One of the biggest challenges for any business, including those focused on e-commerce, is ensuring customers keep returning for more. But it’s natural for consumers to lose interest in brands or forget about specific products. An effective win-back email campaign sequence can reactivate the “sleeping” subscribers who have stopped interacting with your brand.
Source: Kim’s Convenience
There’s no denying that the easiest way to maintain the interest of current clients is by using creative email campaigns. According to Marketing Metrics, brands have a 60-70% probability of selling to existing customers, while there is only a 5-20% chance of selling the same item to new customers.
At the same time, 40% of business revenue comes from repeat customers, even though they only comprise 8% of the visitors. In this article, we’ve gathered email marketing strategy examples to help you win back lapsed customers.
Source: Adobe
Those emails are messages designed to catch users’ attention and encourage them to buy from your brand again, and that’s why you must showcase how you can change their lives for good.
Around 45% of customers who get a win-back email typically open other emails from businesses and brands. Effective email campaigns can remind your clients why they were interested in your offer and chose to subscribe to your newsletters in the first place.
Today, we will show where to focus while building a win-back email campaign and what tricks you may use. We will also share the top win-back email ideas to help you re-engage lost customers.
What Are Win-Back Emails?
These are “We want you back” types of messages. The win-back marketing email campaigns have a specific goal: they aim to re-engage and bring customers back.
Those messages are often sent to inactive customers and subscribers to re-engage them. Win-back email campaigns are gentle nudges to remind lapsed clients about your products and services.
Be prepared that a single message won’t change anything in your email marketing campaign: some consumers may ignore it, while others may not even see it. As of today, users tend to subscribe to many mailings but ignore most of the incoming marketing content. That’s a common behavior in the post-recession world.
But wait…is there a way out, or are all marketers effectively doomed?
https://giphy.com/gifs/straystv-season-2-episode-7-strays-aIL9uAQBv8aIsLDg4c
Source: Strays
Here’s what you need to do — build a creative email marketing strategy to make the mailing successful. Use the next tips to achieve a high deliverability rate:
- Remind that you exist. You don’t need to over-promote yourself here. In the best email marketing campaigns, brands remind users about their existence and how they can benefit the customer. Share updates about the brand, demonstrate new launches, etc. It will help to re-establish a connection with passive subscribers.
- Send valuable offers. They should motivate users to take action. It can be subscribing to your socials, buying a product, or any other action suiting your email marketing strategy.
- Follow-up or send a “last chance” message. If the customer read your first win-back email and didn’t react to it, send the “last chance” letter. Emphasize the limited deal time and show how a user can take advantage and benefit from the deal. Highlight benefits they may miss in this part of the email marketing campaign.
- Unsubscribe email. Not every subscriber becomes your perpetual client. After 3-4 win-back emails in a row, some customers may decide to unsubscribe from your mailings. Show them respect and thank them for their journey with you. It leaves a positive impression, so users may share this experience with their friends, promoting your brand even after you parted ways.
You should distribute messages in your win-back email marketing campaigns evenly: sending multiple letters in one day is unnecessary. The subscribers may be busy or not interested in looking through multiple promo emails. Keep the marketing funnel timeline in mind and schedule your emails weekly or bi-weekly until you reach the “welcome back” or the “farewell” phase.
Timing depends on user preferences, their current stage in lifecycle marketing, and the user’s purchase cycle. Best email marketing campaigns do not overwhelm subscribers. On the contrary, they’re good-natured and aim to show your value to the user.
The Secret Behind These 7 Best Customer Winback Emails
Why Are Win-Back Email Campaigns So Important?
Inactive subscribers often represent more than half of the average mailing list. If you have 10,000 people there, only 4,000 – 5,000 might regularly open your messages.
Win-back email campaigns aim to connect with lapsed clients and help them realize why they use your products or services and become part of your email list in the first place. The goal of your win-back
The occasional unintended customer ignorance can have a negative impact on your email marketing performance. But performance cookies and tracking software can shed some light on why your performance declined.
Your goal is to ensure your win-back emails reach your customers and trigger specific actions. A poor open rate has consequences, showing mailing providers that people don’t want to hear from your brand.
On top of that, the bounce rate of any email marketing campaign should not exceed 15-20%, including soft and hard bounces. A high bounce rate may lead to a mailing provider lowering the deliverability or moving your messages to the spam folder.
Keep reading, and we’ll share the best email marketing campaign examples. Before we examine the top-performing examples of win-back email campaigns, let’s talk about campaign value and how to measure it.
How To Measure Win-Back Email Campaigns
It’s vital to measure every client interaction along the way. Brands can do it with the help of specific software, performance cookies, and targeting cookies.
It’s impossible to figure out the true campaign value if you don’t track it. Tracking helps pinpoint the email marketing strategy that works best and campaigns that require more resources or need to be paused. The dynamics of every metric are crucial to get a bird’s eye view of your email campaigns.
Your primary goal with win-back emails is to re-engage users so they start interacting with your emails and other marketing messages. From visiting the website or offline shops to placing orders or reposting your stories — any interaction matters and should be carefully monitored.
But what about metrics?
Source: StarTalk Radio with Neil deGrasse Tyson
Use the average open rate, CTR, closed deals rate, and ROI to understand the current state of your win-back email campaigns. Modify those campaigns as often as you need. Some of them should be updated every 2-3 months.
Consider the current state of affairs and build your promotion strategy. Don’t be afraid to take inspiration from the best email campaign ideas you’ve encountered, even if it’s competition. Make sure you create something unique that suits your business and the lapsed customer needs.
Podcast / Episode #33 – How to Write a Win-Back Email to Bring Your Customers Back
Applying proven optimization tactics will help you elevate your credibility among users, increase client loyalty, and achieve the best results while creating email campaigns. Consider following these tips to create the best automated email campaigns:
Segment Your Audience
There is no one-size-fits-all email marketing strategy. To release the best email campaign for your case, categorize your audience into multiple groups based on purchase habits, preferences, engagement, and other demographic factors. It will help you build tailored win-back email campaigns for each client type.
Source: MasterClass
The Elipson research shows that 80% of customers are more likely to purchase from businesses that customize the brand experience. The only way to do it is to properly segment the audience at the beginning.
You can’t create the same win-back email campaign for all your clients: they are all at different stages and have slightly different needs. Your task as a marketer is to segment customers into multiple groups.
Lapsed customer groups are not as homogenous as you may think. Some may read every email but refuse to buy from you, while others can read promotion email campaigns once a quarter but buy something every time they see it.
When you think about the lapsed audience, remember that they are real people, not just numbers on a screen. Segment them based on their recency and frequency of interaction with your company, monetary value, ROI, history of purchases, and demographic data. Find a pain point of each segment and show how your product can address it in your win-back email campaign.
Suppose you sell something with a yearly cycle, like swimsuits or winter clothes. In this case, a 3-6 month pause between purchases is natural. But if the purchase cycle is 1-2 months, and a client hasn’t bought anything from you for 4-6 months, it’s time to implement creative email campaigns to win back the customers.
Properly targeted emails bring in 58% of all email revenue. Take your time and segment your audience so each lapsed customer gets a letter that suits their requests. That way, they will have more motivation to buy promoted products from you. Email marketing segmentation won’t take a lot of time but will benefit your business.
Personalize Mailing Templates
Finding and addressing customer pain points in your win-back email marketing strategy shows that you care about your lapsed customers and want to help them. It will boost clients’ loyalty.
Provide personalized discounts based on purchase history. It can be a free trial for digital services or free shipping for physical goods. By providing it in the email campaign, you demonstrate that you know client needs and want to satisfy them.
Writing a personal letter for each lapsed customer is impossible, so you should try customizable win-back email templates. But remember that your emails should remain compliant with the latest regulations. Otherwise, mailing providers can block your IP and send your mail to the spam folder.
Use Strong Subjects
Subjects are a crucial part of emails. 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. That’s why having a proper starting point in your communication with clients under email marketing campaigns is vital.
If your subject line looks like spam, you can get into the user’s blacklist. Almost 70% of email recipients report spam based only on the subject line, without opening a letter. Create a catchy and intriguing subject to achieve the best results in your email campaign. Ensure that it doesn’t look like spam.
Personalizing the offers you present in your win-back emails can create an emotional bond between you and the customer, making your company more appealing.
According to the Lifecycle Marketing press release, personalized email subjects can increase open rates by 50%. You can set the time frames to make your message more urgent. Email subjects with a sense of urgency can result in a 22% higher open rate.
Source: Fotor
Using all those tips for the best email campaigns will benefit your mailing strategy, making it more profitable and reliable. Fotor, an AI-based photo editing service, uses this technique. They offer a free trial for customers available for platform credits. To re-engage customers who leave the service, they offer 2 credits (internal currency) for free.
The company creates a sense of urgency with this win-back email marketing campaign by telling users they have only 48 hours to claim the credits.
Source: GIPHY
It’s a great promotional strategy: users understand they get a valuable offer while giving nothing in return. The only thing that they need to do is log back into the service and claim a reward.
Provide Clear CTA
Clear call-to-action guides recipients through further possible actions. The best approach is to set one main action in the email campaign.
If you want to provide multiple CTAs, do it in different messages. Don’t mix everything in one letter. Otherwise, users may get confused and ignore it. Clear CTA is one of the most important parts of the email. Ensure that each email campaign has its call to action.
Gather Feedback and Analyze Results
Once you send the message, you need to determine its effectiveness: how many people see the letter, click on it, and take the desired action. If people haven’t performed the action, you need to understand what prevents them from doing it.
Here are the most common reasons why your win-back email campaigns can fail:
- Letters that are part of your email campaigns fall into the spam folder.
- You send too many high-res images, so when people with a poor Internet connection open the letter, they see nothing and close it.
- You don’t personalize the emails; your subscribers feel ignored and unappreciated.
- You offer no incentives.
- You tend to go for the sale too soon.
There can be many more reasons why even the best emails fail. Gather feedback, track and analyze the results to find out why your win-back email campaigns fall short, and modify your email marketing strategy.
Implement A/B Tests
Repeat customers provide 2x more revenue than returning customers and 5x-7x more than occasional shoppers creating different mailings for different target audiences and testing them will help you see what approaches work better for win-back email campaigns.
Finding the right messages that resonate with a lapsed audience and can help your email marketing strategy be even more effective may take time. But here’s the upside: it will pay off.
Source: Adobe
You must provide valuable offers to boost audience engagement in your creative email campaigns. Some audience groups want a discount, while others want a freebie. Analyze the group’s needs and A/B test your win-back emails to find the perfect approach for each group.
Top 10 Win-Back Email Campaign Examples and Ideas
As promised, we’re sharing 10 email campaign best practices to help you win back your clients. Modify those ideas to suit your brand or use them as an inspiration for your win-back emails.
Offer a Free Trial or a Discount
A discount, gift, or free trial is a great win-back strategy for any company. More than 50% of internet users between 18-29 say discounts are crucial for their decision-making.
People like presents, and it’s a great way to reactivate old customers. Think about what they may need from you and offer it as a gift. It can be a personalized discount, free software trial, free shipping to any order, or another appealing offer.
Ensure that this offer presented in your win-back email campaign is more beneficial than the offers provided to new clients. That way, users will have the motivation to stay rather than leave.
For instance, the beauty industry is very competitive: users easily switch from one brand to another. That’s why Birchbox has created a win-back email campaign, offering a free Beautyblender sponge and the opportunity to choose the design of their next delivered beauty box. The customer only needs to enter the promo code from the letter at checkout.
Source: Birchbox
That way, Birchbox has created a win-win situation. The client will get a professional makeup sponge for free while the business wins back the lapsed client.
Use Humor To Drive User Attention
A quality joke has never hurt anyone. Find the audience’s pain points and show how you creatively can solve them in your win-back email campaign. After all, making clients smile leaves a positive association with your brand.
Even if they don’t buy anything after this message, it may affect your interactions with this client in the future. Either way, it’s a great win-back email marketing practice that benefits the brand in the long run.
Here’s a great example: Blue Apron, a meal delivery service, decided to stir up their lapsed clients a few years ago with a risky Halloween email campaign. This edgy but funny message cheers up lapsed clients.
Source: Blue Apron
Additionally, they offered $40 off their deliveries in the form of $20 off for the first two orders after they clicked the link.
Re-Engage Inactive Customers With Seasonal Win-Back Emails
Remember about timing: you can use a seasonal event or holiday to generate trust in your brand. Create seasonal win-back email campaigns, associating your products with positive emotions.
Shein’s email campaign is an excellent example of leveraging this strategy. They launched a fall email campaign based on wordplay. By elevating the mood of subscribers and stressing the specific charm of shopping during the fall season, they provide an appealing free shipping offer while strengthening the bond between the brand and its clients.
Source: Shein
Run Campaigns on Lesser-Known Holidays
The most successful and powerful email campaigns happen during big holidays like Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Women’s Day, Independence Day, etc. Such holidays are a great opportunity for brands to launch thematic email campaigns. The only downside is that most businesses leverage this opportunity, sending consumers dozens of emails.
So, what should you do if you are looking for a unique reason to reach out to lapsed customers? Try launching win-back email campaigns on lesser-known holidays. Using such holidays as an inspiration for your emails can help you stay creative with your win-back email marketing strategy and make sure your marketing messages resonate with your clients.
Launch a New Product
Customers may outlive your current product or service. It’s a natural part of the customer journey. Once you add new products, you can offer them to old customers to win them back with your new email marketing campaign.
Pick the item that suits their current history with your brand. It’s a great way to boost their interest and reactivate part of your client base. Those email campaigns should look like the gentle pat, showing that you are still here and waiting for lapsed customers to return.
Recommend Various Products
Showcase your products to customers to encourage them to buy. Ensure those recommendations are tailored to customers’ needs: consider their purchase history, season, and potential well-being. As we pointed out, segmentation is the proven way to create an effective win-back email.
In fact, tailored product recommendations may boost the click-through rate up to 840%. If the lapsed client doesn’t have a purchase history, promote your best-selling products that potentially can fit customer needs. Use metrics from users with the same demographic, geographic, and even device data.
Source: Sephora
Check out how Sephora promotes its best-selling items in its win-back email campaigns. They effortlessly show bestsellers that match the user’s purchase history. This approach increases sales while staying non-obstructive to users.
Educate Consumers About Cancellation or Pausing Options
If yours is a subscriber-based business, you’re no stranger to customer churn reflected through paused or canceled memberships.
Take the initiative into your own hands with proper win-back email marketing. Provide multiple alternate options to customers – anything from pausing to cheaper plans and partial cancellations. If clients still want to cancel their memberships, show that you care about them and offer several reactivation options.
If they end up canceling the membership, periodically send them emails with personal discounts. But remember your win-back emails should not look too pushy or salesy.
Motivate Clients With Last Chance Letters
Sometimes, losing is a much more powerful motivation than getting something for free. Technically speaking, it’s a psychological phenomenon called loss aversion. You can use this trick in your win-back email marketing campaigns if users ignore most of your letters, even those with valuable offers.
The idea behind last chance letters is to let lapsed customers know – in a gentle and respectful way – that a lack of interaction might lead to a loss of personalized discounts, access to a service library, or even their accounts. Those interested in staying with you in the long run will open the emails and perform targeted actions.
This approach can also help you group consumers who are no longer interested in your products and keep your email list clean and up-to-date at all times.
Here is an example of a last-chance letter, part of a win-back email campaign launched by Urban Outfitters. They highlighted two options — users could end their subscription or keep receiving emails — and offered a welcome back gift as an incentive to stay.
Source: Urban Outfitters
Make the Breakup Email Work for You
What if the breakup email can become a makeup email? While the breakup email is literally the last email you send to customers, you can use it as the last attempt to win them back.
In this message, directly tell the user that you are removing them from the email list. But like you’ve just seen in the last chance email example, try making them an offer they cannot refuse.
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Source: GIPHY
If things go south, remember that removing an inactive subscriber has its benefits. They include reducing the number of people marking your emails as spam and keeping your email list clean.
Ask for Feedback
Asking for feedback is a common way to grab a customer’s attention at the end of the win-back email campaign. Also, it is a way to show that you care about your clients and want to provide the best possible service for them.
Here’s another great example: women’s clothing and wellness shop Anthropologie asked lapsed clients to provide feedback about their customer experience.
Source: Anthropologie
In gratitude, this shop offered a 20% discount for the next purchase. It works as an additional motivation for clients to provide feedback and buy something from Anthropologie at least once, even if it’s just to use the promo code.
Building the Best Email Marketing Strategy: Save Time With Templates
Mailing templates are life saviors for businesses. They allow personalizing email marketing campaigns while keeping them engaging and relevant.
Here, you can pre-describe each interaction in advance. You can be sure that mailing tools will send the message at the most appropriate time, offering products that perfectly suit the user’s needs. It will increase the chance of winning back customers under the email marketing campaign.
Responsive email templates look good on any device. They change their layout, navigation, hierarchy, and color schemes to fit the user’s device. Responsive templates will enhance the user experience while saving efforts on design and performance tests. You can easily automate win-back email marketing campaigns using editable templates to suit desktop and mobile devices.
Unlocking New Email Campaign Opportunities
Losing valuable customers after building a solid email list can be disheartening. But when the lion’s share of your revenue comes from repeat customers, it’s even more painful. With personalized email campaigns, brands can decrease the need to win them back later. When it comes to lapsed customers, that’s when it gets tricky.
Win-back email campaigns are the surefire way to reach lapsed customers, provide extra attention, and reignite their love for your business. After all, ensuring customer loyalty can be a rocky road, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
Email Marketing Extravaganza at MailCon Show in New York
MailCon is back with a one-day email performance and deliverability conference on July 28th in New York City.
Every attendee will get:
- Productive email marketing sessions reinforced with panels and workshops addressing the most pressing topics for mailers
- Speaking and exhibition opportunities
- Connecting with renowned email marketing professionals and experts
And here’s why MailCon is the coolest email marketing event you can attend:
Here are some of the topics you’ll get covered on July 28th:
- Brand Safety & Better Subscriptions: What You Need to Know, by Ebenezer Anjorin, Lead Product Manager at Google Workspace
- Email Deliverability Starts Where Best Practices Fall Short, by Adrian W. from Email Angels
- The Importance of Securing Your Email Infrastructure and How to Do It, by Kevin A. McGrail, CEO of Peregrine Computer Consultants Corporation, and LB Blair, Head of Deliverability at Email Industries.
- Future-Proof Your Brand Like Beyoncé: Integrating Email & Social Media for Iconic Digital Presence, by Carlos Gil from GetResponse
- Insights from the expertise of renowned email deliverability consultants like Trey Bennett, Keith Kouzmanoff, Jakub Olexa, and more
- Expert panel on navigating the complexities of consumer privacy and compliance regulations, by Eric J. Troutman, Puja J. Amin, and Brittany Andres
- Marketing Crossfire session hosted by Channel Automation™ and featuring industry thought leaders
And so much more!
Get your tickets now before they sell out!
For those new, here’s everything you need to know about MailCon in just 90 seconds:
Discover MailCon in 90 Seconds
Frequently Asked Questions
Is win-back email one of the main types of email campaigns?
Yes. Winning back customers is crucial for any business, so those emails are integral to any email marketing strategy.
How can I find creative email campaign ideas?
Think about customers’ pain points. Most businesses work only with the most common clients’ pains in win-back email campaigns. If you want to stand out, consider user problems similar companies ignore. Launch your new email campaign aimed at solving this issue.
What are the main rules for launching email marketing campaigns in 2023?
Segment your audience to target specific parts of it in the win-back email campaign. Write catchy subject, personalize email template, and provide clear CTA based on user’s needs. Gather feedback and analyze results to achieve even better results in the next email marketing campaign.
