Retention and recovery
Plays that rescue revenue you already paid for: dead leads, invoices, churn saves, reviews.
4 pages
Which revenue is easiest to recover with a text message?
The revenue already inside the business. A dormant CRM list was paid for once and never converted. An invoice sitting at sixty days is money earned and not collected. A customer starting a cancellation has not left yet. A delighted customer who was never asked leaves a review and a referral on the table. Four plays, all running on lists that already know you, which is why they reply at rates cold outreach never reaches.
The channel matters here for a specific reason: these messages need to arrive as a person, not a system. A dunning email reads as accounts receivable. A cancellation survey reads as a form. A blue bubble from the line the customer already has a thread with reads as somebody at the company noticing. That difference is worth more on recovery work than anywhere else in the funnel, because the recipient's decision is emotional as often as it is commercial.
Timing does the rest. A churn save works in the minutes after someone starts a cancellation, not the day after it completes. A review request works within an hour of a proven win, while the customer still feels it. A payment reminder ladder works because the tone shifts as the invoice ages, from a heads-up before the due date to a direct ask at sixty days, and because it reaches the person who approves the payment rather than an accounts payable alias. Reactivation works when the list is segmented and paced rather than blasted, which is the single most common way it goes wrong.
These four plays sit outside any one industry because every business runs them. A dental practice, a SaaS team, a staffing agency and a coaching program all have dead leads, unpaid invoices and customers halfway out the door. Each page gives the trigger wiring, the message ladder and the number to watch. The fifth recovery play, client onboarding, sits under agencies instead, because the version worth reading is the one about kickoff calls, access requests and the first thirty days of a signed contract.
Frequently asked questions
Is texting a dormant list allowed?
Yes, where those contacts opted in to be contacted and have not opted out, which is the same standard that governs emailing them. What is not allowed, and what our acceptable use policy refuses, is purchased or scraped lists. The practical risk with a reactivation campaign is pacing rather than permission: exporting twelve thousand stale records and sending them in an afternoon is how a channel gets burned.
How quickly does a churn save have to reach someone?
Inside minutes of the cancellation starting. The window closes when the flow completes and the customer has mentally moved on, so the trigger needs to fire off the cancellation event itself rather than a nightly export. Falling usage in the weeks before is the second, slower signal worth catching.
Do payment reminders by text actually collect faster?
They collect from a different person. An invoice email goes to an accounts payable alias where it queues; a text goes to the phone of the person who approves the payment. The ladder that works runs from three days before the due date to sixty days past, with the tone shifting at each rung rather than the same message repeated louder.
When is the right moment to ask for a review?
Within an hour of a moment of proven success, which means a completed job, a delivered result or a solved problem, not a calendar date. The ask is one message, it names the specific win, and it goes to every customer rather than only the ones a rep guesses will say yes.