Why most dunning is dumb
The default in this category is “retry the card every 3 days for two weeks, then cancel the subscription.” That’s wrong on both ends. Soft declines (insufficient funds, daily limit) need a different cadence than hard declines (lost card, fraud). Retrying a hard decline 5 times just ages it into a chargeback.
What decline-aware looks like
Hey Mara —
We tried to bill your card for your Cold Brew subscription this morning and it didn't go through. No worries — we'll try again in 48 hours, or you can update your card now.
Update payment methodOrder #4421
You're receiving this because you have an active subscription with Maya's Coffee. Manage your subscription any time from your account.
Reapita reads the issuer reason code on every decline. Soft decline → wait 48h, retry. Hard decline → skip the retry, email the customer immediately with a one-tap card-update link. Lost-card decline → bypass retry entirely. Bank-declined-as-fraud → flag for review, don’t retry.
The four-email cadence
Branded transactional emails ship in the box: first decline (apologetic), second attempt (gentle reminder), final attempt (action required), final cancel (graceful exit with a reactivate link). All edit-in-place. All inherit your store’s logo, fonts, and colors.
Recovery numbers
Across our beta cohort (32 stores, ~85k active subscriptions), the decline-aware engine recovered an average of 12.4% more revenue than Shopify-native retry alone. On Scale, where AI-optimized subject lines are also on, that climbs to 16.8%.
Who this is for
Every store. Dunning is the single highest-ROI lever in the subscription economy. Most of your “churn” is involuntary — failed charges that didn’t retry properly.