Dunning / Snippets
Snippets
How to personalize Churn Buster emails with built-in snippets, build reusable custom snippets, and preview them before they send.
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- Snippets fill in the details for each customer
- Built-in snippets
- Custom snippets turn any HTML into a reusable tag
- Preview snippets before they reach a customer
Snippets fill in the details for each customer
A snippet is a tag in double curly braces, like {{sender.company_name}}, that you place in an email. When the email sends, Churn Buster replaces the tag with the right value for that customer.
Built-in snippets come with every account and pull in the card update link, the sender, the campaign, and the customer. Custom snippets are your own reusable blocks of HTML and text, like a signature or a logo, that you write once and drop into any email.
Built-in snippets work across billing platforms. The card update link and a few customer tags depend on your platform, and those are marked below.
Built-in snippets
Card update link
These tags send customers to your card update page, where they update their payment method. The link adjusts to where the customer's billing lives and to your card update settings.
| Tag | What it shows |
|---|---|
{{capture.link}} |
"Update Your Card Now," linked to the customer's card update page |
{{capture.link | text: "Update Card"}} |
The same link with your own words |
{{capture.url}} |
The raw URL. It's long, so use it inside a custom button rather than as visible text |
On some platforms, the card update link comes from a platform-specific snippet or points to your customer portal instead. Contact our team and we'll help you set up the right link for your platform.
Sender
These describe who the email is from. You can use them in signatures and greetings, like "Hi, I'm {{sender.first_name}} and I handle support at {{sender.company_name}}."
| Tag | Example |
|---|---|
{{sender.email}} |
support@coolcompany.com |
{{sender.display_name}} |
Cool Company Support |
{{sender.company_name}} |
Cool Company |
{{sender.first_name}} |
Sarah |
{{sender.last_name}} |
Jones |
You can set different sender values for each email in the Campaign Editor. We recommend a real person's name over a generic team name.
Campaign
These describe the recovery campaign the customer is in. The campaign amount can differ from the subscription amount in edge cases, so only show an amount where a mismatch wouldn't confuse anyone.
Campaign snippets are also useful in Liquid conditions, like adding a phone number only to emails for customers paying more than $500/mo.
| Tag | Example |
|---|---|
{{campaign.started_at}} |
2019-05-14T17:11:07Z |
{{campaign.started_at | date: "%B %e, %Y"}} |
May 14, 2019 |
{{campaign.amount_in_cents}} |
50000 |
{{campaign.currency}} |
USD |
{{campaign.formatted_amount}} |
$500.00 |
You can format the start date with the Liquid date filter, as in the second row.
Customer
These describe the customer receiving the email. The most common use is a first name greeting with a fallback. The right name tag depends on your platform, and that page lists each one.
| Tag | What it shows |
|---|---|
{{customer.email}} |
sarah@example.com |
{{customer.source}} |
Where the customer's billing lives, like stripe, braintree, recharge, or in_house
|
{{customer.source_id}} |
The customer's ID in that system, like cus_98aysd98fhio23h498
|
{{customer.properties.x}} |
Any custom property you send through the Churn Buster API. Email support@churnbuster.io to start sending one |
Stripe and Recharge sync a few extra properties automatically.
| Platform | Tag | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | {{customer.properties.stripe.customer.description}} |
The customer's Description field in Stripe |
| Stripe | {{customer.properties.stripe.customer.metadata.x}} |
The value of metadata field x in Stripe |
| Recharge | {{customer.properties.recharge.hash}} |
8176904a2ad4294c283b2c1 |
| Recharge | {{customer.properties.first_name}} |
Sarah |
| Recharge | {{customer.properties.last_name}} |
Jones |
Custom snippets turn any HTML into a reusable tag
Teams most often use custom snippets for a signature they reuse across every email, a logo or avatar image, and content that changes based on a customer property you store, like a plan name in Stripe metadata.
To create one, follow these steps.
- Go to the Snippets page and click New Snippet.
- Enter a Tag Name, like
signature. That's how you'll call it in emails, as{{snippets.signature}}. - Enter the Snippet HTML. It can hold any HTML or text, built-in snippets like
{{sender.company_name}}, and Liquid tags and filters. - Save, then add the tag to any email in the Campaign Editor.
Add your logo
Host your logo at a stable public URL. Then create a snippet with the Tag Name logo and this HTML, swapping in your URL and a short description of the image.
<img src="URL_GOES_HERE" alt="ALTERNATIVE_TEXT" height="80">Add {{snippets.logo}} wherever the logo should appear.
Add a card update button
Some teams prefer a button to a text link. Create a snippet with the Tag Name capture_button and this HTML. It uses {{capture.url}}, so each customer's button opens their own secure card update link.
<p style="margin:0;"><a href="{{capture.url}}" style="display:inline-block;padding:12px 30px;border-radius:30px;text-decoration:none !important;background:#333333;color:white !important;font-size:16px;line-height:18px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-weight:bold;text-align:center;">Update Your Card Now</a></p>Change #333333 to your brand color, then add {{snippets.capture_button}} where the button should appear.
Preview snippets before they reach a customer
A test email from the email editor shows your template in your own inbox. Test emails don't fill in customer data, so snippets won't show real values there.
To see snippets with a real customer's details, open an active campaign and click into an upcoming email. The preview shows the email as that customer will get it.
Where to go next
Snippets work inside your emails, and these pages cover the rest of the sequence.
- Emails, how to build and brand the recovery sequence.
- Card Updates, where the card update link sends customers.
- First-Name Greetings, greeting tags for each platform, with safe fallbacks.
- Translation, sending your emails in the language customers expect.