# Automate customer emails

Learn how you can use customer emails to recover revenue.

Customer emails help prevent involuntary churn by notifying customers and giving them a chance to intervene when churn is likely, like when a payment fails.

Enable email notifications for all the use cases that make sense for your business. We recommend you minimally provide a way for customers to:

- [Confirm payments](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/revenue-recovery/customer-emails.md#payment-confirmation-notifications)
- [Correct failed payments](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/revenue-recovery/customer-emails.md#failed-payment-notifications)

## Configure emails

You can turn on customer emails in your [subscriptions and emails settings](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic) Dashboard under **Email notifications and customer management**. All of these emails and hosted pages use your [branding settings](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/branding).

Emails for the following notification types include a link to a page where the customer can update their payment method.

- Payment confirmation notifications
- Failed payment notifications
- Trial ending reminders
- Renewal reminders
- Expiring card notifications

You can set the link destination to [a Stripe-hosted Customer Portal](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/revenue-recovery/customer-emails.md#link-to-a-stripe-hosted-page) or your own custom subscription management page.

You can also configure a [Manage subscription link](https://docs.stripe.com/invoicing/send-email.md#email-notifications) that redirects your customers to a [Stripe-hosted Customer Portal](https://docs.stripe.com/customer-management.md) or your own subscription management page, where they can cancel or manage their subscriptions.

## Failed payment notifications

Notify your customers about failed payments for subscriptions to encourage them to resolve the reason for failure, such as an expired card. Enable **Send emails when card payments fail** in the [revenue recovery settings](https://dashboard.stripe.com/revenue_recovery/emails) page.

When you enable this setting, Stripe automatically sends an email to your customer after each failed payment. The email lets your customer know that their recent subscription payment failed and gives them the opportunity to update their payment method so it can be retried successfully.

## Unpaid recurring invoice reminders

To send reminder emails about unpaid invoices, enable **Send reminders if a recurring invoice hasn’t been paid** in the [billing settings page](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic), in the **Manage invoices sent to customers** section.

This sends payment reminders for recurring invoices with a collection method of [send_invoice](https://docs.stripe.com/api/invoices/object.md#invoice_object-collection_method) on the configured schedule.

## Trial ending reminders

Under [**Email notifications and customer management**](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic), turn on **Send a reminder email 7 days before a free trial ends** to send a trial ending reminder.

When the trial ends without a payment method and the subscription is paused, customers can activate the subscription on the hosted page. They can add a payment method to activate the subscription and pay the first invoice.

## Renewal reminders

Under [Email notifications and customer management](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic), turn on **Send emails about upcoming renewals**.

Stripe sends this email before the current renewal period ends based on the days configured in the **Prevent failed payments** > **Upcoming renewal events** section.

The renewal date in the email uses the customer’s timezone. If the customer’s timezone isn’t defined, it uses the timezone set in your [account settings](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/account). Otherwise, it defaults to UTC.

## Payment confirmation notifications

Some payments might require manual customer intervention, like those that use [3D Secure](https://docs.stripe.com/payments/3d-secure.md) or the [Boleto](https://docs.stripe.com/payments/boleto/accept-a-payment.md) payment method. You can [manage payments that require confirmation](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/billing/automatic) in the Dashboard.

1. To automatically send an email to your customer when their payment requires confirmation, enable **Send a Stripe-hosted link for customers to confirm their payments when required**. The email includes a link to a Stripe-hosted page where your customer can confirm the payment.
1. To continue sending emails until your customer confirms the payment or it expires, enable **Send reminders if payment confirmation isn’t completed**. You can customize the intervals at which Stripe sends these reminders. Each reminder includes a link similar to the original email where the customer can confirm the payment.

## Expiring card notifications

Under [Email notifications and customer management](https://dashboard.stripe.com/revenue_recovery/emails), turn on **Send emails about expiring cards**.

This automatically sends an email 1 month before your customer’s card on file expires, where the card is their default payment method or default source.

## Link to a Stripe-hosted page

With the **Link to a Stripe-hosted page** option, Stripe provides a secure, private URL to a Stripe-hosted page in the email. Stripe doesn’t include a link to the Stripe-hosted page if the subscription is set to manually send an invoice.

On that page, your customer can update their payment method for the relevant subscription and pay any outstanding invoices if applicable. Otherwise, the new payment method is used the next time a scheduled payment is attempted.
![](https://d37ugbyn3rpeym.cloudfront.net/videos/hosted-recovery-experience.mp4)
Any of the following conditions invalidate the link to the hosted payment page:

- It’s been 30 days since we sent the trial ending email.
- The [subscription status](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/subscriptions/overview.md#subscription-statuses) changes to `cancelled`, `incomplete_expired`, or `unpaid`.
- The trial ended and the customer already provided a payment method for the subscription.
- The subscription’s current renewal period expired.

## Test your configuration

In *sandbox* (A sandbox is an isolated test environment that allows you to test Stripe functionality in your account without affecting your live integration. Use sandboxes to safely experiment with new features and changes), Stripe doesn’t automatically send customer emails. To test your customer email settings, use email addresses that belong to your verified [email domain](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/emails) or an active [team member](https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/team). If a sandbox customer’s email matches either of those conditions, Stripe sends failed payment notifications, upcoming invoice reminders, trial ending reminders, and card expiring reminders in a sandbox.

## Email logs

You can find logs for emails sent within the last 30 days on the [customer](https://dashboard.stripe.com/customers) page. The logs are updated daily, so they don’t include emails from the current date.

We log the following types of email notifications:

- Failed payment attempts.
- Finalized invoices.
- Receipts for paid invoices.
- Payments requiring 3D Secure.
- Expiring cards on file.
- Unpaid one-off invoices.
- Created credit notes.
- Issued refunds.
- Ending subscription trials.
- Canceled subscriptions.