How Bullymake recovered 17% more failed subscription payments with Ordergroove’s Payment Agent
17%
Relative lift in recovery rate for insufficient-funds declines
Six figures
Projected additional subscription revenue recovered annually
About Bullymake’s personalized dog toy subscriptions
Bullymake brings new toys to dogs and their owners with each subscription delivery. Subscribers use Bullymake’s purpose-built customer portal to choose the toy types their dogs get, whether each box includes treats, and which add-ons to include. That personal experience keeps subscribers coming back, and it’s a critical part of a business that has shipped millions of boxes worldwide.
Behind those personalized boxes was a homegrown system that gave Bullymake control over how subscriptions worked. But evolving their subscriber experience took significant development work, and reporting was limited.
In 2025, they moved to Shopify and Ordergroove for powerful yet easy-to-use enterprise subscription commerce capabilities. Bullymake kept that portal, and with Ordergroove now powering the subscriptions behind it, the team can keep every box built around each dog while adapting faster and offering subscribers new features.
“We get the best of both worlds in utilizing Ordergroove’s technology without having to develop everything ourselves, and the flexibility to tailor the experience to our business and customers.”
Holly Walker, Senior Manager, DTC, Bullymake
Ordergroove also gave Bullymake more ways to address a growing concern: involuntary churn from failed payments.
Challenge: Involuntary churn from failed subscription payments
A failed payment could abruptly end a customer’s Bullymake subscription, even when they wanted their next box. As payment-related cancellations increased, Bullymake needed a better way to reduce involuntary churn and keep subscribers it had already acquired.
The timing and frequency of payment retries in Ordergroove still reflected settings carried over from Bullymake’s homegrown system. The team wanted to know whether a different retry strategy could recover more orders, but analyzing failed-payment patterns and managing an experiment took time its lean team didn’t have. Bullymake turned to Ordergroove’s Payment Agent to handle that work.
“We knew that not only do we not have bandwidth to put towards figuring out the issue and the best way to handle it and the cadence, but that the agent would be able to make better data-driven decisions more efficiently than we as a team could ever.”
Holly Walker, Senior Manager, DTC, Bullymake
Solution: Payment Agent A/B tests payment retry logic automatically
Bullymake put Ordergroove’s approach to Autonomous Subscriptions into practice with a focused Payment Agent test. The six-week A/B test covered about 6,300 subscription orders declined for insufficient funds, comparing Bullymake’s existing retry schedule with a strategy that changed both the timing and number of attempts.
During the experiment, Ordergroove’s Payment Agent:
- Used AI to analyze failed-payment patterns
- Proposed a new retry strategy
- Ran an A/B test against existing retry logic
- Tracked which approach recovered more orders
- Automatically made the winning strategy the new baseline
Bullymake’s team could compare strategies and follow results in the Ordergroove dashboard. The focused test provided evidence of what the technology could improve and helped build confidence across the business.
“It was a cohort of failed payments that we could go after, test, see what that improvement was, and then have everybody on the internal team be more comfortable moving in this direction.”
Holly Walker, Senior Manager, DTC, Bullymake
Beyond optimizing retries, Ordergroove’s Klaviyo integration gives Bullymake control over how and when it follows up with customers about rejected payment attempts. This supports the customer communication side of payment recovery, while Payment Agent handles testing and improving retry logic.
Results: 17% higher recovery of insufficient-funds declines in a six-week A/B test
In a six-week A/B test, Ordergroove’s Payment Agent increased Bullymake’s recovery rate for insufficient-funds declines by 17% relative to its existing retry logic. Based on those results, Bullymake could recover a six-figure amount in additional subscription revenue annually, if the measured lift holds at the modeled payment volume.
Ordergroove’s Payment Agent ran the experiment and automatically rolled out the winning strategy, which is now the baseline for insufficient-funds declines. As Holly puts it, the team “didn’t have to touch anything” to make it happen.
Takeaway: Reduce involuntary churn without adding workload
Bullymake’s first Payment Agent test improved recovery for insufficient-funds declines without requiring its team to manage the test or rollout.
Ordergroove’s Autonomous Subscriptions give lean teams a way to test new approaches and scale what works without running every experiment themselves.
Put Payment Agent to the test against your existing retry logic, and see how much more subscription revenue it recovers.
Bullymake and Ordergroove Payment Agent FAQ
What did Bullymake use Ordergroove’s Payment Agent for?
Bullymake put Payment Agent to work on one decline category: subscription orders declined for insufficient funds.
How does Ordergroove’s Payment Agent work?
Payment Agent uses AI to analyze failed-payment patterns and propose a new retry strategy. Payment Agent runs an A/B test against existing retry logic, tracks which approach recovers more orders, and automatically makes a winning strategy the new baseline. Bullymake’s team can follow each test and compare results in the Ordergroove dashboard.
What result did Bullymake see with Ordergroove’s Payment Agent?
In a six-week A/B test, Payment Agent increased Bullymake’s recovery rate for insufficient-funds declines by 17% relative to its existing retry logic. The winning strategy automatically became the new baseline for those declines.
What is the estimated annual revenue impact for Bullymake?
Based on the test results, Ordergroove estimates Bullymake could recover a six-figure amount in additional subscription revenue annually, if the measured lift holds at the modeled payment volume.
Why did Bullymake use Ordergroove’s Payment Agent to optimize retry logic?
Bullymake wanted to optimize retry logic but had limited bandwidth to analyze failed-payment patterns and manage an experiment. Payment Agent handled that work, testing a new strategy against its existing approach.
What changed when Bullymake moved to Ordergroove?
Moving to Shopify and Ordergroove in 2025 gave Bullymake access to enterprise subscription capabilities without developing everything itself. The team gained better reporting while keeping the freedom to tailor its customer portal.
