Failed payment reminder email: the second note
The second failed payment email, sent three days after the first if the card still has not gone through: the words, subject lines and when it stops.
- Goes
- 3 days after the card fails
- To
- Anyone whose payment still hasn't gone through three days later.
- Stops
- Once the payment goes through.
The email
Your payment still hasn't gone through
Hi {{first_name}}, Just a quick note: your payment for [Product] still hasn't gone through. Updating your card fixes it.
{{first_name}} is each person’s first name. If your tool uses another tag, swap it in.
Subject lines
- Your payment still hasn't gone throughin the email above
- Still need to update your card
- A reminder about your [Product] payment
- Your [Product] payment is still waiting
- Your card still needs updating
- A last note about your [Product] payment
Why it works
Three days on, some people have not seen the first email and some saw it and meant to get to it. A short second note with the same fix catches both without repeating the whole first one.
It should be shorter than the first and no sterner, because the card is still the likely cause and the person is still a customer.
Make it yours
- Add the same billing link as in the first email.
- If your account pauses on a date, put the date here and nowhere earlier. Do not warn of a pause that is not coming.
- Only call it the last note if it is. Two or three over about a week is plenty.
Write yours from your URL
Paste your site's address and the generator writes this email for your product, in your site's own voice.
Where it goes
On your Lifecycle map this email hangs off the Card failed side road. The emails there, in the order they go:
- Your payment didn't go throughRight away, when the card fails
- Still not throughthis page3 days after the card fails
How Kicklace sends it
It is the second email on the Card failed side road, three days after the first. Kicklace stops a sequence for somebody the moment they move on from its stage, so a customer whose payment goes through never gets it. The events behind it are in the Stripe events library.
Kicklace writes a first version in your voice from what it reads on your site, and you change whatever you like. Nothing sends until you switch it on. Before you do, it shows who would have got it over the last 30 days, and you can send yourself a test. Each person gets it once.
Questions
How many failed payment reminders should I send?
Two or three over about a week. Kicklace's starter sends two: the first email the day the card fails and this one three days later.
What if they still don't update the card?
After the last reminder, the next message is about their account: what changed, and how to come back. That email is yours to write. Kicklace only reads Stripe: it never charges anybody and never changes a customer, a price or a payment.
Should the reminder be a new email or a repeat?
A new one, shorter than the first. Repeating the first word for word reads as automatic, and it gives somebody who missed it nothing new to act on.
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