Introduction
Imagine every time a customer stopped making purchases with your brand, you stopped contacting them altogether. This is a huge mistake a lot of eCommerce brands make. On average, it is five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain existing customers. Hence, you need to ensure that you are always encouraging lapsed customers to come back to your website and explore what’s new. This is why the Customer Winback is such an important piece of your email marketing ecosystem.
In this article, we’ll be breaking down how you can create an effective Customer Winback flow so you can always catch those lapsed customers and turn them into repeat purchasers.
Email 1: Check out what’s new
In email 1, we want to send a general email that reminds your audience that you still exist and have some pretty cool things happening with your brand. You can mention any recent product launches, brand events that have occurred, and even some unique benefits of what makes your brand different from others.
The aim of this email is to keep your brand at top of mind for the customer and reintroduce yourself.
Subject Line Ideas:
- Check out what’s new at (brand name)
- Hey (first name), check out these products!
Email 2: We Miss You
In email 2, the aim is to send a highly personalized email that lets the customer know that it’s been a long time since they last visited your brand and that we miss them very much.
Another great strategy is to offer a discount code to incentivize these customers. Now, you may be thinking, “I dont know if I want to give these people a discount code”, but what you have to realize is that these are already lapsed customers. They haven’t purchased or engaged with your brand in a long time so it may be a good idea to offer a discount that is exclusively sent to these customers so you can encourage them to make a purchase and re-enter your email marketing eco-system.
If you are going down this route, ensure this discount is similar to or higher than your Welcome Series discount as these customers would have already been familiar with the range that you offer. If it is too low, it may not be as effective.
Subject Line Ideas:
- We miss you!
- We miss you (first name)
- It’s been a while…
Email 3: It’s been a while… Here’s X% off!
In email 3, we want to emphasize again that it’s been a while and we really do miss them. The best-performing Winback emails are usually more creative and in line with a brand’s personality, so make sure to have fun with these emails. We can again mention to them that they have a discount code and this is set to expire in “x” amount of days so make sure they use it.
This email is a great combination of brand personality/creativeness with urgency and scarcity sprinkled throughout.
Subject Line Ideas:
- It’s been a while.. Here’s “X”% off!
- Your “X”% off code is about to expire!
- Only 24 hours left! Use your code now
Conclusion:
The Customer Winback series is an essential part of customer retention and lifecycle marketing. Not having this flow set up could be losing your brand a lot of money and letting customers slip through the cracks.
With this breakdown, you should have a clearer understanding of how to create an effective customer winback series that turns your lapsed customers into repeat purchasers.
