LostChurn Docs

Understand decline categories, recovery states, retry timing, and the difference between campaigns and recovery.

This page covers the core concepts you'll encounter throughout LostChurn. Understanding these will help you configure recovery settings and interpret your analytics.

Decline Categories

When a payment fails, LostChurn classifies the decline code from your processor into one of four categories. Each category drives a different recovery strategy.

Category	Description	Examples	Recovery Approach
Soft Retry	Temporary issues that often resolve on their own	Insufficient funds, processor timeout, rate limit	Silent retry at optimal timing
Hard Customer	Problems that require the customer to take action	Expired card, invalid card number, authentication required	Customer outreach via campaign
Terminal	Permanent failures where recovery is not possible	Stolen card, account closed, fraud	Flag and stop retries
Unknown	Decline codes that don't map to a known category	Unrecognized processor codes, generic declines	Attempt silent retry, then escalate

LostChurn maps 210+ processor-specific decline codes into these categories automatically. See Retry Strategies for how each category is handled.

Recovery States

Every failed payment moves through a lifecycle of states. Understanding this flow helps you read your dashboard and configure automation rules.

State	What's Happening
New	A failed payment event has been received but not yet processed
Classifying	LostChurn is analyzing the decline code and enriching it with historical data
Silent Retry	The payment is being retried automatically at optimized intervals — no customer contact
Communication	Silent retries have been exhausted or the decline requires customer action; outreach campaign is active
Recovered	The payment succeeded — either through a silent retry or after the customer updated their payment method
Terminal	Recovery is not possible; the failure is permanent or all recovery attempts have been exhausted

Payments can skip states depending on the decline category. For example, a Terminal decline moves directly from Classifying to Terminal, bypassing Silent Retry and Communication entirely.

Retry Timing

LostChurn doesn't retry payments on a fixed schedule. Instead, it selects the optimal retry time based on four factors:

Soft declines (like insufficient funds) benefit from waiting — the customer may deposit money or the processor issue may resolve. Hard declines need immediate escalation to the customer, not more retries.

Time of Day

Retries sent during business hours recover at higher rates. LostChurn uses the subscriber's timezone (when available) to schedule retries during their local daytime hours, respecting your configured quiet hours.

Day of Week

Payment success rates vary by day. Retries on paydays (typically the 1st, 15th, and Fridays) recover at higher rates for insufficient-funds declines. LostChurn factors this in when scheduling.

Attempt Number

Each successive retry has a lower probability of success. LostChurn increases the delay between retries with each attempt and will stop retrying once the expected recovery value drops below the cost of the attempt.

Learn more about how these factors combine in Retry Strategies.

Campaigns vs Recovery

These two terms come up frequently in LostChurn, and it's important to understand the distinction:

Recovery is the entire end-to-end process of handling a failed payment — from receiving the decline event, through silent retries, to customer outreach, and finally to a successful charge or terminal state. Recovery is what LostChurn does.

Campaigns are the customer-facing communication sequences within the recovery process. A campaign defines what you say to a customer, when you say it, and how (email, SMS, or in-app). Campaigns only activate when silent retries fail or when the decline category requires customer action.

In short: every campaign is part of recovery, but not every recovery involves a campaign. Many payments are recovered silently through intelligent retries, and the customer never knows there was an issue.

To set up your first campaign, see the Campaign Builder. To understand the full recovery pipeline, see Recovery.

Key Concepts