Look at the list of students who left your martial arts school this year and some of them will surprise you. They were training regularly, their kids were working toward the next belt, and then their account went inactive.
Nobody sent a cancellation email. A card expired or a payment declined, the retries ran out, and the account closed while everyone assumed someone else would follow up.
These families are the easiest people you’ll ever win back, because nothing about your school pushed them away. Finding them takes one focused session in your records, and reaching out takes a friendly message that makes it simple to pick up where they left off.
Who Counts as a Member Lost to a Failed Payment?
It’s anyone whose membership ended because a payment didn’t go through, as opposed to someone who asked to cancel. Billing companies call this involuntary churn. Recurly describes these as subscribers lost to payment failure who didn’t intend to cancel.
This post is about the people who have already lapsed. If you want to understand why failed payments slip through in the first place, start with how involuntary attrition hurts retention and what happens when a membership payment fails. Here, we’re focused on getting those families back on the mat.
Why These Are Your Easiest Win-Backs
A student who left over price or a bad experience made a decision, and winning them back means changing their mind. A student lost to a failed payment never made that decision. Their reason for leaving is a card number, and you can fix a card number in a two-minute phone call.
Declines are also common. Across subscription businesses, Recurly reports that 13% of recurring transactions are declined each month on average, and 72% of renewal card declines come from generic declines, insufficient funds, and temporary holds.
Those numbers come from subscription companies broadly, so your school’s figures will differ, but the pattern holds: a decline usually says more about the timing of a bank balance or an expired card than about how someone feels about your classes.
Bringing these families back is also far cheaper than replacing them. According to Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer costs five to 25 times more than keeping an existing one, and a former student who already knows your instructors and your schedule is about as close to an existing customer as it gets.
The one thing working against you is time. The longer an account sits closed, the more likely the family has filled that evening with something else, and the more awkward the first message can feel. That’s why the search below covers the past year and no further back.
How to Find Them in Your Records
Most membership software can show you inactive or cancelled accounts with their last payment activity. Pull everyone from the last 12 months and look for these signs:
- The last billing event was a decline, with no cancellation request from the member.
- The status was changed by the system, after retries failed, instead of by a staff member.
- Attendance continued right up to the decline. A student who was training every week until the card failed almost certainly meant to stay.
- No cancellation note. If your team records a reason when people cancel, these accounts will have nothing there, or a note like “card issue.” Our guide on what to ask when a student cancels covers how to set up those notes so this search gets easier next year.
Sort the list into two groups: accounts with an unpaid balance and accounts without one. The second group is the simplest, since you’re only inviting them back.
The first group needs a gentler touch, and if any of those accounts have already gone to a collections process, check its status before anyone reaches out so the family doesn’t hear from two places at once.
For the accounts that still owe money, our guide on how to collect past due invoices covers the best way to collect past due accounts while keeping the relationship intact.
What to Say When You Reach Out
Lead with the student. Open with the person and their training, and let the payment come second. “We’ve missed seeing Jake in the Tuesday class” is a better first line than anything about an account.
Assume it was a glitch. Cards get replaced after fraud alerts, banks send new numbers, and updated cards never make it to the school. Saying “it looks like your card on file stopped working” puts the problem on the card, which is almost always where it belongs.
Keep the bank’s reasons private. You may see a decline code suggesting a card was reported lost or stolen. Stripe’s decline code guidance advises against sharing that specific reason with the customer and presenting it as a general decline instead. The family doesn’t need to know what your processor saw.
Make coming back easy. Give them one way to update their payment, like a secure link or a phone number to call, and tell them their rank and progress are right where they left them.
Offer a plan for any balance. If they owe a month or two, offer to spread it out or fold it into the restart. A balance they can handle is much easier to say yes to than a lump sum.
Skip the discount. These families didn’t leave over price, so a coupon solves a problem they don’t have and trains them to expect one next time. We explain the bigger picture in why discount win-back offers backfire.
A sample message for a kids program might read like this:
Hi Sarah, this is Coach Dana from [School Name]. We’ve missed seeing Jake on the mat this fall! It looks like the card we had on file stopped working back in August, and I’m sorry nobody reached out sooner. If you’d like him back in class, you can update the card here [link] or just reply and I’ll call you. His green stripe progress is saved and his spot in the Tuesday 5pm class is open.
Swap in your own school name and voice. Send it as a personal text or email from the instructor or owner, follow up once a week later if you hear nothing, and then let it rest.
For more wording, see our win-back message templates, and for the full approach to former members of every kind, read our guide to winning back former members without discounts.
A Credit Card Declined Email Template
Some families respond better to email, especially when they’ll need a computer to update a card. Here’s a credit card declined email you can adapt:
Subject: Jake’s spot in Tuesday class
Hi Sarah,
We’ve missed Jake in the Tuesday 5pm class. It looks like the card we had on file stopped working in August, so his membership paused, and I’m sorry we didn’t catch it sooner.
If you’d like him back, you can update the card here: [secure link]. If it’s easier, reply to this email and I’ll give you a call.
His green stripe progress is saved, and his spot is open whenever he’s ready.
Coach Dana [School Name]
For members who are still enrolled and only a payment behind, use a reminder instead. Our payment reminder email templates cover each stage, from a friendly nudge to a final notice.
If you want a clear view of how many families you’ve lost this way and what it’s costing you each month, a free billing assessment will show you.
How to Keep It From Happening Again
Winning these families back is worth doing once. Doing it every year means something in your billing process needs fixing, and clear billing policies that help retain members are a good place to start. These three changes help the most.
Use card updater services. Visa and Mastercard both run programs that send updated card details to merchants who keep cards on file. Visa Account Updater handles new card numbers, expiration dates, and closed accounts, and Mastercard’s Automatic Billing Updater does the same for reissued and expired cards.
These services usually run through your payment processor or billing provider, so ask yours whether it’s turned on.
Follow up within days of a decline. Automated retries and reminder emails catch the easy ones. When they don’t work, a person needs to reach out that same week, while the student is still coming to class.
Our post on handling a failed payment without an awkward conversation has scripts for that moment, and moving families to bank draft can help too, since switching members to ACH payments removes card expiration from the picture.
Let a billing team own it. The follow-up after a decline is the job that slips when the front desk is busy with a full kids class. Member Solutions has handled managed billing and collections for 35 years, and our team calls members, works with banks to update cards, and follows up on past-due accounts so it doesn’t land on you.
You can see how that works on our revenue recovery page, or read how martial arts billing software with a real team behind it fits BJJ and karate schools. If you’re weighing whether to keep billing in-house, our comparison of billing as a service vs. billing software walks through the tradeoffs.
Examples
These examples are illustrative and don’t describe specific schools.
A kids karate family. A dad’s card was replaced after a fraud alert in the spring. The school’s software retried the old card three times, sent two emails to an address he rarely checks, and closed the account.
His daughter had been training twice a week. When the owner called in October, the dad was surprised to hear the account had closed at all and updated the card on the spot.
An adult kickboxing student. A member’s debit card declined twice for insufficient funds during a hard month, and the account lapsed with a $90 balance. The instructor texted, said the team missed her at the Saturday class, and offered to split the balance across her first two months back. She came back the following week.
Pull the List This Week
Set aside an hour, run the report for the past 12 months, and sort out everyone whose account closed after a decline instead of a cancellation request. Send each family a personal note this month, starting with the ones who were training most recently.
Then look at why the list exists. A free billing assessment walks through your declines, retries, and follow-up so you can see where families are slipping out and what it would take to keep them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How far back should I look for members lost to failed payments? A: Twelve months is a good starting point. Families who lapsed recently are the most likely to return, and the message feels natural. Beyond a year, many have settled into something else.
Q: Should I mention the unpaid balance in the first message? A: Mention that the card stopped working, then save the balance details for the reply or the phone call. Opening with the dollar amount makes the message feel like a collection notice.
Q: What if they don’t respond? A: Send one follow-up about a week later. If you still hear nothing, let it rest and add a note to the account. You can try again when you have news to share, like a new class time.
Q: Do card updater services catch every expired card? A: No. They depend on the card issuer taking part and sending updates, and coverage varies. They reduce declines from replaced and expired cards, but you still need someone following up on the ones that get through.
