Playbook, marketing agency
Which payment failed, and how fast does it matter
A failed retainer payment is awkward and slow. A failed payment on the card funding an advertising account is neither: delivery stops, a campaign pacing to a date falls behind, and whoever notices first is usually the client looking at a dashboard. Whose card it is depends on whether spend runs through the agency or is paid direct, and that one fact decides who has to move.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for failed payments holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- There are two payment relationships in most engagements and they fail differently: the client paying the agency, and somebody paying a platform for media, which may be the agency's card or the client's own.
- A media payment failure has a delivery consequence within hours, so the useful reply is a route to somebody with account access rather than an explanation of billing terms.
- Where the agency funds spend and bills it on, a client's late payment carries a real exposure, and the published position on pausing has to be written long before it is needed.
- Recovering a stopped campaign is not simply a matter of paying: pacing, learning periods and dated placements do not reset, which is worth saying so a client understands the urgency rather than resenting the chase.
How it arrives
- our card was declined and the ads have stopped
- the retainer payment bounced what happens now
- who pays the platform us or you
- will you pause the work if we are late
- the campaign stopped over the weekend can it be restarted
- can we change the card the spend goes on
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Which party funds media, per engagement model | Whether spend is billed through the agency or paid direct to platforms, and whose payment method sits on the account. Everything on this page depends on the answer and most agency sites never state it. |
|---|---|
| What happens to live delivery when a media payment fails | Who is alerted, how quickly, who can fix it, and what the client has to do. Write it as a runbook, because the person reading it is in a hurry and reading badly. |
| The position on late fee payment | When a reminder goes out, what follows, and whether work or spend pauses and after how long. Publishing it is fairer than improvising it, and it is the clause that decides whether a late payment becomes a dispute. |
| How a payment method is changed, and who is allowed to | The route, and the fact that it is done by named people with the account open rather than by anybody who asks. This doubles as your answer to an impersonation attempt, so it has to be firm. |
The reply
If advertising has stopped, that is a payment on the advertising account rather than an invoice with us, and it needs somebody with access to the account today. I cannot see the account or the card, so use the urgent route on our contact page. If it is our invoice that failed, our terms set out what follows and how long there is before anything pauses [1]. Card details never go in this chat and we would never ask for them here [2]. Leave me your name and an email and I will pass this to the account team.
It splits the two failures in the opening line, because the client usually does not know which one they have. The urgent instruction comes before the billing explanation, since the delivery consequence is running while the message is read. And it refuses card details unprompted, because this is exactly the conversation somebody impersonating an agency would start.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor says delivery has stopped, offers card or bank details, or asks what will happen to their own account.
I cannot see a payment, an invoice or an advertising account, and nothing about a card should be typed here. Leave your name and an email and the account team will call you, and if delivery has stopped use the urgent route on our contact page as well.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never ask for, accept or repeat card details, bank details or a login, whatever the visitor offers.
- Never confirm whether a specific payment failed, cleared or is outstanding.
- Never say a campaign has been restarted or paused, because nothing here reaches an account.
- Never agree to hold off a pause, waive a late charge, or extend a payment date.
Questions
- Is this really separate from ordinary billing?
- It is, because the clock is different. An unpaid invoice is a conversation over days. A declined card on a live account is money not being spent against a deadline, and the reply that suits the first is the wrong reply to the second.
- Can it take a new card or update a payment method?
- No, and it should say so firmly rather than politely. It cannot take a payment or write to any system, and an assistant that looks willing to handle card details teaches clients a habit somebody will eventually exploit.
- Should the pause policy be public?
- Yes. Clients who know the terms plan around them, and a pause arriving unannounced mid campaign turns a cash flow problem into a lost account. It also gives the assistant something to quote rather than something to guess at.
Keep reading
- Everything for a marketing agencyService definitions and engagement terms convert. A price quoted for work nobody has scoped is the trap on an agency site.
- Handling failed payments in generalThe reason usually sits with the card issuer and is invisible to you. The useless reply, the useful one, and why card details never belong in a chat.
- Who has access to what, when the accounts belong to the clientThe seats in question are on the client's own advertising and analytics accounts. Withdrawing them is the client's right, and often an accident.
- Something is broken and spend is still going outThis is a handover rather than an answer. A broken site or a missing tag during a live campaign costs money by the minute.
- A client is chasing a deliverable that has not landedThe article, the creative, the report. Usually the answer is that it is sitting with the client, which is the hardest thing to say.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.