Marketing & Communications

August 6, 2026 · Last updated on September 16, 2026

Recipe: Reclaim Time by Minimising Auto Renew Membership Failures

# Recipes for success

# Recipes for Success

Makes: A recommended approach to managing your auto renew memberships that saves time spent managing failed renewals.

Failed renewals represent potential lost members. By automating your reports and communications to monitor failed renewals, you can protect your recurring revenue and reduce internal administrative burden.

What you need

Access to admin, settings and insights & mailings interfaces

Time required

Prep: 20 minutes

Cook: 1 hour

What will this help me achieve?

Reclaim time spent chasing individuals about failed renewals whilst still providing a smooth and consistent customer experience

Protect your recurring membership and donation revenue by reducing preventable renewal failures

Grow your auto renew base among new and existing members by making it easier to opt in

Concepts we’ll be using

Tags and auto tags : used to identify memberships which aren’t currently set to auto renew

Customer Groups : used to highlight members who may be at risk of lapsing

Continuous authority payments : must be turned on in your system to facilitate recurring payments

Stored Cards : auto renew memberships require a stored card in the wallet section of the customer record

Auto renew notification emails : edit your system email template to make renewal notifications more engaging

Report schedules : automate reports to monitor auto renewals at risk of lapsing

Grace Periods : designate a period of time after the membership end date when members can renew at the renewal price, even if their Membership has expired.

Prep

Create a ‘Not on auto renew’ auto tag to identify memberships which are not set to auto renew. Use a purchasing segment to identify memberships with an expiry date in the future and have auto renew unchecked:

Create a 'Does not want to auto renew' manual tag for your Box Office team to identify members who have been asked about auto renew and declined.

Create a 'Potential Auto Renew' customer group which highlights members who do not have auto renew enabled and excludes those that have already been asked.

Add the ‘Not on auto renew’ auto tag to the criteria set.

Add the 'Does not want to auto renew' manual tag as an AND NOT segment to hide members with the tag from your customer group.

Contact Support to request that the ‘Auto Renew Potential Fails Check’ report is added to your system.

Activate

Step 1: Box Office Best Practice

Use the 'Potential Auto Renew' Customer Group to flag members and ask them about auto renew. At the point of purchase, your Box Office team should ask members whether they’d like their membership to auto renew. Customers opting into auto renew must have a stored card on their account.

Tip: If you’re using Spektrix Payments , saved card details are automatically updated when a card expires or it’s reissued. If you’re not using Spektrix Payments, saved cards will need to be updated by the customer or a member of your staff when the card is due to expire.

When a member says they do not want their membership to auto renew, add the manual tag to their account.This automatically removes them from the flagged group.

Step 2: Optimise your membership set up for online sales by prompting members to save a card

When selling memberships online to customers using the Membership iframe, the auto renew box is checked by default. If your website uses a different type of integration, your web developer can make it so that the auto renew box is checked by default.

Save card details as the default: In the settings interface, under System Setup > Website, check the box ‘Default “Store my card details” to be ticked on customer billing details’. This setting will check the 'store my card for future purchases' box in the checkout by default for all transactions.

Display stored card settings to customers on the My Account page: On the same page, ensure the payments card and memberships sections are displayed to customers. This allows customers to add or update their stored card and manage their memberships on your website’s My Account page.

Step 3: Automate reminders before renewal

In the admin interface, update your memberships auto renew system email templates. Use our HTML templates to improve engagement with a friendlier design that aligns with your brand

Follow the system email templates guide to download and edit your auto renew email template.

In the admin interface, make sure that each of your memberships has the ‘Notify customer of auto renewal’ setting checked. This will email customers to flag their membership is close to expiry and its renewal status. Consider how many days before expiry you want to deliver emails to your members.

Step 4: Proactively troubleshoot by scheduling the potential Fails Check report

Create a report schedule to run on a weekly basis

Add the Auto Renew Potential Fails Check report to your schedule

Use the report to identify customers whose renewal will fail without intervention

A customer with no email address will need this added

A member without a stored card needs one saved to their account

Try this twist

Members are considered lapsed once they’ve passed the membership grace period. You can increase the grace period to allow more time to contact customers or troubleshoot potential failed renewals. If you make this change it will affect all ongoing and future memberships, it will not change memberships currently in their auto renew period.

More to explore

Update all of your system emails with HTML templates to make your emails cohesive, including new account emails, password reset emails, gift vouchers and gift memberships

Send automated Welcome Emails for new Members : create a welcome email which will be automatically delivered daily to brand new members. Use the ‘Not on auto renew’ tag to power dynamic content asking customers if they would like to add auto renewal to their new membership

Automate your member recruitment : create a fully automated journey that helps convert potential members and scale your recruitment strategy with ease.

Dynamic content for potential members : create personalized, high-impact email campaigns that speak directly to your potential members

Combine this recipe with the Monthly Membership Activity report to monitor your membership acquisition and retention to inform your membership strategy