How Subscription Brands Reduce Churn With Email

Subscription brands reduce churn with email by sending the right message at each subscription event: before a charge, when a payment fails, when someone skips or pauses, and after they cancel. The work is mostly about connecting your subscription app to your email platform and deciding what each event should say.

I split the problem in two first, because the two kinds of churn need different emails.

Voluntary vs involuntary churn

Voluntary churn is a customer choosing to cancel. They have too much product, the price no longer feels worth it, they got bored, or they only ever wanted the first-order discount.

Involuntary churn is a customer leaving without meaning to. Recharge's glossary describes it as customers unintentionally dropping out because a transaction failed, with expired cards, insufficient funds and maxed-out credit limits as the usual causes.

The difference matters. A voluntary churner needs a reason to stay. An involuntary churner still wants the product and only needs a working payment method. Sending a discount to the second group wastes margin, and sending a payment reminder to the first group misses the point.

How subscription apps pass events to Klaviyo

Most Shopify subscription apps offer a Klaviyo integration that sends subscription activity to Klaviyo as events, which Klaviyo calls metrics. You can then trigger flows from those events and segment on subscriber properties. The exact event names and coverage differ by app, so check your own app's documentation before planning flows.

Recharge is a good example. According to Recharge's documentation on Klaviyo metrics, it sends events for a subscription being started, cancelled, expired, paused and reactivated, for a product swap, for a change of next charge date or frequency, for an upcoming order, and for a successfully placed order. Its integration guide adds that customer-level properties, such as subscription status and the number of active subscriptions, sync to the profile for segmentation.

Upcoming order emails

This is the email I set up first. A charge that arrives without warning is one of the fastest ways to turn a happy subscriber into a cancellation, or worse, a chargeback.

Recharge's documentation says its upcoming order event is sent to Klaviyo three days before the queued charge date by default, and that the timing can be changed in the merchant settings. That gives the customer time to act.

It can feel risky to remind people they are about to be charged. I still send it. The customers who would cancel after a reminder are the same ones who would cancel angrily after the charge. The reminder also doubles as a sales email when it offers an add-on.

Offer skip and pause instead of cancel

A lot of voluntary churn is not rejection. It is a timing problem. The customer has too much product at home and cancelling looks like the only way to stop the next box.

So I put the softer options in front of them before the cancel button:

• Skip the next order.
• Pause or push the date back.
• Change frequency to match how fast they actually use the product.
• Swap to a different product or flavor if they are bored.

The fewer steps this takes, the better it works. Recharge offers what it calls Quick Actions for its Klaviyo integration: links unique to each customer that let them skip the next order, swap a product, add a one-time product, apply a discount or reactivate a subscription straight from an email. Its documentation notes limits, including that prepaid subscriptions are not compatible, so test before you rely on them.

After a pause or skip, send a short check-in before the next charge. A paused subscriber who hears nothing tends to become a cancelled one.

Failed payment (dunning) emails

Dunning is the process of following up on a failed payment. It has two parts: the system retrying the charge, and messages asking the customer to fix their payment method. Recharge's glossary recommends both, plus a proactive notice when a card is close to expiring.

Where those emails are sent from depends on your app. With Recharge, the Failed Payment Recovery documentation states that these notifications are sent by Recharge and cannot be sent through Klaviyo. You customize the copy and branding inside Recharge instead. It also says that if every retry fails, the subscription is cancelled automatically. Other apps may pass a failed payment event to Klaviyo, so check what yours supports.

Wherever they are sent from, I write dunning emails the same way:

Cancellation winback and subscriber-only content

When someone does cancel, the cancellation event starts a winback flow. Capture the cancellation reason if your app collects it and branch on it.

Winback is the last line of defense. The stronger play is making the subscription worth keeping while it is active. I create an active subscriber segment and give it things other customers do not get: early access to new products, usage tips timed to each delivery, and the occasional surprise. I also exclude subscribers from public promotions they cannot use.

What to do next

1. Connect your subscription app to Klaviyo and list the events it actually sends.
2. Build the upcoming order email with skip, swap and add-on options.
3. Rewrite your failed payment emails, wherever they are sent from, and add a card expiry notice.
4. Add a cancellation winback flow that branches on reason.
5. Create an active subscriber segment and plan one subscriber-only email a month.

Then track voluntary and involuntary churn as separate numbers. You cannot tell which emails are working if they are blended into one rate.