Dunning 101: Multiple campaigns
Discover the power of multiple dunning campaigns in Recurly. Learn how to segment your failed payment recovery strategy by billing frequency and plan value to optimize your outreach, protect high-LTV subscribers, and prevent involuntary churn.
Retain • Dunning 101
Multiple campaigns
Out of the box, every subscriber gets the same dunning treatment. That means your highest-value annual customers are being recovered with the same window and messaging as a monthly trial subscriber.
Navigation Menu
Navigate Home
Multiple campaigns
The problem with a single default campaign
Recurly ships with one dunning campaign applied to every plan. That works as a starting point, but a monthly consumer subscriber and an annual enterprise customer have very different recovery profiles — different LTV at stake, different likelihood of updating their card quickly, and different messaging that will resonate. One campaign can't do all of that well.
Note: Multiple dunning campaigns are not available on the Starter plan. Contact support to inquire about your plan if needed.
Annual subscribers represent your highest LTV — yet the default setup gives them the same short window as a monthly subscriber. Annual renewals are statistically harder to recover than monthly ones. Cards expire over the year-long gap, amounts are larger (triggering insufficient-funds declines), and subscribers may have forgotten to update billing info. A short dunning window dramatically reduces your odds of recovery. Adjusting your dunning window according to unique plans ensures all subscriptions have ample time for recovery.
What to segment — and why
At minimum, create two campaigns. A great starting point is one for monthly and one for annual (if you offer both). You can also set up unique campaigns for different monthly plans. From there, additional segmentation by subscriber type or value tier adds meaningful gains. Each segment benefits from a tailored window length, email cadence, and tone.
Monthly subscribers
28-day window, 4–5 emails spaced 4–5 days apart. Friendly, concise tone — most monthly failures are soft declines that resolve quickly with a timely prompt.
Start hereAnnual subscribers
60-day window, 8–10 emails spread across the full window. Higher-touch messaging that emphasizes the value they'll lose — these subscribers have more at stake and deserve more recovery time.
Start hereLow-value or price-sensitive plans
For low-cost plans, use shorter dunning windows and fewer emails to offset retry costs. Focus messaging on engagement—offering pauses or discounts—rather than aggressive payment pressure.
Enterprise or team plans
Extended window, formal tone. Reference the contract and invoice number. Later-stage emails may warrant direct outreach rather than automated messaging alone — the recovery stakes are highest here.
| Campaign type | Window | Email count | Tone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly consumer | 28 days | 4–5 emails | Friendly, concise |
| Annual | 60 days | 8–10 emails | Higher-touch, value-focused |
| Low-value / price-sensitive | 14–21 days | 3–4 emails | Casual, option-forward |
| Enterprise / team | 60+ days | 8–12 emails | Formal, consequence-aware |
Start with monthly and annual. Once those are running and you can see recovery rates per campaign in your dunning benchmarks report, add segmentation where the data shows a gap. Building four campaigns before you have baseline metrics to compare against makes it hard to know what's working.