Memberium Keap Developer: How to Elegantly Manage Subscription Declines & Cancellations Part 2

In part 2 of this series, we are moving from handling expiring cards (the topic of part 1) to managing card declines elegantly with a focus on collections.

There are three parts to this. They are:

1. The Keap Billing Automation Triggers that trigger the automations that manage the decline and collection process.
2. The Keap Automations (formerly called campaigns) that manage the declines, suspension and reactivation of the account.
3. A Memberium powered My Accounts page where members can update their payment card information.

Memberium Keap Developer Advice - Part 2

Managing Payment Card Declines Elegantly and Maximizing Collections

Managing declines starts with a billing automation trigger. Keap allows you to take action when it detects that a payment for an invoice gets declined. We develop 4 triggers to manage this. They are:

1. A decline #1 trigger that notifies the member to update their card information.
2. A decline #2 trigger that notifies the member to update their card information.
3. A decline #3 trigger that suspends the member's access and notifies them of that requesting that they update their card information.
4. A autocharge successful after a previous auto charge attempt failed trigger that starts the un-suspends there access and allows the member access again.

In my video, I show how to configure these triggers. I go into detail there to show you how to build this.

My preference is to keep these triggers simple. The trigger's job is to start a Keap automation that does the work. I call my Keap automation Manage Card Declines and Member Cancellations. In the final part of this series, I go over how to manage member cancellations.)

The Keap automation sequences for Decline #1 and #2 are simple. They assign tags "Decline #1" and "Decline #2," respectively. Anyone viewing the Keap contact record can quickly see the account has recently experienced a decline. I make sure to assign the contact records with a Keap Note. This can be useful when handling a customer service request or doing some debugging. The automation sequence then send the member an email message. We typically keep the message in these as nice as possible. We aren't threatening them, but informing them that we got a decline when processing their payment. We provides them with a link they can use to update their payment information. More on this a bit later.

Decline #3 is similar. It tags them with "Decline #3." It makes tag changes so the member can no longer access the content associated with the subscription.  Then it send them a message telling them their access has been temporarily suspended with a link they can use to update their payment information.

The campaign then waits for 25 days. That is the period of time the member has to update their payment information before we cancel their subscription. We do this to keep the subscription from creating another invoice for the following month. My thinking behind this is that you want to give them time to correct the payment situation. If you have increased the price of the subscription, they will be risking having to repurchase at the higher price. To address this later, they have to take action by making another purchase or contacting the site owner.

The final trigger starts an automation when a member makes a payment after either of the declines run and before the 25 day wait ends. When that triggers, it un-suspends them so they can again get access and it removes the decline tags so anyone viewing the contact record sees a contact in good standing.

The final part to review is the My Accounts page of the website. Any membership or online course site that uses subscriptions, needs one. This will allow members to view information about their subscription (i.e., how much, next bill date, how to cancel) and, for our purposes managing declines, how to update their payment information.

The My Accounts page includes a way to update their existing payment card information and a way to add a new card to use to get payment. Both are implemented using the Memberium shortcode [memb_add_credit_card]. We use it twice so the member sees they can either add or update the card on file.

When the member uses the forms made available by these shortcodes, Keap e-commerce uses these updated card to attempt a payment. If the payment goes through, it executes the automation sequence that un-suspends their access and the member regains access.

In part 3, the final part of this series, we'll go over how to manage user cancellations.