As good as your brand is and as diligent as your efforts may be, you can’t always have 100% success. Some customers will simply lapse over time. They’ll have a bad experience or, in many cases, they’ll simply lose interest.
A win-back campaign—also known as a re-engagement or reactivation campaign—is a series of emails sent to try and re-engage them. This campaign usually uses an automation sequence beginning with a gentle “nudge,” with incentives and beyond.
Learning how to use a win-back campaign can help any marketer regain potential customers and ensure their email list isn’t being filled up by subscribers who aren’t interested in the content.
How to measure the success of a win-back campaign
A win-back campaign’s ultimate goal is to bring back lapsed customers. When you notice subscribers aren’t engaging, you should aim to create content that brings them back as early as possible.
Ideally, you’ll want to send as few messages as possible to win them back. If you can do it without having to offer some type of discount or freebie, that’s a plus as well. The biggest question you should be asking yourself at the start is exactly why the customer left.
The results are overwhelming. If customers aren’t engaging, they may think you don’t care. The key to winning them back is to show them the opposite is true. How exactly should you structure your campaign?
Start small and make it personal.
When you have customers who haven’t engaged in a while, a simple email showing you miss them is a good way to reach out. You can open up with a statement showing you care, then tailor the rest of the message to something you think they’d like. Remember, personalized content is key for retention and recovery.
Don’t forget to offer incentives.
Obviously, you want to win a customer back without having to offer incentives, if at all possible. However, don’t be afraid to use them. Discounts and even freebies are worth it if they mean you win back a customer who’ll make future purchases. Once again, use personalization when deciding. Do your customers prefer a certain type of product? Are there any new additions to your catalog you think they’d like?
Does it really matter?
Even if a customer has lapsed, it doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to offer the company anymore. If they can be reminded of a previous good experience they had, or be persuaded to give the company another try, it’s worth it. The main reason for this is that they’re still an existing customer, even if they haven’t purchased in a while.
Existing customers, even if they’ve been inactive, are often easier to sell to than new prospects. New prospects have a profitability range somewhere between 5-20%—far lower than the number for previous customers.
The probability of selling to an existing customer is about 60-70%.
Win-back campaigns matter in the long run because, for the marketer with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, lapsed customers can make up large segments. If you have dozens or even hundreds of customers who’ve fallen off, that’s a lot of sales potential to recover. You can also ensure they begin engaging with your emails again, strengthening the potential of your list.
What now?
Once you understand how vital a win-back campaign is, you can go about creating your own. The best way to regain lapsed customers is to show you care, and this can be done through a series of emails. Make them personal, and show a little more effort in each one.
Explore personalization techniques to make your win-back campaign even more impactful.