3 Ways to Create Upsells and One Time Offers on MemberPress

One of the most requested features we have found in recent months is the ability to upsell as part of the buying process for new members within their membership sites. We’ve seen this functionality requested not only with our Ready Steady Websites® members but also in multiple Facebook groups.

Strictly speaking, MemberPress does not use a “shopping cart” approach to their checkout experience, which makes adding more than one membership theoretically impossible as well as the ability to “upsell” people on the checkout.

However, with some creative thinking that doesn’t have to be the case. You can still upsell in MemberPress and we’ve recorded three videos which explain how to do just that.

How to create a one time offer (OTO) in MemberPress

Firstly, the classic upsell, a one time offer (or OTO). This technique involves somebody signing up to one membership and then with the use of a custom thank you page and a MemberPress “Group” you can ask your brand new member if they’d like to upgrade their membership to a more expensive one.

The advantage of this approach is that your new member is already in a buying mindset, they’ve just signed up for your membership and the idea of an OTO is that it’s a “no brainer” for them to upgrade. When they go to the new membership their details are all pre-filled and they just need to re-enter their card details (which should already be to hand as they’ve just joined).

You don’t need any other plugin aside from MemberPress to achieve this, which makes it a really cost effective solution, check out the tutorial video below for a full tutorial on how to set it up.

How to create a one time offer (OTO) in MemberPress based on login count

This is something we’d call a hidden feature of MemberPress because it’s sort of hidden away in a tab within the membership settings and in fact, you may not even notice that it’s even there because it’s so well hidden! 

But… it can be a really powerful way of getting people to either upgrade their membership or to just sell them another membership in addition to what they already have.

With this feature, again built right into MemberPress, you can send your members to different pages, all based on how many times they have logged in. The unique pages would show for just that login and prompt the member to sign up for something new.

The really cool thing about this feature is that you can add as many of these as you want… maybe on their first login count you want them to become a VIP member. On their fifth login you sell them a course and on their 20th login you sell them a mastermind.

The advantage of this approach is that your member is already a paying member, so they’re more likely to be tempted by an offer like this. Also when they’re upgrading/buying something else their details will be pre-filled on the checkout process, they only need to re-enter their card details.

Check out this tutorial on how to set it up…

How to create an Upsell panel on a MemberPress Registration page using Beaver Builder and Themer

You can easily create an upsell panel on a MemberPress registration page (the checkout page) with almost all page builders. This tutorial is Beaver Builder and Beaver Themer specific, which is our page builder and theme builder of choice but is entirely possible with other page builders too!

This is a similar approach to having a custom thank you page, except you’re intercepting their initial membership signup and offering a different one in its place. This is a more complex approach in some regards as if you do not communicate clearly what the upgraded offer is then it could cause confusion. So make sure you get your messaging right with this one and it will be a handy addition to your site.

This approach requires two (or more) memberships. One being the base membership they’ve seen initially, with the button on the upsell panel linking to a separate membership.

There is one main drawback to this approach, if they’ve started filling out the form and then they decide to switch, their details will not be remembered. However if you’re using a two step checkout (where the first step creates their user account) and they decide to upgrade on step 2 of the checkout (the payment page) their details will be pre-filled.

Have a look at the tutorial which goes through everything in more detail…

Our views on Upsells and One time offers

That’s the tutorials covered, if you want upsells and OTOs you can do that with MemberPress, with some creativity.  However, when it comes to membership sites, we advocate simplicity. Upsells and OTOs do have their place and they have been proven to increase sales in certain circumstances. However, before you start to introduce them you really need to consider if you need them right now.

Your first focus should be on your product and messaging. Is the product right for your audience, is your messaging speaking to them? If the answer is no, then there is no way an upsell is going to tempt someone who never even got to the end of your sales page.

Get your messaging and product right and you’ll be golden.

Is an upsell going to cause confusion? Is a one time offer going to annoy someone who has just spent money with you? We don’t use upsells on anything we do for getting customers, on the face of it our main product (our website and membership site plans) is complex. We have different plans for what our customers want and we’ve made it as simple as humanly possible to make what is a very complex product as simple as possible.

Our plans are an investment for our customers and our customer base does range from people who have limited and even bad tech experience to website professionals. We don’t want to put off a potential customer by trying to switch their plan at the last second or add to the cost they’d already thought hard over. It sits against what we promote, honesty and transparency. We want people to know exactly what they’re signing up for.

We think upsells work really well for standard ecommerce and well established memberships with a large user base. If you’re just starting out with your membership, don’t overcomplicate it, make it simple for people to join.

So there you have it, 3 ways to upsell using MemberPress and our thoughts on keeping it simple.

Thinking about creating a membership site?

All the techniques above are possible with Ready Steady Websites® so please check out our Membership site templates for some inspiration on what you can achieve with yours.

Using MemberPress and need some extra styling?

We have a free plugin for that! and also a Pro version called Missing Bits for MemberPress.