Fanvue gives creators four promotion tools: free trial links made under Settings, Creator Settings, Subscription; promotional offers of a free trial or a discounted first month, set up under Creator Tools, Promotions and aimed at all fans, new fans, expired fans or followers; discounted multi-month bundles; and a free follow option for fans not ready to pay, as Fanvue's promotion offer article and settings pages describe. Each one changes who arrives and what they pay, so choose the audience first and the discount second.
This guide covers the Fanvue mechanics and a way to run each promotion as a defined experiment. Whether a discount is a good idea at all is a separate question that our discount guardrails worksheet handles, and the wider strategy of trial links across channels is in our guide to free trial links.
The tools and where each one lives
- Free trial link: under Settings, Creator Settings, Subscription, choose to create a new free trial link, then set how many times it can be used, when it expires and how long the trial lasts. Fanvue's free trial link article describes these as unique links for specific campaigns or funnels.
- Promotional offer: under Creator Tools, Promotions, follow the steps for a free trial or a first-month discount, then pick the audience it applies to.
- Promotional bundle: in the same menu, choose a discount and a duration; Fanvue's subscription settings article allows up to 50% off for 3, 6 or 12 months paid upfront.
- Free trials without a payment method: a toggle on the subscription settings page that lets fans redeem a trial to your page, which Fanvue notes is separate from the follow-for-free button.
- Follow for free: under Settings, Creator Settings, Profile, on by default, letting fans follow without subscribing; you also choose whether followers can message you.
Followers are a real audience, not just a waiting room. Fanvue's follow-for-free article says they can receive your messages, buy paid content you send them in chat, see captions and anything posted to followers, and buy paid wall posts that you have set to followers and subscribers. They cannot see subscriber-only posts. That makes a follower list the natural target for a promotion that tries to turn browsers into payers.
What the fan sees when a trial ends
Write every offer knowing how Fanvue bills it. The fan-side explainer on how Fanvue subscriptions work says a free trial that is not cancelled converts automatically into a paid subscription at your standard price on the day it expires, that the sign-up pop-up shows the renewal amount and billing cycle, and that Fanvue emails fans a reminder 24 hours before conversion. Section 3.9 of the General Terms adds that promotional subscription periods can run from 1 day to 12 months.
Two practical consequences follow. First, say the post-trial price plainly in your promotion, because a fan who feels surprised at conversion is the fan most likely to dispute a charge. Second, the help centre does not explain what happens at the end of a trial redeemed without a payment method, so do not count those trials as future renewals until you have confirmed the behaviour with Fanvue support.
Offer decision table
Start from the job the promotion has to do, then choose the tool. Fanvue's guide Running Profitable Promotions reports, from its own tenure data, that fans who joined through bundles stayed longest and spent more afterwards, trial joiners sat in the middle and spent less, and time-limited discounts churned fastest; it recommends bundles as the default way to discount and narrow targeting for everything else.
| Job to do | Fanvue tool | What the fan pays | Risk to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Test which social channel brings paying fans | One free trial link per channel, each with its own use cap and expiry | Nothing during the trial, then your standard monthly price | A link shared beyond its intended channel, which muddies attribution |
| Turn free followers into subscribers | Promotional offer targeted at Followers | A free trial or a discounted first month | Training followers to wait for the next offer before paying |
| Win back people whose subscription lapsed | First-month discount targeted at Expired fans, paired with a message | A reduced first month back | Returning fans leaving again once the discounted month ends |
| Secure a longer commitment from interested fans | Promotional bundle for several months paid upfront | A discounted total for the whole period, charged at once | Under-delivering across months the fan has already paid for |
| Let curious visitors in without any payment | Follow for free, with follower messaging switched on | Nothing unless they buy a paid post or message | An inbox full of followers who never intend to pay |
Whichever row you choose, set the end date and the audience before launch. Fanvue's own advice is to avoid leaving the same offer running for everyone, because constant discounting teaches fans that the standard price is not the real one.
Scarcity and urgency: only claim what is true
Fanvue's blog post Setting Up Free Trials the Smart Way recommends short trials and promotional lines about limited spots, and another Fanvue post, From Zero to $1,000, suggests telling fans only a few places remain at a discounted price. Limits like that are honest when they are real, and Fanvue gives you the means to make them real: a trial link has a use cap and an expiry you set yourself, and a promotional offer has an end date.
The line to stay behind is clear in consumer-protection guidance. The FTC's announcement of its dark patterns report lists countdown timers that make people believe an offer is time-limited when it is not among the tactics that mislead consumers, alongside making free trials and subscriptions hard to cancel. Fanvue's own Creator Advertising & Promotion Policy requires external promotion to be truthful and not mislead fans about the content. So: if you say a certain number of spots, set the link's cap to that number; if you say the offer ends tonight, end it tonight; and never imply a trial is free forever.
Promotion run sheet
Complete one sheet per promotion. The stop rule and the measurement line are written before launch; the result line is written after.
| Run sheet field | What to write |
|---|---|
| The job | One sentence: which audience should do what, for example expired fans returning for a month |
| Offer and settings | Tool used, discount or trial length, use cap, expiry, and where in Fanvue it was configured |
| Audience | The targeted group, or the single channel a trial link was shared on |
| Start and end | Date and time in your time zone, matching what the promotion tells fans |
| Price after the offer | The standard monthly figure the fan will move to, quoted in the launch message |
| Launch message | The mass message or post that announces it, and the list it goes to |
| Measure | Redemptions, first paid renewals, purchases in the first month, and cancellations |
| Stop rule | What would make you end it early, such as renewals falling among existing subscribers |
| Result and next step | Numbers from your dashboard, the decision taken and the next variation, if any |
Measure conversion at the first paid renewal, not at sign-up; a trial that fills your subscriber list and empties it a few days later has not converted anyone. Our guide to measuring free trial conversion sets out the cohort tracking that makes this comparison fair, and it works with Fanvue's Free Trial Subscribers and Expired Subscribers lists.
Messages that carry a promotion
A promotion nobody hears about does nothing. Fanvue's mass messaging guide suggests pairing a launch with a message so it reads as a moment worth acting on, and its built-in lists make the targeting simple. Plan these touchpoints when you build the run sheet:
- Launch: one message to the single list the offer targets, stating the offer, the end date and the price that applies afterwards.
- During a trial: a personal hello to each new trial subscriber that asks what they hoped to see, rather than an immediate sales pitch.
- Before conversion: a reminder to the Free Trial Subscribers list of what continues after the trial, sent while there is still time to decide calmly.
- Win-back: a note to Expired Subscribers explaining what is new since they left, with the first-month offer if you are running one.
- After the end: no follow-up that implies the offer is still open once it has closed.
Keep broadcasts occasional. The same guide warns that messaging too often risks mutes and unsubscribes, and recommends broadcasting only when you have something genuinely worth saying.
How promotions interact with pricing and commission
A promotion is a temporary price, so run it against a stable base. Change your standard subscription price and launch a discount in the same week and you will not know which one moved sign-ups; our Fanvue subscription pricing guide explains how to test the base price on its own.
Free and fully discounted subscriptions also earn nothing for anyone in Fanvue's commission schemes. The referral and affiliate policy excludes transactions with a zero net amount, naming free trials and fully discounted purchases, and Fanvue's affiliates guide says trial sign-ups start earning affiliate commission only from the fan's first paid renewal. If another creator is promoting you on commission, a free-trial campaign pays them nothing until those fans convert, which is worth agreeing in advance. Where promotions sit among your other income lines is mapped in our Fanvue revenue feature guide.
Limits of this promotion guide
The retention patterns quoted come from Fanvue's own help centre, with no published method, and may not match your niche or audience. Some settings are thinly documented, notably trials redeemed without a payment method, and Fanvue can change any tool or term; what we describe is what its pages said on 1 October 2026.
Consumer rules on subscriptions, free trials and price claims differ between countries and are tightening in several. Fanvue runs billing and cancellation, but the words in your promotion are yours, so keep them accurate and, if you run promotions at scale or across borders, get advice from someone qualified in consumer law where your fans are.