Campaigns Overview
Understand how dunning campaigns work in LostChurn — multi-channel outreach that recovers revenue when silent retries are not enough.
Dunning campaigns are automated outreach sequences that contact customers directly when their payment fails and silent retries have been exhausted. While the recovery engine works behind the scenes to retry payments at optimal times, campaigns bring the customer into the loop — prompting them to update their payment method, resolve a bank hold, or simply confirm their subscription.
When Campaigns Trigger
LostChurn follows a two-phase recovery process:
- Silent retries — The recovery engine automatically retries the failed payment using intelligent timing and backup payment methods. The customer is never contacted during this phase.
- Campaign outreach — If silent retries fail (or the decline is classified as Hard Customer and requires customer action), the recovery state transitions to
CommunicationPendingand the customer is enrolled in the appropriate campaign.
This means customers only hear from you when they genuinely need to take action, keeping your brand experience clean and reducing notification fatigue.
Multi-Channel Support
Each campaign step can use one of five customer-facing channels:
| Channel | Best For | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Primary outreach, detailed instructions | Email Campaigns | |
| SMS | Urgent, time-sensitive reminders | SMS Campaigns |
| Push | In-app and mobile re-engagement | Push Notifications |
| High open-rate markets, conversational recovery | WhatsApp Campaigns | |
| Voice | High-value, late-stage escalation via phone | Voice Outreach |
In addition to customer-facing channels, LostChurn supports Slack notifications for internal alerts — notifying your team when high-value payments fail, recoveries succeed, or campaigns complete. You can also connect your CRM via the Integrations page to sync recovery outcomes with your existing customer management tools.
Campaign Structure
Every campaign is built from three components:
Trigger
The event that enrolls a customer into the campaign. LostChurn supports nine trigger types:
| Trigger | Description |
|---|---|
| Payment Failed | Any failed payment event |
| Card Expiring | Card expiration date approaching |
| Card Expired | Card has already expired |
| Soft Decline | Retryable decline after silent retries exhausted |
| Repeated Failure | Multiple consecutive failures for the same customer |
| High Value Churn | Failed payment above a configurable revenue threshold |
| Pre-Dunning | Preventive outreach before a payment is even attempted |
| Manual | Manually enrolled by your team |
| Any Decline | Catch-all for any decline type |
Steps
An ordered sequence of messages with configurable delays between them. Each step specifies:
- Delay — How long to wait after the previous step (or after enrollment for the first step)
- Channel — Which channel to use (Email, SMS, Push, or WhatsApp)
- Template — The message content to send
- A/B variants — Optional alternative templates for split testing
Stop Conditions
Rules that automatically end the campaign when they are met:
- Max attempts — Stop after a set number of steps
- Stop on recovery — End the campaign immediately when the payment is recovered
- Stop on terminal — End the campaign if the decline is classified as terminal
- Stop on card update — End the campaign when the customer updates their payment method
Quiet Hours
Campaigns respect quiet hours to avoid messaging customers at inconvenient times. You configure a start hour, end hour, and timezone. Any message scheduled during quiet hours is held and delivered when the window reopens.
What's Next
- Creating Campaigns — Step-by-step guide to building your first campaign
- A/B Testing — Optimize campaign performance with split tests
- Slack Notifications — Set up internal alerts for your team