Run membership specials and early-renewal campaigns

A membership special is a time-limited campaign layered over an existing membership offering. It can lower the checkout price, add membership time, or do both without changing the ordinary offering for everybody else.

Choose who can use the campaign

Open Admin → Members → Specials (/app/your-slug/admin/offerings/promotions) and create a campaign. Select one or more targeted membership offerings, then choose any combination of these audiences:

• New joins — people buying the targeted membership for the first time.
• Active early renewals — current holders buying another term before their normal renewal date.
• Lapsed members — former holders returning after their membership ended.

Set the opening and closing time and optional priority. For discovery, choose Automatic, Code only, or Automatic + code. A code does not bypass audience, offering, date, redemption or capacity checks.

Build the benefit

A campaign can use one or more of these benefits:

• a percentage discount;
• a fixed rand discount;
• a fixed promotional price;
• extra days, months or years;
• one or more extra whole membership terms; or
• a price benefit and time benefit together.

The ordinary price, discount and payable total are shown separately. Time benefits are calculated by the server and displayed as an exact current paid-through date and new paid-through date before checkout. Do not promise a date from mental arithmetic or a poster alone; use the preview generated for the actual member and offering.

Black Friday early-renewal example

Suppose a member's current 365-day membership is paid through June 2027. A Black Friday campaign in November 2026 allows active early renewal, so checkout buys the next standard 365-day term early. The member does not lose the remaining months of the current term:

Paid through June 2027 → paid through June 2028

The bought term is queued after the already-paid term instead of restarting in November 2026. Current access continues unchanged. This is useful when a community wants to secure the following year's renewals during a holiday campaign.

Decide how family contracts participate

For a group or family offering, explicitly choose whether the promotional price benefit applies to the Whole current contract or the Primary price only. The early renewal itself remains one co-termed primary contract and includes its current paid, unreleased dependant places; this setting controls which portion receives the campaign discount.

When whole-contract renewal is selected, the primary buyer sees one exact preview listing the primary and each included place, the ordinary line prices, discounts, payable total and resulting dates. The primary redeems and pays; dependants do not each redeem the campaign. Released places and places that the campaign excludes must not be silently charged.

Review that preview carefully when a family changed size after joining. A campaign's family setting is frozen into its quote so checkout cannot quietly switch between a primary-price-only and whole-contract discount.

Set limits and refund terms

Set Per holding redemptions. One use per holding per promotion is the recommended default, but the community owner can choose another supported limit. Optional Per member and campaign-wide Total uses caps can limit repeated use or close a popular offer after an exact number of successful reservations.

The owner also selects the published refund rule: Full refund only (recommended) or Allow partial refunds; keep the term. For an early renewal that has not begun, the recommended rule means a completed full refund removes that queued future term and leaves the member's current paid access untouched. Under the partial-refund option, a partial refund does not shorten the promised term. The member-facing quote shows the chosen policy before payment. Never remove current access merely because a refund request was opened; apply the term change only after the refund is confirmed.

Document who reviews a refund after the future term has started. A partial refund must never silently leave a full future term in place unless Allow partial refunds; keep the term was the explicit configured and displayed policy.

Eligibility, approval and renewal choice

The quote shows whether the buyer is eligible now, must sign in, must update or resubmit qualifying details, has already used the offer, or has reached a campaign limit. A promotion does not create a second eligibility rule: it reuses the targeted offering's existing Student, Senior, residency, or other validation policy. Choose Keep current approval when a qualifying current approval may carry forward, or Revalidate before payment when the same offering validation must check fresh evidence. A promotion code does not override that validation.

Automatic renewal is ON for a fresh recurring checkout unless the buyer changes it. If an existing holder previously turned automatic renewal off, that explicit choice stays off in the special checkout unless the buyer turns it back on. After the promotional term, later ordinary renewal returns to the community's then-current normal price after notice; a one-time special does not permanently replace the offering price.

Test before publishing

Use test people for every selected audience and at least one ineligible route. Check an automatic campaign and a code campaign, every targeted offering, the exact price calculation, the paid-through date, prior auto-renew opt-out, redemption limits and refund wording. For a family campaign, also test current paid places, a released place and the precise whole-contract total before sharing the link.