What is a recovery discount?
When a subscription payment fails, Appstle retries it on a schedule before giving up. A recovery discount adds an incentive to that process: the moment a payment fails, Appstle discounts the subscription so the customer has a reason to update their payment method before the next retry.
The discount is applied to the subscription itself, so it is waiting on the order the moment the payment goes through. Nothing is asked of the customer beyond fixing their payment method.
Where to find it
Go to More > Failed Payment Recovery and open the Retry strategy card. Recovery discounts is at the bottom of that card.
The section only appears when retries are turned on. If your store is set to never retry a failed payment, there is no next attempt to recover, so there is nothing to discount.
Setting one up
Select Add discount and fill in the following:
Name — customers see this name on the discounted order, so write it the way you want it to read on their receipt.
Apply — which failed payment triggers the discount. The original charge counts as the 1st failed payment.
Discount type — a percentage, or a fixed amount off.
Amount — how much to take off. Percentages are whole numbers between 1 and 100. Fixed amounts are taken off in each subscription's own currency, so if you set 5, a subscription that bills in euros gets €5 off.
Customer message — what the customer is told about the offer. See the next section.
Only when the card has insufficient funds — restricts the discount to that one decline reason. Other reasons, such as an expired card, will not trigger it. Leave it off to offer the discount on any failed payment.
You can add more than one discount, but only one can target each failed payment. Attempts you have already used disappear from the Apply list.
Telling the customer
The Customer message is added to the failed payment email, and you write it yourself — it is your wording, in your voice and your language.
Use {{ recoveryDiscountLabel }} anywhere in the message and Appstle replaces it with the offer, for example 20% off or $5.00 off. Because it is filled in when the email is sent, the message can never quote an amount you have since changed.
A new discount starts with a suggested message you can rewrite:
We have applied {{ recoveryDiscountLabel }} to your next order. Update your payment method to use it.
To see how it will look, open Settings > Emails and preview the Transaction failed email — the preview shows your real message with the discount filled in.
Two things worth knowing:
If you clear the message, the discount is still applied to the subscription, but nothing is added to the email. Use this if you would rather tell customers about the offer some other way, or not at all.
If you have turned the failed payment email off, Appstle still sends it for the attempt that earns a discount — otherwise the customer would never learn about the offer.
How the discount behaves
It applies to one order only. The customer gets the discount on the order that finally goes through, and their following orders return to the normal price.
A failed retry does not use it up. The discount waits until a payment actually succeeds.
Discounts replace each other, they do not stack. If you set up a discount after the 1st failed payment and a larger one after the 2nd, the first is removed when the second is applied. The customer is never given both.
It is cleaned up if recovery fails. When Appstle has used every retry and the payment still cannot be collected, the discount is removed from the subscription, so it cannot quietly reappear on a future order.
Out-of-stock failures are skipped. If an order fails because a product is out of stock, no discount is applied — the payment method is not the problem.
An example
Say your store retries 3 times, and you set up two discounts:
10% off after the 1st failed payment.
20% off after the 2nd failed payment.
The original charge fails, and the customer is emailed about a 10% offer on their next order. The first retry fails too, so the 10% discount is swapped for 20% and the customer is emailed the larger offer. They update their card, the next retry succeeds, and that order is charged with 20% off. Their subsequent orders are billed at the normal price.
If the customer never updates their card and every retry fails, the discount is removed and your usual final action — cancel, pause, or skip the failed order — applies as normal.
Discounts that will never apply
A discount only makes sense if a retry follows it. If your store retries 3 times, a discount can target the 1st or 2nd failed payment, because there is still an attempt left to recover. There is no point discounting after the 3rd, because nothing will be charged afterwards.
If you reduce your retry count and leave a discount stranded past the last retry, Appstle shows a warning on the page. Either add retry attempts or move the discount to an earlier attempt.
Checking that it worked
Open the subscription and look at its activity — an entry is recorded each time a recovery discount is applied.
The discount appears on the subscription under the name you gave it, and on the recovered order.
The Results tab on the Dunning Management page shows your recovery rate and recovered revenue, so you can compare performance before and after adding a discount.
Good to know
Recovery discounts are part of the recovery settings on the Dunning Management page. There is nothing separate to install or turn on.
Changing or deleting a discount affects future failed payments. A discount already sitting on a subscription stays there until that subscription's dunning finishes.
If your store uses a fully customized failed payment email, add
{{ recoveryDiscountMessage }}to your template where you want the message to appear.
If you would like help choosing a recovery offer that fits your customers, reach out to Appstle support and our team will walk you through it.