Churn Buster and Rivo integration explained
Churn Buster runs your failed-payment messaging alongside Rivo's retry schedule. Build email and SMS campaigns, control when messages are sent, and tailor the sequence as the recovery window progresses.
What does the integration do?
Start a Churn Buster recovery campaign when a membership payment fails
Keep messaging the member while Rivo is still retrying the charge
Close the campaign when the payment is recovered
Report recovery results in Churn Buster, separately from your Rivo metrics
Optionally add basic Churn Buster Cancel Flows, available on request.
💡 Good to know: The messaging schedule and the retry schedule are configured in two different places. This is useful when you want to test a new email cadence without changing how often cards are charged.
Prerequisites
To connect Churn Buster to Rivo, you'll need:
An active Rivo Membership program with at least one paid tier
Webhook access on your Rivo plan. If you see an upgrade banner instead of a webhook list under Settings > Webhooks, please reach out to your Rivo CSM
A Churn Buster account. Churn Buster creates this for you. We recommend scheduling a kickoff call with their team to get set up
Rivo connected to your Churn Buster account. You can set up the integration here.
📝 Note: If any questions come up along the way, you can reach Churn Buster at [email protected]
Integration setup
From the Rivo Dashboard, go to Settings > Webhooks
Create three webhooks, all pointing to the Churn Buster URL, one for each of these events:
membership/payment_failuremembership/payment_successmembership/canceled
For each webhook you've created, click the three-dot button and click "Edit"
Copy the Secret Token Rivo shows for each webhook and paste it into the matching token field on Churn Buster's setup page
Go to Memberships and find the Failed Payments Retry Schedule card. Churn Buster recommends 7 attempts, spaced
1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5days, which is Rivo's default. If your schedule has to be customized, click Edit to adjust it
Go to Memberships > Emails and turn off the Payment Failure email, so members don't receive one message from Rivo and another from Churn Buster.
If you have enabled the Payment Failure event for any of our ESP integrations, please make sure it is not used as a trigger for sending emails either.
💡 Good to know: The Description on a webhook is an internal name only. If you use webhooks for more than one integration, clear descriptions make it easier to tell them apart later.
How Rivo sends events to Churn Buster
Webhook event | When it fires | How Churn Buster uses it |
| When a paid membership is cancelled immediately | Closes the campaign as churned |
| Each time a paid membership billing attempt fails | Opens a recovery campaign, or advances an open one to the next stage |
| When a previously failed payment is recovered on a retry | Closes the campaign as recovered |
📝 Note: membership/payment_success only fires on recovery attempts. Regular successful renewals send membership/successful_rebill instead, which is why a healthy member's normal billing never opens or closes a Churn Buster campaign.
What stays in Rivo
Churn Buster covers the messaging around failed membership payments. Everything else in your program is unchanged:
The retry window. Churn Buster doesn't change when or how often a payment is attempted. It only controls the messages sent alongside those attempts
Payment method updates. Members request a payment method update from your Rivo membership account page, and Shopify sends them a secure link by email to complete it
Shopify tags. The
rivo-membership-payment-failuretag is still added on failure and removed once the payment is resolved.
💡 Find out more: Failed Payment Recovery and Dunning.
Important considerations
Each number in the retry schedule is the number of days to wait after the previous attempt, not after the original failure. The default schedule runs 7 attempts across 26 days
Turning off the Payment Failure email doesn't affect your other membership notifications. Rebill reminders, cancellation confirmations, and rebill confirmations continue to send from Rivo or your ESP integration as normal
Rivo and Churn Buster analytics are meant to differ, as each platform calculates and reports metrics using its own methodology.
💡 Tip: Use Rivo's metrics to understand the health of your billing, and Churn Buster's to understand how much of that loss you're winning back. You can read more at Tracking performance.
Troubleshooting
What you're seeing | What to check |
No campaigns are opening in Churn Buster |
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Members are receiving two payment failure emails | The Payment Failure email, or the matching event trigger on one of your ESP integrations, is still enabled. Turn it off under Memberships > Emails or Integrations |
A campaign didn't close after the member's payment went through |
|
A Churn Buster campaign is still running for a member who is no longer active |
|
Common questions
Do I need to change my retry schedule?
Usually not. Churn Buster's recommended schedule of 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5 is Rivo's default. Only revisit it if you've customized the schedule previously.
Can Churn Buster change when payments are retried?
No. The retry schedule is controlled entirely in Rivo. Churn Buster's campaigns are tuned independently, which is what lets you measure messaging performance separately from retry performance.
Will my members notice anything different?
Only the messaging. Recovery messages come from Churn Buster on your own sending domain, and the link inside still brings members back to your Rivo membership account page to update their card.
Does it cost extra to add Cancel Flows?
Churn Buster includes basic Cancel Flows setup at no additional cost. Reach out via [email protected] to have it enabled.