Note: Autopilot is now automatically enabled for all creators. To change this setting, check the Autopilot section in the Promotions tab. Additional details can be found in the dedicated section of this article.
This article is a general guide to joining and using our Autopilot feature. You can also check our Autopilot FAQ for additional information.
Autopilot overview
Autopilot is an easy and automatic way to give your fans promotional offerings to drive your growth on Patreon. The feature currently includes:
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Grow your community: Tools to turn fans into paid or higher-tier members
- Free member upgrade offer: Encourage free members to become paid members by offering them a one-time discount on their first month of membership
- Paid member upgrade emails: Share locked posts from higher tiers with paid members in lower tiers to motivate upgrades
- Teaser campaign: Share a selection of your paid posts with free members to showcase what they’re missing out on
- Abandoned basket emails: Remind fans who have added your membership to their basket to check out
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Retain existing members: Help to keep members in your community
- Annual membership: You can offer members yearly membership access and give a discount to encourage them to sign up
- Cancellation offer: Selected members who are cancelling their paid membership can receive a discount from creators
- Benefit expiry emails: Send a reminder 24 hours before a membership is about to expire, and encourage fans to renew it
We plan to add more growth and promotional features to Autopilot over time. See below the current options available and how to make the most of them.
Grow your community
Tolls to encourage membership upgrades and grow your community by converting fans into paid members.
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Autopilot will automatically help you send upgrade offers to selected free members and encourage them to become paid members. Offers will be a one-time discount to your free members who seem likely to upgrade to a paid membership. Subsequent months will be at full price.
Availability
The free member upgrade offer is enabled for creators who have met the following requirements:
- Creators must be on Subscription billing
- 18+ creators must be ID-verified
How to edit it
Follow the instructions below on desktop or mobile web while on your Creator profile:
- From the Promotions tab in the left menu, locate the Autopilot tab
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Under the section Grow your community, select Free member upgrade offer to open the details
- Patreon will automatically start with smart settings and optimise the offers for you.
- Discounts will be from 5–90%
- You can also check the Set a maximum discount option to set a manual cap on the highest discount amount you want to offer. This means Patreon will only send out discounts ranging up to that maximum amount.
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Select which tiers you want to include in the discount offer
- Click Save
You can turn Free member upgrade offers on or off by using the toggle in the details section. Once turned on, Autopilot will start gradually sending discount offers to your free members. Please note that not all free members will receive an offer.
What free members see
Free members who receive an Autopilot offer will get the following email indicating how much of a discount they are receiving and how long until the offer expires. It will be attached to a locked post that’s part of your paid membership.
Details on offers:
- Only eligible free members who are likely to upgrade will receive a discount. This includes those who have previously purchased or interacted with your work, or have never redeemed an offer before, etc.
- Discount will only apply to their first month of membership
- Free members will have seven days since receiving the email to claim it
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Discounts can only be claimed once and are unique to the recipient
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We’ll send paid members in lower tiers locked posts from your higher tiers to encourage them to upgrade. This feature is enabled by default but can be disabled, if you’d like, by simply turning off the toggle. We’ve seen that paid members were 23% more likely to upgrade to a higher tier after receiving a paid member upgrade email.
Availability
Paid member upgrade emails are enabled for creators who have met the following requirements:
- Creators must have more than one tier
How to edit it
Follow the instructions below on desktop while on your Creator profile:
- From the Promotions tab in the left menu, locate the Autopilot tab
- Under the section Grow your community, check the status of Paid member upgrade offer. If you’d like to change it, click on it to open the details
- A pop-up will appear
- Select the tiers you want to include in the offer
- Click Save
What your paid members see
Paid members will get an email similar to the view below showing a post from the tier below.
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With the Teaser campaign, you can give free members a preview of your paid content by sharing a selection of your paid posts. It’s an effective way to showcase the value of upgrading without creating new content. This feature is not enabled by default and requires review. Learn below how to set up.
Availability
The Teaser campaign is enabled for creators who have met the following requirements:
- Creators must have their work categorised as All Audiences
- Creators must be on Subscription billing
How to set up
Follow the instructions below on desktop while on your Creator profile:
- From the Promotions tab, locate the Autopilot tab
- Under the section Grow your community, check the status of Teaser campaign
- Click on Add posts to choose up to five posts to include
- Posts will be unlocked on different days to keep free members engaged
- Select the posts you want to offer and click on Update
- You can search for any posts you want by typing in the Search or by using the available Filters
- You can search for any posts you want by typing in the Search or by using the available Filters
- Click Save
What your free members see
Once the Teaser campaign is set up, free members who join after activation will receive teaser emails:
- The first email will be sent 24 hours after they join as a free member
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They will receive one email per day showcasing a different paid post from your selected content
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Fans who have started to purchase your membership but did not finish the process will receive a reminder to complete their purchase. This feature is enabled by default but can be disabled, if you’d like, by simply turning off the toggle. All creators are eligible, except those with active per-creation campaigns.
How to edit it
Follow the instructions below on desktop while on your Creator profile:
- From the Promotions tab in the left menu, locate the Autopilot tab
- Under the section Grow your community, check the status of Abandoned basket reminder. If you’d like to turn this off, click on it to open the details
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A pop-up will appear
- Adjust the toggle as needed to enable or disable the feature
- Click on Done to save the changes
Retain existing members
Tools to retain and maintain your members by preventing cancellations and encouraging renewals.
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With Patreon, you can offer members yearly membership access. You receive one annual payment from members, cutting down on member processing fees and payment method upkeep. This feature is not enabled by default and requires review. Check below for the eligibility and how to set up.
Availability
To enable Annual membership, the following requirements must be met:
- Creators must be on subscription billing or already offer “charge up front” billing
- Creator page must have been launched at least three months ago
- Creator account must have a well-established payment history, including at least $200 of earnings/month in the previous three months
- 18+ creators must be ID-verified
How to set up
Follow the instructions below on desktop or mobile web while on your Creator profile:
- From the Promotions tab, locate the Autopilot option on the top menu
- Click the arrow on the Annual membership row to open up details
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Select the Discount amount to be offered to members
- Click on Save
For creators who are not yet eligible for Annual membership, a pre-enrol feature will be available. Once eligible, creators who opted in will automatically be enrolled and receive an email confirmation.
What your members see
Once Annual membership has been set up within Autopilot, select free and paid members will receive an email notification offering to switch to a yearly plan. This is only sent once you’ve turned it on for the first time.
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Patreon will automatically send a discount offer to fans going through the cancellation flow to incentivise them to stay in the membership. This feature is automatically enabled for all eligible creators. You can disable it by using the toggle in the details section. You can reactivate Autopilot by turning it back on at any time.
Availability
The cancellation offer is enabled for the creators who have met the following requirements:
- Creators must be on Subscription billing
- 18+ creators must be ID-verified
How to edit it
Follow the instructions below on desktop or mobile web while on your Creator profile:
- From the Promotions tab, locate the Autopilot option on the top menu
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Under the section Retain existing members, select Cancellation offer to open the details
- Patreon will automatically start with smart settings and optimise the offers for you. Discounts can range from 5% to 90%.
- You can also check the Set a maximum discount option to set a manual cap on the highest discount amount you want to offer. This means Patreon will only send out discounts ranging up to that maximum amount.
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Select which Tiers you want to include in the discount offer
- Click Save
What your members see
With the cancellation offer, eligible members will see a pop-up with a discount for their next month before they complete the cancellation. If a paid member has already previously redeemed a cancellation offer, they will not receive another one.
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Send a reminder 24 hours before a membership is about to expire, and encourage fans to renew it. This feature is enabled by default but can be disabled, if you’d like, by simply turning off the toggle. All creators are eligible.
How to edit it
Follow the instructions below on desktop while on your Creator profile:
- From the Promotions tab in the left menu, locate the Autopilot tab
- Under the section Retain existing members, check the status of Benefit expiry reminder. If you’d like to change it, click on it to open the details
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A pop-up will appear
- Adjust the toggle as needed to enable or disable the feature
- Click on Done to save the changes
Turning Autopilot off completely
If you don’t want Autopilot on for your Patreon, you can head to Autopilot settings to turn it off completely.
- Toggling this off will mean that all Autopilot features that are currently on will be turned off
- Offers that have already been sent out can still be redeemed, but no future offers will be sent out
If you want to turn off Autopilot but have future features turned on, you can tick the box that says Turn on future Autopilot features automatically.
- This means that any eligible features added to Autopilot over time will be automatically turned on for you but existing features will remain off
- To turn off Autopilot completely, turn the toggle off and untick the box. No Autopilot features will be turned on for you and all features will remain off
Track Autopilot conversions
On the Autopilot tab, you’ll see a View Insights button at the top of the page. Clicking this will show you more metrics on how your offers are performing.
Please note that Autopilot insights will show data for the Free member upgrade offer, Teaser campaign and Cancellation offer, but Annual membership statistics will be available in the general Insights tab.
You will also be able to see which members have redeemed an Autopilot discount in their payment history. First, head to the Audience tab and click on a member. Anyone who has redeemed will have an “Autopilot discount applied” tag next to them. If the payment history extends beyond three months, you may have to click See all payment history.