RecoverFree tool
Dunning email generator
Write the failed payment email that actually matches what went wrong. Pick the decline reason and where you are in the sequence, and paste the result into Stripe, your ESP, or wherever you send from.
What makes these work
- Say what actually happened. "Your card ending 4242 has expired" beats "there was a problem with your payment". Vagueness makes people assume it is spam.
- One link, one action. Every extra choice costs you conversions. The update link should work without a login wall if you can manage it.
- Do not lead with threat. Access loss belongs in the third or fourth email, not the first. Opening with a deadline on day zero reads as aggressive for something that is usually an honest mistake.
- Plain text beats a designed template. A message that looks like a person wrote it gets opened and clicked more than a banner-and-button layout, and it lands in the inbox more reliably.
- Send from a real address. A no-reply sender tells the customer you do not want to hear from them, which is the wrong message when you are asking for a favour.
Match the email to the decline code. An expired card and an insufficient funds decline need completely different messages. One needs a new card, the other needs you to wait until payday and try again. Sending the same email for both wastes the one you send too early and misses the one that needed urgency. The decline code reference covers which is which.
A sequence that holds together
- Day 0, heads-up. Friendly, specific, no pressure. Most recoveries happen here.
- Day 3, reminder. Same facts, different subject line, slightly more direct.
- Day 7, consequence stated plainly. Say what happens and when, without drama.
- Day 14, final notice. Last chance, then stop. Continuing past this converts rarely and annoys reliably.
Three to four emails across two weeks is a sane default. It also matches the two week window Stripe's own retry schedule defaults to, so your emails and your retries finish together rather than one running long.
Frequently asked questions
What is a dunning email?
A message telling a customer their payment failed and asking them to fix it. It is the communication half of recovery. Retries handle money that was temporarily unavailable. Emails handle cards that need replacing.
How many dunning emails should you send?
Three to four across two weeks. Fewer under-recovers simply because people miss email. More starts reading as harassment and rarely adds anything.
Should a dunning email say why the card failed?
For benign reasons such as an expired card, yes, because it tells them exactly what to fix. For fraud-related declines Stripe advises a generic message instead, since a precise one is useful to a card thief.
Does Stripe send dunning emails already?
Yes, using your branding settings. What you cannot control there is the sequence, the timing, the sender or the copy, which is the reason to write your own. See the Stripe comparison.
Or have them sent for you
RecoverFlow sends sequences like these automatically, matched to the decline reason, and tracks which ones actually recovered money. Start with a free 90 day scan of what you have been losing.
Run the free 90 day scanThese are starting points, not tested winners. RecoverFlow launched in July 2026 and does not have open or click benchmarks of its own to publish, so nothing here claims a conversion rate. Edit them to sound like you, then test.