Nataly

February 05, 2025

10 min read

Use case: How to Master Your App Retention with Apphud Renewals Performance Report

Apphud’s Renewals Performance Report takes the guesswork out of recovery. In this article, we’ll show you exactly how to use it to secure potentially lost revenue and strengthen retention most efficiently.

10 min read

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Use case: How to Master Your App Retention with Apphud Renewals Performance Report

How many subscriptions with billing issues will recover? How soon? What revenue can you expect to win back, and where should you focus your recovery efforts to get the best results? If these questions resonate, you’re not alone. For subscription-based businesses, billing issues are an unavoidable part of the game - but how you handle them can make or break your bottom line.

Path to Subscription Renewals Mastery

The Renewals Performance Report can be your step-by-step guide in navigating the challenges. This powerful analytics tool with over 30 metrics, data segmentation, and filtration capabilities uncovers patterns in subscription renewals, helps predict recoveries, and pinpoints the best opportunities to maximize recovered revenue and optimize subscription models.

By conquering each 'level' of renewals analytics, you’ll unlock actionable insights that drive growth and retention.

Level 1: Optimize your Baseline / Understanding the Foundations of Renewal Success

The journey begins with the essential building blocks of subscription management. At this stage, you focus on grasping the high-level dynamics of your subscriber base.

Is a large segment of your audience experiencing payment problems? Are certain regions or platforms underperforming? These questions lay the groundwork for actionable strategies to address root causes, and the report answers them via its baseline metrics:

Total Renewal Attempts = On-time Renewals + Billing Issues

Billing Issue Rate = 100% * Billing Issues / Total Renewal Attempts

1. Total Renewal Attempts – This metric tracks the total number of renewal attempts for active subscriptions, encompassing both successful and failed attempts, during a specified time frame.

APPHUD TIP: For better precision from the start, you can pick as one of the report segmentation layers the period type matching with the analyzed product cycle (e.g., 'by month' for monthly subscriptions, etc.) and ensure the date range selected aligns with complete cycles to avoid uneven segments (e.g., from the first day of a month to a last day of another).

2. On-Time Renewals - tracks successful renewals completed without delays, providing insight into seamless subscription payments.

A high On-Time Renewal volume and relevant Rate metrics indicate user satisfaction and effective payment processing. To improve these, consider proactive risk mitigation strategies, such as employing the proper pre-renewal engagement and smooth activation, ensuring subscribers have their 'A-HA' moment (i.e., the moment a user realizes the value of an app) shortly after onboarding. Exclusive perks for long-term subscribers also help to maximize on-time renewals.

APPHUD TIP: Identify successful segments by original installation source (iOS, Android, or Web), geo (Store country or IP country), app version, or other relevant parameters. Replicate their conditions in underperforming segments. For instance, if data shows that users who do not promptly upgrade the app version are more likely to have renewal issues, use Apphud Rules to encourage reinstallation. Integrations with Amplidude or other customer experience analytics services can help more deeply identify user segment behavior, replicate it, and monitor success via increased On-Time Renewals number.

3. Billing Issues and Billing Issue Rate – measures the number and percentage of renewals encountering payment failures resulting from expired credit cards, insufficient funds, or technical barriers (e.g., mandatory two-factor authentication by the card issuer).

APPHUD TIP: Consider implementing targeted in-app reminders via Apphud Rules to update payment details or explore alternative payment options if supported by a Store or a Payment Provider used. Broader analysis can be done in Apphud if custom user properties relevant to pre-payment behavior are provided and used for segmentation.

Level 2: Fine-Tune Recovery Strategies / Navigating the Recovery Path

Now it’s time to focus on users who fall through the cracks: those with failed payments. This stage is about exploring the recovery process and uncovering strategies to turn at-risk subscriptions into long-term retention successes.

When a payment fails, is it the end of the road for that subscriber, or can it be brought back? Are grace periods effectively giving users the time they need to resolve issues, or are they just delaying inevitable cancellations? How do promotional offers measure up in retaining revenue? These questions lie at the heart of recovery strategies, and the Renewals Performance Report is here to answer them.

A failed payment is not the final sentence. Many users face short-term disruptions - such as expired cards or low balances - that can be resolved with the right interventions.

Recovery metrics highlight where your efforts are working and where there’s room for improvement:

1. Recovered Renewals and Billing Recovery Rate metrics show the number and the relevant percentage of subscriptions successfully recovered after an initial payment failure, reflecting the effectiveness of your recovery strategies. A high recovery rate indicates that retry mechanisms, notifications, and other interventions are working well, resulting in retained revenue and improved user satisfaction.

APPHUD TIP: Focus retry efforts on user segments with a moderate likelihood of recovery, as these are most influenced by interventions while deprioritizing those likely to recover on their own or unlikely to recover regardless of effort.

2. Total Renewal Rate metric combines On-time and Recovered renewals and can be used as the KPI for retention.

Total Renewal Rate = 100% * (On-time Renewals + Recovered Renewals) / Total Attempts

APPHUD TIP: Keep in mind that some billing issues may be influenced by factors beyond your control, such as platform-imposed retry limits or user decisions to let subscriptions lapse intentionally, so instead of aiming for 100% Recovery Rate, define your target by considering the industry benchmarks.

3. Pending Billing Issues mark if there are still not-cancelled subscriptions that can be potentially recovered, signifying that the Total Renewal Rate is not final for the analyzed period and may change over time.

The report clearly shows the recovery pathways. By analyzing these metrics, you can identify which strategies, from optimized retry timing to well-placed promos, are truly compelling:

Recovered from Grace Period tracks subscriptions successfully renewed during a grace period, while Recovered from Billing Retry – after or without it. A high Grace Period Recovery Rate shows that the given allowance is essential for your users experiencing temporary payment challenges.

APPHUD TIP: Send timely, personalized reminders during grace periods emphasizing the uninterrupted service’s value. Highlight the urgency of resolving issues while reinforcing the value of continued subscription benefits.

Recovered with Promo Offer – helps to evaluate the success of targeted promotions. With it, you can identify patterns among users who respond well to promotions, such as timing, discount size, or offer type. For instance, a limited-time discount shortly after a billing failure can create urgency and drive higher recovery rates.

APPHUD TIP: Monitor the downstream impact of Promo campaigns, such as retention rates and subsequent renewals, to ensure promotions don’t just recover users temporarily but foster long-term loyalty.

Recovered with Different Product metric counts users switching to a different product tier. It reveals the importance of flexible pricing options and the potential necessity to adjust onboarding paywall offerings to a different product set.

APPHUD TIP: The Apphud Experiment functionality for placements will help you to test hypotheses regarding your audience inclinations – if your audience in some regions is more price-sensitive or if there are user groups who prefer to save long-term buying annual products.

4. Cancellation insights provide a unique perspective on when users decide to leave, revealing patterns that other metrics cannot fully capture. This helps refine retention strategies with pinpoint precision:

Canceled from Billing Issues measures the number of subscriptions lost due to unresolved payment problems. This includes cancellations during grace periods or on the further retry states and highlights potential revenue loss from failed recoveries.
Cancellations During Grace tracks voluntary cancellations made by users during the grace period. This metric highlights users who actively decide to leave despite the additional time provided, suggesting dissatisfaction or unmet expectations.

APPHUD TIP: Analyze patterns in voluntary cancellations during grace periods to identify potential product or pricing issues. Proactive surveys via Apphud Rules can capture feedback for targeted improvements.

Canceled from Billing Retry indicates the number of subscription cancellations from a state where a user lost premium access to the product. Here, the user or the system turned off the subscription's auto-renew as the billing retry period ended or the refund request was filed.

APPHUD TIP: By saving behavioral characteristics to Custom User Properties, you can later segment reports data and check if users demonstrating a specific behavior (e.g., using your app less than once per week) keep the app as long as they have access to premium features but afterward cancel more often than others.

Boss Level: Master the Full Picture

Achieving subscription mastery requires more than just focusing on isolated metrics. The real power lies in understanding how these metrics interconnect, revealing a holistic picture of your app’s performance. By combining insights, you can uncover hidden opportunities and systemic issues that might otherwise go unnoticed. For example, analyzing recovery rates alongside billing issue trends can help pinpoint where and why users churn. This integrated approach ensures your strategies are not just effective but also aligned with broader business goals.

Scenario 1: The Hidden Cost of Grace Period Failures

Your app offers a grace period for users with billing issues, but despite this, cancellations remain high. A deeper dive into the metrics reveals a low Grace Period Recovery Rate paired with a high number of Canceled Grace Period subscriptions. This insight shows that users need more than extra time - they need proactive engagement.

APPHUD EXAMPLE: By introducing timely, personalized notifications during the grace period, such as reminders of the app value and easy payment update options, one app recovered 30% more users who were on the brink of churn. This single adjustment led to a significant revenue boost and higher customer retention.

Scenario 2: Promo Offers That Pay Off

A high Billing Issue Rate in one region was paired with a strong recovery rate from promotional offers. Upon investigation, the app team realized that users in this market were particularly price-sensitive but willing to re-engage with well-timed discounts.

APPHUD EXAMPLE: By strategically targeting users with a time-limited 20% discount after a failed renewal, the app retained over 40% of these at-risk users in the region. This approach not only reduced churn but also uncovered valuable insights into market-specific pricing strategies.

Scenario 3: Smart Retries for Web Subscriptions

An app handling web-based subscriptions faced high Pending Billing Issues and a low Billing Retry Recovery Rate. Using Stripe’s Smart Retry policy feature, the app adjusted retry logic to align with customer behavior and payment processor insights, automatically retrying failed payments at optimal times for success.

APPHUD EXAMPLE: Implementing Smart Retries improved recovery rates by 15%, significantly reducing churn from payment failures. This automation not only saved operational effort but also created a smoother user experience by resolving issues without requiring manual intervention.

Conclusion

By leveraging Apphud’s Renewals Performance Report, you gain a comprehensive understanding of your subscription lifecycle. From optimizing renewals to fine-tuning recovery strategies and uncovering the full picture of user behavior, this tool equips you with actionable insights to retain more users and recover lost revenue.

Combined with Apphud’s broader suite of features - such as custom audiences, Rules, promotional tools, and Experiment functionality - you have everything needed to refine your subscription strategies and drive sustainable growth.

The key to subscription success lies in mastering these metrics.

Are you ready to take control of your renewals and unlock your app’s full potential? Sign up for Apphud today!