A declined renewal no longer means a lost subscriber. Retries are scheduled around payday, WhatsApp and email nudges go out in sequence, and a self-service card-update link closes the loop — recovering 57% of failed charges without anyone chasing.
Typical results
3 days
Average time to recovery
-55%
Subscribers lost to card issues
0
Manual chasing calls
Figures reflect typical results for this kind of automation.
The challenge
Every month roughly 85 subscribers vanished not because they wanted to cancel, but because a card expired or a charge bounced. The billing system's three blunt retries recovered barely 22%, emails went to spam, and the team had no time to phone people about their credit cards.
Before and after
Failed charges recovered
2.6×Subscribers lost to card issues monthly
−55%Days to recover a failed charge
−75%The automation
We connected the payment processor's decline webhooks to a dunning engine built in Make. Each failure is classified — expired card, insufficient funds, hard decline — and gets its own playbook: retries timed around typical paydays, a friendly WhatsApp nudge, then an email sequence. Every message carries a secure self-service link to update the card, and the moment a charge clears, the flow stops and the subscription continues untouched.
How it works
- 01
Decline detected
The processor's webhook fires the instant a renewal charge fails.
- 02
Failure classified
Expired card, insufficient funds or hard decline — each gets its own playbook.
- 03
Smart retries
Charges reattempt around typical paydays instead of on a blind timer.
- 04
Nudges that convert
WhatsApp first, then email, each carrying a secure card-update link.
- 05
Loop closes itself
A successful charge stops the flow and the subscription continues untouched.
Starts from
- Declined renewals
- Subscriber records
Delivers
- WhatsApp nudges
- Email sequence
- Self-service card update
The impact
Recovery typically rises from about 22% to 57% of failed charges, cutting subscribers lost to card issues from about 85 to 38 a month, a 55% drop. Average recovery lands in three days instead of twelve, and the team no longer spends time phoning subscribers about their cards.
Questions about this automation
How are different decline reasons handled?
The processor's decline code decides the path. An expired card skips retries and goes straight to a card-update message. Insufficient funds triggers retries timed around common paydays. A hard decline, such as a closed account, stops retries and asks the subscriber for a new payment method, so nobody is charged again and again for nothing.
Is the card-update link secure?
Yes. The link opens the payment processor's own hosted page, so card details never pass through WhatsApp, email or the automation itself. Each link is tied to one subscriber. Once the new card is saved, the pending charge runs again and the subscription continues on its usual schedule.
How does the flow know when to stop messaging?
Every successful charge sends a webhook back to the flow, which ends the sequence for that subscriber right away, even halfway through. Subscribers who cancel or reach the last step are marked in the billing system. Simple automations like this are usually live within days.