscription to paid on a different plan immediately while applying a discount.

In this tutorial, you'll set up a discount-led trial conversion offer to a different plan in Chargebee Growth: create an audience, create the offer, choose the offer processing type (Chargebee Checkout, Billing integration, or URL redirect), and create an Acquisition play so the offer is shown to the right users.

Before you start

1. Connect Growth and Billing: Have Chargebee Growth enabled and connected to your Chargebee Billing site. This is required before you begin.
2. Set up the product catalog in Billing:
   1. Create the appropriate plan and plan price in Chargebee Billing to convert the subscription to the new plan. Bear in mind that the origin plan and destination plan must be from the same Product Family.
   2. Create the appropriate coupons in Chargebee Billing that you will apply when the offer is accepted (for example, a percentage or amount off).
3. Integrate Growth with your application: Your app development team must follow the In-app offers integration guide to integrate Growth with your application so offers can be presented to users in your app.

Implementation steps

Follow these steps to create and launch a discount-led trial conversion offer to a different plan in Chargebee Growth.

1. Create an audience in Growth

First, ensure the Subscription Trial End Date field is mapped in Growth:

1. In Growth, go to Settings > Setup.
2. Under Field mappings, select Map fields.
3. Scroll to the Subscription Trial End Date dropdown and ensure the value is Chargebee > Subscription Trial End.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Save changes.

Next, define who sees the offer—for example, users whose trial ends within 7 days. Create an audience with a rule such as:

1. In Growth, go to People > Audiences.
2. Create a new audience with the following rule:
   • Property: "Subscription trial end date"
   • Operator: "Will take place within"
   • Value: "7"
3. Select Done to save the audience.

2. Create the trial conversion + discount offer in Growth

Define the acquisition offer and how the subscription and discount are applied when the customer accepts. For conversion to a different plan, you must set the offer subcategory to Trial Conversion to New Plan and select the destination plan.

1. In Growth, go to Offers > In-app.
2. Create a new offer with the following configuration:
   1. Offer objective: Acquisition
   2. Offer category: Trial Conversion + Discount
   3. In the editor, customize the offer content in the right pane:
      • Title: Select the edit icon and set the offer title (e.g. "Upgrade to Pro and save 10%")
      • Description: Set the description for your offer
      • Button text (CTA): Set the button text and optional icon (e.g. "Upgrade to Pro")
      • Image: Optionally choose an image for the offer
      • Design layout: For modal offers, choose a design layout from the available templates (not applicable for pop-up and banner)
   4. Under Button > Settings:
      1. Set Button processing to one of the following:
         • Billing integration: This offers a single-click user experience which applies the discount and activates the subscription automatically using the payment source on file for the customer in Billing.
         • URL redirect: This redirects the user to a URL of your choice to run your own workflow. You must then handle payment collection, coupon application, and subscription activation yourself. You may use the Update subscription API to do this.
         • Chargebee Checkout: This redirects the user to the Chargebee Checkout page to collect payment and complete the purchase. In this case, select the layout for the Checkout page and ensure Checkout has been configured appropriately.
      2. Set Button action 1 as follows:
         • Button offer category: Trial Conversion (set by default and cannot be changed)
         • Button offer subcategory: Trial Conversion to New Plan
         • Destination plan: Select the plan from the dropdown. All plan prices from the connected Chargebee Billing site are listed. Ensure that the selected plan is from the same product family as the current plan.
      3. Set Button action 2 as follows:
         • Button offer category: Discount (set by default and cannot be changed)
         • Discount option: Choose % based, $ based, or quantity based
         • Coupon ID: Select the coupon from the dropdown of coupons in Chargebee Billing.
      4. Select the back button (<)
   5. Under Button > Accept step, choose what happens after the user selects the offer button:
      • Link: Sends the user to a URL, Redirect Page, or Global URL (e.g. success page after Checkout).
      • Confirmation modal: Shows a confirmation, then redirects to a URL, Redirect Page, or Global URL.
      • Send email with confirmation: Sends an email (e.g. to an agent) and shows a confirmation modal—useful when offers are processed manually by agents.
   6. Select the back button (<)
   7. Optionally, under Offer settings > Card > Redemptions, set the maximum number of times a single customer can accept this offer.
3. Select Done > Publish to save the offer.

3. Create an Acquisition play in Growth

Connect the audience and the offer so the trial conversion offer is shown at the right moment.

1. In Growth, go to Plays > Acquisition.
2. Create a new play.
3. Select the in-app offer play type.
4. Select the audience you created in step 1.
5. For Trigger, choose when the offer is evaluated (e.g. Any page load or the trigger that fits your flow).
6. For Action, select Show offer.
7. Select the trial conversion + discount offer you created in step 2.
8. Set the play priority.
9. Select Publish Play to activate the play.

Result

After following the steps in this tutorial, you will have a discount-led trial conversion offer to a different plan configured in Chargebee Growth. The offer will be shown to the targeted in-trial users. Depending on the processing type you chose, users will either go through Checkout, get a single-click conversion via Billing, or be redirected to your URL to complete the flow.

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to:

• Create an audience in Growth to target in-trial users.
• Create a discount-led trial conversion to a different plan offer.
• Choose the offer processing type (Chargebee Checkout, Billing integration, or URL redirect).
• Create an Acquisition play that uses the audience and offer so the discount-led trial conversion to a different plan is shown to the right users at the right time.