Scope
How to configure Recurly Billing Integration in Chargebee Retention?
Recurly billing integration with Chargebee Retention
Summary
Chargebee Retention's native integration with Recurly makes it easy for you to retain subscribers and revenue by reducing voluntary churn. In Chargebee Retention, head to Settings in the lower left sidebar > Integrations > Recurly > Connect.
Solution
By connecting Chargebee Retention to Recurly, you will be able to enable our four main billing integration use cases:
Attribution - This validates a Chargebee Retention Save event by confirming a subscription is still valid when the Save event fires, then retrieving revenue values to calculate and apply the revenue to your Chargebee Retention dashboards and reports
Enrichment - Map fields from the Recurly subscription record to personalize your experiences, and build custom Audiences for user targeting purposes
Manage offers - Directly pause, discount, extend, and update a subscription in Recurly based on Recurly Subscription ID when a customer accepts a Chargebee Retention offer
Manage cancels - Directly cancel a subscription in Recurly when a user completes the cancel request, which can be configured to include all active subscriptions on a Recurly Account record, invoice users immediately for all outstanding charges, or Prorate the subscription.
These use cases are core to Chargebee Retention and allow you to perform some of the key elements of your cancel flow, including:
Update a subscription directly in Recurly, following the valid submission of a cancel request or Offer from the Chargebee Retention Page.
Pull subscription data from Recurly into Chargebee Retention to enrich the profile of your customer for use in targeting custom audiences, personalizing the cancel experience, and segmenting data records to build richer save and churn reports
Validate that customers are still paying when Chargebee Retention classifies a customer as saved, by looking up the subscriber by their Recurly Account ID and confirming their payment status
Calculate the dollar amount in revenue that is saved (or churned) per session, which is a customer that shows intent to cancel by being directed to the Chargebee Retention cancel page.
Connecting Chargebee Retention to Recurly
In Recurly, head to the Integrations settings in the left sidebar menu.
Select API credentials.
You'll want to use a Private API key. Select Add a Private API key.
Name your API Key Chargebee Retention (so you know what you're using it for later) and add Notes if you'd like to remember how it's being used. You also will want to use a Write API key so we can update subscriptions on your behalf. However, if you don't want to give Chargebee Retention write access, Read-Only will work for our Attribution and Enrichment use cases.
Identify that the API key will be used for a third-party application and select Other, and label it as Chargebee Retention.
Save your changes and your API key will generate. Copy the API key and head back to the Chargebee Retention App.
In Chargebee Retention, head to the Settings in the lower left sidebar. Find Recurly under Integrations and select Connect.
Pop in the API key you copied in the last step, Save and Continue
You're now connected.
Note: We allow you to also add a Test API Key that links to a Sandbox or dev environment, which can be used when generating a sample session via the Session Generator under Targeting
In order to use the Recurly integration, you'll need to enable it in settings and send along the Recurly Subscription ID in the request body of the installation snippet.
Activating the Integration
Once Recurly is connected, you will need to activate the core use cases of the integration in the Settings Page under Setup.
Enriching your subscription profile
Once Recurly is connected, you can leverage Chargebee Retention's enrichment feature to reduce the engineering time and effort needed to install the Chargebee Retention.js snippet. With the integration enabled, Chargebee Retention will use the Recurly Subscription ID to lookup and key subscriber data in Recurly (such as first purchase date or billing frequency) and sync it back into Chargebee Retention to map to Chargebee Retention fields using Field Mappings located under 'Settings' (read below).
Note: If you do not send a valid subscription id or have a valid connection to Recurly, Chargebee Retention will not be able to pull subscription information at load time. In this case, your subscriber would be routed to your control or default cancel experience, and any dynamic field data used for personalization will default to the fallback variablesSyncing and mapping Recurly fields into Chargebee Retention
Before you can successfully map Recurly data into Chargebee Retention, you must first ensure that you are capturing the Recurly Subscription ID via the Chargebee Retention.js, and have mapped this field to the Subscription ID in the field mappings page.
Once successfully connected to Recurly, navigate to 'Field mappings' under Settings, to start mapping. For each Chargebee Retention field that you will map to, you must first specify the field data type (e.g. text, date, decimal, email, URL), then select the source field in Recurly, visible under the Recurly source in the menu dropdown.
Go ahead and map as many fields as you would like. Mapped fields can be used to personalize the cancel page, target the cancel experience/offers, and in reporting via the customer's page.
Missing a field? Please contact [email protected] and we'll look into adding it.
Processing Cancels in Recurly
When a user completes a cancel on the Chargebee Retention page, we will update Recurly to mark the subscription as canceled. This process works as follows:
Cancel the matching Recurly Subscription ID via the Recurly integration. When a customer submits a valid cancellation request via your Chargebee Retention page, Chargebee Retention cancels the matching Recurly Subscription ID. Confirm by navigating to Accounts | Subscriptions in Recurly, and confirming that the customer's subscription is pending cancellation.
You can choose how to apply the cancel in Recurly under the Setup tab for the integration.
Select the options that match how you currently handle cancellations in Recurly and hit Save & Close.
Processing Offers in Recurly
You also can process Offer updates directly to Recurly subscriptions. We support the ability for you to map Discounts, Pauses, Extensions, and Plan Changes directly to Recurly Subscriptions. When the user selects one of these Offers in the cancel flow, we will apply it directly to the corresponding subscription in Recurly. To get started with Offer Management, go ahead and enable this toggle on the Settings page.
Next, create a Discount type offer in Chargebee Retention, where you will finalize the offer content, button copy, and define where the offer appears on your Chargebee Retention page (Placement).
Finally, you will use the Billing sidebar to browse and select the Billing coupon created above in Recurly, which is applied to your customers' subscriptions when they accept this offer.
Pause a Recurly subscription: To automatically pause a Recurly subscription, you will first create a new Pause offer in Chargebee Retention, per the steps above, this time selecting the Pause offer type. However, when configuring billing, you will now have the option to define a pause duration, based on the pause Duration and Interval (below). An example here might be to test a 2-month pause of your product/service, targeting customers who do not intend to use it for a period of time (e.g. are going on vacation or the project has been delayed).
Change a Recurly Plan: To automatically change a Recurly subscription, create a new Plan Change offer in Chargebee Retention, per the steps above. When configuring billing, simply select a plan from the available list in the dropdown, which will be automatically updated upon the offer user accepts this offer type.
Extend a Recurly Plan: To automatically extend a Recurly subscription, create a new Extension offer type in Chargebee Retention, per the steps above. When configuring billing, simply select the Duration and the Interval from the available list in the Extension dropdown. An example here might be to offer an extended trial of your product/service, such that your customer still retains full use and control over their account.
Validate Saves and Attribute Revenue with Attribution
The Attribution integration enables Chargebee Retention to cross-check your billing system to validate any Chargebee Retention Saved or Watch List customers haven't canceled or let their accounts lapse in other ways beyond Chargebee Retention, and calculate the dollar amount in revenue saved (or lost) per customer that hits your Chargebee Retention Page. Once you've enabled the Recurly Attribution integration, you'll see a Revenue data card start to populate in the Chargebee Retention settings menu showing you the last sync, and how many accounts have matched to a customer in Recurly.
Processing customized Cancels and Saves in Recurly
If your Recurly account is not configured properly, or you don't use Recurly to manage subscriptions, you may alternatively automatically cancel or modify your subscriptions using Chargebee Retention's webhooks or pass-through URLs (which requires some engineering to set up), as follows:
Chargebee Retention Webhooks - When a customer cancels or accepts an offer (e.g. 1 free month, pause, etc.), then Chargebee Retention's Webhook event URL triggers an action in Recurly. Note: you would need to have already set up a Coupon in Recurly, then the Chargebee Retention webhook will apply the coupon to the actual customer.
Pass Thru URLs - When a customer cancels or accepts an offer (e.g. 1 free month) then Chargebee Retention calls a URL, that can trigger an in-billing action (e.g. https://netflix.com/free-month?customer_id=12345&interval=1).
Passive deflects (scenario 3, above) do not need any subscription modifications in Recurly, and the canceler is redirected back to a returning URL specified in the Chargebee Retention.js snippet ('save_return_url').
Need a Chargebee Retention developer sandbox for testing the integration with a Recurly dev account? Please contact [email protected] or your account manager, who can promptly set up your developer account.
Install your snippet and send cancel sessions to Chargebee Retention
The final step to using our Recurly integration is to send cancel sessions to Chargebee Retention with the unique subscription id populated dynamically in the snippet. Below is an example of the minimum properties you would need to send in order to create unique cancel sessions.
<a id="bb-cancel" href="/fallback">Cancel</a>
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="https://app.brightback.com/js/current/?compiled=true"
></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
if (window.Brightback) {
window.Brightback.handleData({
app_id: "APP_ID", //your Brightback APP_ID
subscription_id: "5ca5ee44aca90909d5effa4884b19269", //dynamically populated Recurly subscription id
});
}
</script>You of course can send other properties like usage activity in a custom object for personalization and targeting. For more info on that or other installation options check out our full article on installing Chargebee Retention.