Your payment failed. Transaction failed. You probably don’t want to know why and when the ‘transaction failed’ notification pops up on your screen. But, you should know how your customers feel when they miss an important transaction. Inadvertently, for the worst-case scenario and much against your desire, failed transactions leave customers frustrated, triggering an involuntary churn. 

Look at this mishap from a practical perspective. 

These days, especially when a pandemic has grappled us with month-long lockdowns, we are more inclined to online shopping. From very essential commodities like grocery and meals to subscription services that involve a large part of our lives like that of online streaming services, we seem more independent and confident to use payment processors or digital wallets and have instant access to any of the services or products. But when the opposite happens - customers churn. How? See it. 

Your mobile plan expires, you need an instant refill pack to stay connected. The confidence of transaction success with your regular online vendor goes down immediately when your expectations come crashing down as your payment fails. 

This is probably a very irksome experience for any customer for not having a successful transaction. And this is highly likely to cause your customers to move to your competitors. Losing trust once is a long-term impact on your brand reputation and for recurring models, recurring payment failure means the pause of the regular flow of revenue streams. 

Recurring payment failure that causes involuntary churn can no longer be a concern for Shopify merchants if they are careful about damage control using the payment retry. Automatic payment retries are the best way to eliminate the risk of customer churn, and therefore secure a more robust subscription business. Here we give you the best methods to ramp up your subscription using payment retries within the Shopify subscription ecosystem

Ways to apply retry failed transactions for recurring payments 

Find solutions by various factors related to credit card payments. Let’s move forward to know them and apply auto-retry failed subscriptions. 

Soft Declines 

You can call it temporary payment glitches. Although a minor payment-related issue- don’t forget your customers are fickle, and they need instant service for a successful transaction. In the subscription environment, it can be detrimental to your growth by impeding the flow of regular recurring orders. 

Referring to soft declines, the glitch occurs from the client-side even if the card is valid as the issuing bank declines the payment for incorrect billing information and card expiry. Fixing soft declines is an easy job if it happens on a renewal of a recurring order. 

How to fix Soft Declines: When a payment issuing bank declined payments for lack of adequate funds or service interruptions, your app built with Shopify Subscription API can retry it automatically. And before the collection invoice expires, there are several attempts to make the payment happen on the basis of the best available retry schedules. The automatic retry configuration that sits with your Shopify dashboard provides the best-failed payment recovery solutions to support your subscription business. 

Hard Declines 

If the credit card expires, the payment processor or the issuing bank declined the transaction. In this particular area, retry can’t work. Hard declines even if it happens on a renewal date, merchants are not able to apply payment retry. But, there are several ways to improve dunning management to work through hard declines. 

Dunning management gives you the ability to avoid the cancellation of subscriptions even if the number of retries exhaust. 

Note: Dunning customer communication process helps reach customers to update their billing information, or update schedules of subscriptions, merchants can use one-time retry. 

Dunning Management 

Once payment fails, dunning management can come to your rescue to process payment recovery. Automate a series of emails to communicate with your customers- emails have great strength to intrigue customers to take immediate actions. 

Send emails when you know the customer’s credit card is going to expire. So, customers can update the information. 

For a customer with a history of delayed payments, prefer automating emails with custom mails. It is a little tough, so you can hire a partner who can help you with email automation setup in the Shopify store. 

Note: dunning emails are effective for subscribers who want their credit information to be updated and ensure regular delivery of recurring orders. Shoot pre-dunning emails with links that allow subscribers to update information. 

Failed payment recovery finds active solutions by using in-app reminders. Your subscriber’s card gets declined constantly, assuming they would act to update the card. Unknowingly, your customers may not know their card is not working. Reminding them ahead of time can help them take appropriate action. Choose to interact with your customers by sending an in-app notification. 

Payment processors Braintree and Stripe allow users to automatically update the card information when they near expiry. If you wish to give customers this level of convenience, embedding these payment solutions into your subscription management system can work great and provide an excellent customer experience. 

Failed payment recovery is always an efficient solution to manage recurring subscribers and maintain scalability. In addition to this, Shopify Subscription APIs and Product Subscription App Extension allow merchants to build their own subscription apps if they wish to use convenient and affordable subscription management solutions. 

About Shopify Subscription APIs 

Shopify subscription APIs provide all essential needs for emerging merchants to build solutions for their recurring products. Subscription APIs enable the products to integrate seamlessly into the checkout and interact with every key component - payments, shipping, discounts, reporting - at a much-reduced cost compared to other off-the-shelf subscription apps. 

You are able to apply intelligent innovation of subscription methodologies to your app. As a solution to recurring order management, you can seamlessly meet the evolving subscription demands in the Shopify ecosystem.

Apps built with Shopify Subscription APIs are suitable for payment failed retries. 

There are multiple ways to implement intelligent retries with the the Shopify Subscription API-powered apps. Using this app helps you win back cancellations while improving your revenue growth. 

• Shopify merchants can set retry attempts at specified intervals. Configure your logic in the Shopify dashboard or get a subscription management expert to work for you. 
• Enable Shopify API and webhooks so that you can get updates immediately after a failed payment occurs. This helps you take action on an urgent basis. 
• If a default card does not work, merchants have another way to charge other cards. 

If you need a custom subscription app to adapt to your brand’s integrity, Subscription APIs and Product Subscription Extensions give you options to build one. Surprisingly, there are more solutions available with native subscription solutions for Shopify that you can achieve with Subscription APIs- 

Auto-retry failed subscriptions

Use Cohort Analysis to reduce churn 

Getting recurring order subscription management support 

Subscription management will look easy if you get a subscription management partner who can set up your recurring orders, handle payments at checkout,  support customer interaction with email marketing, and much more. 

HulkApps Shopify experts are the leading agency partner with extensive experience with subscription set- cohort management, pre-check-out add-ons, theme modifications, customer portal customization among others. If you need help with subscription product setup, ask for assistance. 

Conclusion 

Failed payment recovery in the subscription space is a crucial matter to ramp up sales and maintain revenue growth. You can prevent payment failure and win back cancellations when you monitor every essential factor closely. Hiring an expert is likely the best possible solution to have a realistic approach to improving other avenues of your subscription business and also one-time products. If you believe a Shopify partner can be a better choice in the customer journey of subscriptions, you can get in touch with HulkApps.