Recurring Payments overview

With Recurring Payments, subscription information from a supported ecommerce store or integration syncs to contact records in ActiveCampaign. Once data syncs, you can use it in automations to increase customer engagement with reminder emails, upsell opportunities, and more.

Take note

• The following integrations support Recurring Payments:
  • PayPal
  • WooCommerce
  • Stripe
  • API-connected ecommerce stores

How Recurring Payments work

Recurring payments is a custom object that syncs data from a supported integration to your ActiveCampaign account. 

If a contact purchases a subscription from you through one of the supported integrations, their data, including subscription data, will sync to your ActiveCampaign account. The subscription data will then display on synced contact records in the “Recurring Payments” widget. 

With Recurring Payments, you can: 

• Use two new automation triggers related to recurring payments
• Segment contacts based on recurring payment data
• Insert recurring payment personalization tags in automated campaigns

PayPal Recurring Payments

When setting up the PayPal integration, select the “Billing Subscription Events” option under “Select a PayPal Event” to sync recurring payments from PayPal.

If you do not use PayPal's “Billing Subscription Events” event, you can still select this option when setting up the integration in ActiveCampaign. However, subscription data will not appear in your ActiveCampaign account as there is no data to sync.

If you’ve already configured the PayPal integration using the “Checkout Order” resource and also wish to sync subscriptions:

1. From your ActiveCampaign account, click your profile > Apps.
2. Click "Connected Apps" on the top right of the expanded menu.
3. Select "PayPal."
4. Click “Add a new resource.”
5. Follow the integration setup steps and select “Billing Subscription Events” as your resource.

It is not possible to perform a historical sync of recurring payments from PayPal.

Learn more about the PayPal integration. 

WooCommerce Recurring Payments

To start using Recurring Payments with WooCommerce, you must:

• Use version 2.6 or later of the WooCommerce integration
• Install the Woo Subscriptions plugin

To see recurring payment data, including automation triggers, segment conditions, and personalization tags, one of the following must happen:

• You run a historical sync that pushes at least one subscription to your ActiveCampaign account
• One of your customers purchases a new subscription and then syncs to your ActiveCampaign account

Learn more about the WooCommerce integration.

Stripe Recurring Payments

When setting up the Stripe integration, select the “Subscription” option under “Resources” on the Select Event Type setup step to sync recurring payments from Stripe.

If you do not use the “Subscription” event in Stripe, you can still select this option when setting up the integration. However, subscription data will not appear in your ActiveCampaign account as there is no data to sync.

If you’ve already configured the Stripe integration using any other resource and also wish to sync subscriptions, you will need to:

1. From your ActiveCampaign account, click your profile > Apps.
2. Click "Connected Apps" on the top right of the expanded menu.
3. Select "Stripe."
4. Click “Add a new resource.”
5. Follow the integration setup steps and select “Subscription” as your resource.

Learn more about the Stripe integration. 

Recurring payment data on contact records

Recurring payment data is displayed on a contact’s record in the “Recurring Payments” widget:

Clicking the “Details” button opens a detailed view on the right sidebar and displays all available Recurring Payment fields:

Note that if your window is smaller, you may have to click the three dots > “Details” button to see this information. 

You can adjust the order of fields displayed in the Recurring Payments widget on your account's Settings > Manage Data page. To get there:

1. Click Settings (gear icon) > Manage Data.
2. Click the “Recurring Payments” option.
3. Drag and drop the fields into the order you prefer.

The widget on the contact record will display the first five fields on the Manage Data page. The field order you set on the Manage Data page will also display in the "Recurring Payments Details" view.

Fields available with Recurring Payments

The following Recurring Payment fields will sync to your ActiveCampaign account when a customer purchases a subscription:

Segment conditions available with Recurring Payments

Recurring Payment fields can be used as conditions in the segment builder. You can use the segment builder in automation triggers and actions, advanced searches, and when selecting a list(s) to send a direct campaign.

WooCommerce users: these items will appear in your ActiveCampaign account after you sync at least one recurring payment.

Stripe users: these items will appear in your ActiveCampaign account after you sync at least one recurring payment.

PayPal users: these items will appear once you configure the integration to sync recurring payments.

Personalization tags available with Recurring Payments

You can use Recurring Payment personalization tags by inserting them into your automated campaign (campaigns sent from an automation). When the campaign is sent, these tags dynamically display field values specific to the recipient. 

To use these personalization tags, your campaign must be sent from an automation that uses one of the Recurring Payment triggers.

Recurring Payment personalization tags cannot be used with direct campaigns (campaigns sent from the “Campaigns” section in your account). 

WooCommerce users: these items will appear in your ActiveCampaign account after you sync at least one recurring payment.

Stripe users: these items will appear in your ActiveCampaign account after you sync at least one recurring payment.

PayPal users: these items will appear once you configure the integration to sync recurring payments.

Learn more about WooCommerce Recurring Payment personalization tags.

Learn more about PayPal Recurring Payment personalization tags.

Learn more about Stripe Recurring Payment personalization tags (article coming soon).

Automation triggers available with Recurring Payments

Triggers are conditions you set that start automations; as contacts meet your trigger conditions, they are pulled into your automation and will proceed through your workflow. 

There are two Recurring Payment triggers available: Recurring Payment Updated and Recurring Payment Created. 

WooCommerce users: these items will appear in your ActiveCampaign account after you sync at least one recurring payment.

Stripe users: these items will appear in your ActiveCampaign account after you sync at least one recurring payment.

PayPal users: these items will appear once you configure the integration to sync recurring payments.

Recurring Payment Updated

This trigger starts the automation when a Recurring Payment in your supported integration changes from one status to another

In this trigger, you can customize the:

• Field
  Choose the Recurring Payment field that will trigger the automation
• “From” and “To” field status
  Choose what changes in the field will trigger the contact to be pulled into the automation, and
• “Runs”
  Choose how this trigger will run each time a contact meets the trigger conditions

Recurring Payment Created

This trigger starts the automation when a new Recurring Payment is created in your supported integration.

In this trigger, you can choose between:

• All Recurring Payments
  This option will pull in any contact that creates a new Recurring Payment.
• Segment Recurring Payments
  This option lets you use Recurring Payment segment conditions to specify the Recurring Payment criteria a contact must meet to enter the automation.
  
  For example, you can segment using “Billing Address City,” “Is,” and “Chicago” to only allow new Recurring Payment contacts from Chicago to enter the automation

Recurring Payments on reports

Performance reports

You can view contact engagement data (opens, clicks, and replies) for any automations and automated campaigns that contain recurring payment data. This information can be found in the following reports:

• Automation Overview report
• Automations Performance report
• Campaigns Performance report

Custom Reports

You can also use recurring payment data to create custom reports. To do so, click the arrow to the left of the “Recurring Payment” custom object to reveal the dimensions and measures available to build the report.

Learn how to view custom objects in Custom Reports.

Automation recipes for Recurring Payments

Below are automation recipes you can use to get started with the Recurring Payments feature:

• Welcome sequence for new Recurring Payments customer
• Content digest email for Recurring Payments customer
• Win-Back email for Recurring Payments customer
• Product recommendation for Recurring Payments customer