Payment Declined Email Examples

If you’re asking a customer to update their information, clearly call out and link users to their account settings page. Take subscription boxes brand Boxycharm, for example. They call out their account page in the text as well as a clear button to update information. By linking to the account page, customers can easily click, sign-in, and update without much hassle. The easier the process, the more likely you are to reduce churn.

Boxycharm urges the customer to take action with their warning subject line. Within the email, the brand immediately lets the customer know their payment failed, and it includes a link to their subscription to make sure the customer knows what this is about. It then asks the customer to update their payment details and adds a sense of urgency by saying that boxes are limited. Lastly, the clear pink cta button leads directly to the customer’s account where they can update their billing info.

Look, no one wants to receive a “credit card declined” email, especially if their bank information hasn’t changed. Instead of suggesting there’s something wrong on the customer’s end, Sephora says it was unable to confirm the payment information. It also reassures the customer that they won’t be charged for the order and offers them the opportunity to get in touch with its customer support team to resolve the billing issue.

Most failed payments aren’t due to customers not being willing to pay, so be gentle when notifying them about a failed payment and make it easy for them the chance to both update their payment method and salvage their purchase.

When wanting to create a seamless experience, brands can include easy step-by-step instructions on how to update payment information like HBO Max does with this payment declined email. Its easy 3-step process is extremely simple and gives customers an idea of how easy and quickly they can update their information before clicking to do so. On top of that, the brand explains why customers should update their billing information: to “keep streaming uninterrupted” and avoid account suspension.

All of this in combination with the clear CTA “update payment info” is sure to increase retention for the streaming service.

If items are on hold for a certain period or your brand has a grace period for declined payments, call out any payment update deadlines in the email. Purple Carrot does a great job of this within their declined payment email by bolding the text mentioning the deadline cutoff for updates.

Also here, the call to action is impossible to miss.

Some brands, particularly subscription services, highlight deadlines over several emails to create urgency. For example, BarkBox sends two dunning emails, one a few days before the deadline and one as the deadline approaches to ensure customers update their info and their subscription payment can be processed in time to send them their monthly subscription box.

The brand also provides a link to its customer support in case customers have additional questions.

If a one-time purchase is canceled due to a payment failure, highlight the canceled item by automatically adding it to the email. In this case, your email can follow a layout similar to that of an order confirmation email but instead of confirming the order, you now inform customers of the payment failure. That’s what Gucci does here.

The brand also informs the customer as to why it wasn’t able to receive payment and invites them to place a new order using another payment method. This is the type of messaging you can use when a customer’s bank lets you know the customer is trying to pay with an account that has insufficient funds, for example.

To provide a better customer experience, set your reply-to for this email (as well as a majority of your transactional emails) to the customer service email address so customers can easily respond and communicate with your team.
SSense automatically opens a support ticket whenever there’s a payment failure and lets customers know they can respond directly to the email with any questions.

Make your payment declined email subject lines stand out in the customer’s inbox by having them clearly address the issue. Vitamin Shoppe does this well with the subject line “There was a problem with your payment”. Applying this strategy allows the customer to be aware of the issue even before opening the email and also creates a bit of urgency.

Sometimes, a failed payment is due to a technical hiccup and so you may want to try to make the charge one more time. If so, let customers know. That’s what Blue Apron does with this email. The brand alerts the customer of the declined payment and asks them to please update their payment details as soon as possible if needed, as Blue Apron will attempt to charge them again.

This is another strategy to prevent involuntary churn and recover lost revenue, especially for subscription services.

Daily Harvest does an excellent job of including some humor within their payment declined email: “Your stored card is too cool for us”. This fun and humorous approach to the email stands out from the others as most payment declined emails are basic notifications with limited branding.

We also like the step-by-step instructions telling customers how they can update their information, the highlighted note giving them a deadline, and the direct link to their account page presented as a clear call to action button.

Most customers don’t instantly know why a payment failed and so MunchPak shares a few of the most common reasons. Expired credit cards are not uncommon, especially when someone has been a customer for a while, but also fraud and other issues could have caused a recent payment to get canceled.

Below these explanations, MunchPak shares that the customer can update their information or get in touch with its support team.