What dunning is
Dunning is the sequence of messages that asks a customer to fix a failed payment. The word is old and sounds harsh, but the modern job is not to demand money. It is to tell someone their card stopped working before it costs them their subscription, and make fixing it a single click.
It is the recovery lever for one specific situation: declines that only the customer can resolve. An expired_card, a bank that wants the cardholder to confirm, a method that needs replacing. No retry clears those on its own. A good message does.
When to dun, when to stay silent
The first best practice is restraint. Not every failure deserves an email. If a insufficient_funds decline is likely to clear on a well-timed retry, a silent retry is the better tool. Emailing a customer to warn them about a payment your own system would have recovered a day later spends their trust for nothing.
Rule of thumb: retry silently what a retry can fix, dun what only the customer can fix, and never dun a payment you already recovered. Which bucket a decline falls into is in the decline-code library and the failed-payment-recovery guide.
The cadence
Timing is most of the outcome. Too few messages and it goes unnoticed; too many and it becomes noise the customer tunes out. A widely used starting cadence is three to four messages spread across roughly two weeks, for example on day 1, day 3, day 7, and day 14 after the failure.
- Start soon, but not instantly. A same-minute email can beat the retry that would have quietly fixed it. A short grace period lets automation do its job first.
- Space the messages. Each one should arrive after enough time that it is a fresh prompt, not a repeat pestering.
- Give a real deadline. Tell the customer when access ends if nothing changes. A concrete date converts better than an open-ended nudge, and it is honest.
- Stop on success. The moment the payment clears, the sequence ends. Nothing erodes trust like a dunning email after the customer already paid.
What a good dunning email says
The message does one job: get the customer to update their payment method. Everything in it should serve that, and nothing should distract from it.
- Lead with what happened, plainly. "Your payment didn't go through" beats a vague "action required". People act on specifics.
- One clear action. A single button to update the card. No competing links, no upsell, no survey.
- Say why it matters, without fear-mongering. What they lose and when, stated calmly. The tone is a helpful heads-up from a product they use, not a warning from a debt collector.
- Make the fix frictionless. A direct link to a prefilled update page. Every extra step between the email and a working card is lost revenue.
- Sound like your product. Same voice as the rest of your app. A dunning email that reads like a legal notice feels like it came from someone else.
Channel
Email is the backbone: it is where account messages already live, and it carries a full explanation and a button. It does not have to be the only channel. An in-app banner catches customers who log in but never open email. For high-value plans, a short personal note recovers accounts an automated sequence will not. Match the effort to what the subscription is worth.
Measuring dunning
Dunning is a funnel, so measure it like one: messages sent, opened, clicked, and payments recovered. Each step leaks, and the biggest leak is your next fix.
- Low open rate: a subject-line and timing problem. Say what happened in the subject.
- Good opens, low clicks: the message is not making the action obvious or urgent enough.
- Good clicks, low recovery: friction in the update flow itself. Shorten the path to a working card.
See what dunning could recover for you
Reecova reads your last 90 days of Stripe history and shows how much of your failed revenue sits in declines only the customer can fix, the exact payments a good dunning sequence targets. No subscription, no card.
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Common questions
- What is dunning?
- Dunning is the sequence of messages that asks a customer to fix a failed payment, usually by updating a card. It is the recovery lever for declines that only the customer can resolve, like an expired card or a bank that needs a call. Done well, it is helpful, not a threat.
- How many dunning emails should you send?
- Enough to be heard, not so many that you nag. A common cadence is three to four messages over about two weeks, spaced out, each with a single clear action. Stop the sequence the instant the payment succeeds, so a customer who already paid never gets another reminder.
- When should you dun versus retry silently?
- Retry silently when the charge can clear on its own, like a soft insufficient-funds decline. Dun when only the customer can fix it, like an expired card. Sending a customer an alarming email for a payment your retry would have recovered on its own erodes trust for no reason.
- How do you measure dunning?
- As a funnel: messages sent, opened, clicked, and payments recovered. Each step has a drop-off, and the weakest step is your next improvement. A low open rate is a subject-line and timing problem; a low click-to-recovery is a friction problem in the update flow.