October 2, 2024
The only task as important as getting new customers is keeping them. This is where win-back campaigns come in. In this article, we’ll learn what they mean and how you can use them to increase your number of active users.
Customer win-back campaigns are deliberate efforts to re-engage old customers who no longer patronize your brand. These campaigns are carried out through web and mobile push notifications, email marketing, and social media, among others.
E-commerce or retail businesses have various metrics and models for defining when they need win-back campaigns. For some, it might take only 30 days of inactivity on an app or website; for others, the wait is up to three months of inactivity.
If applied carefully and strategically, customer win-back strategies can give you excellent customer win-back results across multiple channels. Below are some actionable steps toward a successful customer win-back campaign:
It is important because you don’t want to target them too late when they may have moved on to other brands. Targeting them too soon with your win-back marketing efforts might irritate them enough to want to disengage. Here are some ways to clearly define and identify who your inactive customer is:
Inactive or lapsed customers stop using a platform or service for different reasons. For some users, it might be a change of interests, a change of your service delivery or product, or unresolved technical difficulties. Other lapsed users might be inactive until your next best deal before going cold again. Consider asking through a questionnaire to understand a customer’s reason for lapsing.
You need to study your customer's data for more insight and better user understanding. Here are some pertinent questions to ask yourself:
After identifying your lapsed customers, it's best to divide customer segments into different groups for an effective win-back campaign. You can group them according to
Next, in your quest to recapture customer attention, leverage nostalgia to show them the value you’ve rendered to them in the past and how your services solved their problems. You can even quantify the duration of a long-term customer-brand relationship to put things in perspective.
Once you’ve gotten their attention, hit clients with an irresistible offer tailored just for their needs. Highlight past interactions, mention newer services or products, and acknowledge improved processes or technology.
You can even suggest other products you offer based on their purchase history before they went inactive. One of the long-term goals of this approach is to drive up the average order value (AOV), which is the average amount of money spent per order.
Mobile push notifications are the rave of the moment, seeing that more people access the internet via mobile devices than desktops. Hence, they allow you to send timely and relevant updates to your customers, persuading them to take salient actions that can directly improve their level of activity on your mobile app. Similarly, web push notifications are equally helpful if you have a web app. Whichever the case, endeavor to add this marketing channel to your win-back campaign and keep the message within the appropriate character limits.
To send out engaging personalized messages, appeal to Reteno’s personalization tools.
Your win-back strategy can include a mouthwatering enticement, such as a special customer-win-back offer. Your offer could say, “10% discount valid for the next three weeks” or “$15 off first 2 orders for the new year!” Ensure your offer is hard to pass on but realistic to pull off.
Feedback is an efficient way to determine whether your campaign is headed in the right direction. According to a study, 50% of customers will naturally lapse or churn every half a decade. Even fewer customers voice their displeasure before they leave. But if you leave room for feedback, you display genuine interest and trust in a customer. To increase the response rate, you can adopt mobile push notifications to remind them to send their feedback.
Thus, by following the step-by-step guide above, you’ll get
Here are some win-back campaign examples from famous mobile apps and e-commerce brands.
Basic Man is concise, precise, and realistic with its enticement: “We want you back! Here’s 50% off!” This copy is straightforward, and they state the win-back enticement in the subject line (for hypervisibility). Remember that the 50% enticement is on offer for a month, giving inactive customers enough time to reactivate their accounts while the brand proves its value.
Dollar Shave Club applies humor and wit in its copy. One of their win-back campaigns focuses on stirring curiosity with a unique breakup-themed subject line: “Have you been seeing someone else?” This suggests getting back together with an old or inactive user.
The brand utilizes the changing of seasons to make a consistent and personalized offer. Blue Apron shares a new dish and ingredients with old or inactive customers to gain them back. One email reads, “Join us again for sweater weather eats.”
After you cancel your subscription, Winc sends an incentive email offering $10 off for 21 days to inactive customers. The copy is straightforward, and a CTA “Get Cooking!” with a link attached follows it immediately.
To know the effectiveness of a customer win-back campaign, you should optimize and measure a few key performance metrics that gauge success and boost retention rates. Here is how you know if you have successful win-back campaigns:
These are some win-back email engagement metrics to monitor:
Sessions are a metric that actively tracks daily active users’ actions on your online store or website during single visits. It typically starts when users arrive on a site and ends when they are inactive for 30 minutes or leave. A session with multiple hits, such as transactions, page views, button clicks, and events, can be deemed a successful win-back campaign.
Reactivation rates measure the monthly earnings from past canceled or churned subscriptions that were reactivated within that month. The higher your reactivation rate (excluding free to paid upgrades on subscription plans), the more successful your win-back campaign is.
An increase in customer lifetime value suggests that your customer win-back campaign is producing the desired results. Customer lifetime value measures the value generated from an average customer over their lifetime as a patronizing customer.
High conversion rates are great for several reasons, but nothing beats increasing revenue from a copy during your customer win-back campaign. Revenue generated is a measure of the average earnings an email gives you. If this figure is low or declining, you should modify your long-term win-back marketing strategy.
The A/B testing metric compares two versions of your webpage, online store, or mobile app against each other to identify the better-performing version. The difference between versions could be as basic as a button, headline, or a complete overhaul of the web page or app.
Customer win-back strategies are a direct approach to regaining the trust and loyalty of inactive customers who have something you need: continued engagement and money. While customer churn is almost inescapable, it can be avoided and kept to the lowest possible rate with a proper win-back campaign.
So whether you run your B2B or retail business independently or delegate your marketing efforts, consider using these customer win-back campaign tips.
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