When done correctly, they send to inactive customers just as they lose interest in your store and entice them to come back and make another purchase. 

But for this to happen, your disengaged customers need to have opened your email in the first place. That’s why getting your win-back email subject lines right is so important. 

Especially when a third of your email list decides whether to open emails entirely on their subject lines.

So that’s why we’ve put together this list of 80 of the best win-back/’we miss you’ email subject lines we’ve seen well-established brands use in their email marketing. 

Feel free to steal some inspiration from any you like! 

General ‘we miss you’ email subject lines

These are general, all-purpose win-back subject lines that lend themselves well for any kind of store. The most common strategy among these being to include ‘we miss you’ as the key message.

• We Miss You (And You’re Missing Out) – Ann Taylor
• We Miss You Already – Birchbox
• Come back to beef up dinner! – Blue Apron
• You’ve missed over 30 different snacks! – Bokksu
• Reminder: Pick your book for September – Book of the Month
• Let’s reconnect! – CBS
• Because we miss you – Chanel
• Ends Tomorrow: Earn your initiation back. – Equinox
• We’ll be here when you’re hungry – Home Chef
• The word is out. We miss you (a lot). – Jane
• Checking in… – Le Tote
• Let’s start over – Le Tote
• We Miss You! Come Back And Try LingQ Again – LingQ
• We TOTALLY need to catch up – LOFT
• We miss you! Enjoy this exclusive offer just for you! – Loot Crate
• We miss you…*puppy eyes* – Lucky Vitamin
• It’s been a while… – MistoBox
• Try Netflix again today. – Netflix
• Don’t leave this message on the printer – Office Depot
• We miss you – ThirdLove
• Long time no see! Here’s a discount b/c we miss you. – TOMS
• Because we miss you + you’ve GOT to see what’s new – West Elm

Win-back subject lines with emojis

To help your subject lines stand out a bit more in customers’ overcrowded inboxes, it’s worth considering including an emoji. 

When done well, these emojis draw attention and have been shown to increase open rates. 

If you decide to include emojis, just be sure to keep the best practices for using emojis in subject lines in mind.

• Because breaking up is hard to do…? – Dinnerly
• We miss you, here’s our best offer to show it (?oh sheet!) – Dream Cloud Sleep
• 2 Free Pints! Because We Miss You – eCreamery Ice Cream
• Say bye to $15 credit ? – FabFitFun
• ? Come Back & Enjoy 6 FREE Plates! – Goodfood Market
• Rejoin TODAY! ? Get The Power Chewer Picnic Box! – Bullymake
• Take a bite of 50% OFF to come back and feel amazing ? – HelloFresh
• Let’s rekindle the friendship ? – Papyrus
• ? We miss you – Subway
• ? Boo… We Miss You! – Wholesale Halloween Costumes
• {NAME}, you don’t want to miss out on these bottles ? – Winc
• Hey, we miss you! Like, a lot! So, here is a ? gift, just for you! – Zivame

Subject lines mentioning a special offer

Another strategy to both increase your open rates as well as your win-back campaign performance is to include a special offer. 

If you decide to include a special offer to incentivize customer retention, you’ll also want to mention it in your subject line. Just like the examples below have done.

• Hey, Here’s a Gift Because We Miss You! – Adorama
• Get Your Special Offer Inside! – All About Dance
• We Miss You – Open for Exclusive Offer – Allen Edmonds
• A coupon for you: 15% off one full-price item – Backcountry
• We miss you. Here’s 15% off, today only. – Baron Fig
• We Miss You | Here’s 15% OFF Friend – Brylane Home
• Come back and get 15% off. 4 days only. – Crate and Barrel
• Come back and save 20%! – Edible Arrangements
• Exclusive 25% Off Sitewide – Because we miss you! – Fairytale Brownies
• Take 40% Off Your Entire Order – We Miss You – GiftsForYouNow
• Here’s a $10 Perk because we miss you! – GrubHub
• We miss you! Here is 20% off your next order on Us! – Guinness
• We Miss You! 30% Off + Free Shipping. – Levenger
• We miss you… & here’s 20% off to prove it! – ModCloth
• Come back and get 10% off your next order. – Moosejaw
• A lot has changed! NEW Special Offer Inside. – MunchPak
• Free postage because we miss you! – Nomads Clothing
• Psst… $10 off your next order is waiting! – Primary
• Here’s 20% Off Just for You! – Scholastic

Personalized subject lines mentioning the customer’s name

Another common strategy brands use with their customer win-back subject lines is to include their customer’s name. 

Doing this personalizes your subject lines which not only makes them stand out in customers’ inboxes but has been shown to increase open rates by 17%.

• We know it’s been a while, {NAME}. Come back now for 25% off. – Baxter Of California
• WE MISS YOU, {NAME} > $15 Off Your Next Order – Chewy
• {NAME}–We miss you. Here’s something you might like.  – Death Wish Coffee Company
• Hey {NAME}! Our new menu is PERFECT for you! – Dinnerly
• Let’s stay together, {NAME}  – Dinnerly
• {NAME}, give us another chance. We’ll give you 2 weeks free! – Hulu
• {NAME}, we miss you! Take $25 off (in stores and online) – LOFT
• Hey {NAME}, it’s M&M’S. We miss you. Take 30% off now! – m&m’s
• {NAME}, we miss you! – Marley Spoon
• We’ve missed you, {NAME}! Please come back! – Marriott International
• We Miss You {NAME} – Take 20% Off Your Entire Purchase! – Midwest Supplies
• {NAME}, now is the perfect time to rejoin Netflix. – Netflix
• Happy Saturday, {NAME}! Time to come back to Netflix… – Netflix
• {NAME}, We Miss You – See Inside for Special Offer – Off Broadway Shoes
• {NAME}… Come back and SAVE 25%! – Popcornopolis
• {NAME}…we miss you! Take 10% off now – Shopbop
• {NAME}, we miss you! Here are special savings just for you. – Udacity

Subject lines phrased as a question

Asking a question is a great way to pique your subscriber’s curiosity and entice them to open your email. If you follow it up with some engaging email content, it’ll also help with improving your click-through rates.

These are some win-back email subject lines we’ve come across that contain questions.

• Do you still have too many blades? – Dollar Shave Club
• Have you been seeing someone else? – Dollar Shave Club
• Ready to get back together? – Dollar Shave Club
• Have you checked your mailbox? ? – HelloFresh
• Was It Something We Said? ? – Hunting for George
• Wanna have a catch? We miss you. – JustBallGloves
• Continue? 3… 2… 1… – Loot Crate
• Missing your coffee choices? – MistoBox
• Are you in? – SprezzaBox
• We Miss You—Have You Seen What’s New? – Theory

The rest of your win-back campaign

Now that you have plenty of subject line examples for win-back emails to get inspired by, it’s time to start coming up with your own. 

If you want to learn more about subject line best practices and ways to make them stand out in your subscribers’ inboxes even more, check out our guide on writing the best subject lines.

But keep in mind that your subject line is only a small part of your overall email campaign strategy. To get the best results you’ll want to keep win-back email best practices in mind. 

That’s why we’ve put together a guide on win-back emails that takes you through win-back email marketing strategy and provides you with plenty of examples of past campaigns.

The post 80 of the Best Winback Email Subject Lines We’ve Seen appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

Why? Because it’s much easier to make another sale to existing customers than to someone who has never bought from your store. It costs around 6 times as much to acquire a new customer than to make another sale to an existing one.

When you think about it, this makes sense. One of the biggest challenges to getting someone to hand over their money is establishing trust between them and your store. This is especially true for online stores.

Someone who has already bought from your store knows from experience that your brand is trustworthy. (Assuming that they didn’t run into any trouble). As this trust has already been established, you’re already halfway to making your next sale with your new customer.

Studies have backed up this thinking too. Research out of the Harvard Business School has shown that even a modest 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by up to 95%.

That fact alone makes customer reactivation strategies one of the most important aspects of any business. The problem, however, is knowing how to go about winning back your inactive customers.

When it comes to your reactivation marketing campaigns, there are many options at your disposal. But in this post we’ll just focus on the few campaigns you’ll definitely want to be taking advantage of to reactivate customers.

Email Reactivation Strategies

Email marketing is already one of the most profitable digital marketing channels out there. It generates an average return of $38 for every dollar spent on it.

This makes email a powerful tool for your customer reactivation strategy.

Any good email service provider will let you easily segment your email list by subscriber activity. Ecommerce focused email apps will also go further and let you segment by customer activity metrics like purchase history. This lets you easily segment your subscribers into active and inactive customers to target your messaging.

Once you’ve created your segment of dormant customers, you can then go about setting up your win back email campaign.

In this campaign, you’ll want to automate a series of at least three emails to send after someone enters your list of inactive customers. The reason for sending multiple emails is that studies show that only a quarter of disengaged customers will open your first win back email, but up to half will open subsequent ones.

The idea is to email offers to entice people to come back to your back to your store. Again, research has found that including an offer makes it twice as likely that you’ll reactivate dormant customers.

In terms of the content of these emails, some of our favorites are included below as inspiration. You can also check out this guide on winning back customers with email marketing here for a deeper dive.  

As these are automated emails, you only have to set them up once. Afterwards, you don’t have to worry about constantly creating and sending new emails.

Social Media Reactivation Strategies

As great as email marketing is, not everyone will open and read your emails. While a great subject line helps with getting more opens, you’ll also want to utilize other channels.

Targeting inactive customers on social media is a great way to increase the chance they’ll see your message.

The issue, however, is only targeting lapsed customers with your reactivation offer. You don’t want your loyal customers seeing these messages.

This is where Facebook’s  custom audiences feature becomes very useful. This lets you upload a csv file to your Facebook Ads Manager so that you’re only targeting the right people.

While you can upload this manually from your customer database, this would require you to constantly update it. Fortunately, there exist plenty of services that syncs this data to Facebook automatically.

If you’re selling on Shopify, there’s a free app that will sync your customer data to Facebook for you. And of course, remember that this also lets you run targeted ads on Instagram too.

For your inspiration, below is an example of a great customer reactivation ad.

Loyalty Programs

Sometimes the best customer reactivation strategy is preventing customers from becoming inactive in the first place. In other words, you want your customer retention and reactivation plans to work in tandem.

By encouraging people to make regular purchases from your store, you’re drastically reducing the chance they’ll become inactive. One of the best strategies to achieve this is with a loyalty program.

Your loyalty program can also serve as a great lead generation tool to attract even more customers to your store and give you an edge over competitors.

Exactly how you should go about setting up your own program will depend greatly on what type of business you have and what you’re selling. That said, the classic free gift after so many purchases is a good starting point. ReferralCandy is a great and easy option to get started which integrates with all the popular ecommerce platforms.

Combining your social strategy to develop a social media loyalty program is something you can also try.

Other Strategies

Depending on how customers interact with your brand, there may be other customer reactivation strategies you can try too.

SMS

If you collect customers’ phone numbers, you could try sending SMS reminders. Just don’t forget to first make sure your customers have agreed to receiving marketing messages by text.

Phones are also very personal, which makes SMS a personal channel too. So if you do opt for mass SMS messaging, don’t bombard your customers with too many messages. People’s tolerance for receiving marketing material in their messages app is much lower than for their inbox. So it’s best just to keep it to transactional messages and the occasional loyalty or win-back message.

Web Push Notifications

Web based push notifications are also another option. Customers will need to have previously enabled them, but if they have it’s definitely worth experimenting with.

Seeing as both text messages and web notifications are harder to ignore, you’ll likely find that they’re seen more than your emails or social ads. That said, they don’t offer you the same amount of space to include your message and branding.

Over to You

Now that you know what the most effective customer reactivation strategies are, it’s time to start implementing them.

This is not something you’ll want to put off for too long. The longer it’s been since each customer has slipped away, the harder it gets to reactivate them.

The post The Most Effective Customer Reactivation Strategies appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

This is where reactivation email campaigns become necessary. These marketing campaigns are designed to get your subscribers engaging with your emails once again. With it being around 5 times more expensive to acquire new customers than retain existing ones, the ultimate goal with these emails is not only to improve your open rates, but also drive more sales to your store.

Running reactivation marketing campaigns isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. If you’re not sure how to structure your campaign, we’ve written a post on the best practices and tips for reactivation campaigns that you can use to help guide you.

In this post, we’ll run you through ten of what we think are some of the best reactivation emails out there that we’ve seen. Use these emails to inspire you for when you’re creating your own.

Sephora

Win-Back Email with a Special Offer

When it comes to reactivation email campaigns, studies show that only around one in four of your inactive users will read your first reactivation email. The good news is that up to 45% will open subsequent emails you send. This means that your engagement email campaigns should consist of multiple emails, not just a single marketing email.

To improve the conversion rate on your first email, it’s generally a good idea to include a special offer. Mentioning the offer in your subject line also helps to get your subscribers to open your emails.

That’s exactly what this email from Sephora executes so well.

The Gap

Including a Link to Update Preferences

This email from the Gap also aims to win back customers with a special offer as a part of their reactivation strategy.

What’s also great about this email in particular is that it includes an easy way for subscribers to update their preferences. One of the leading reasons people disengage from emails or unsubscribe altogether is that they’re either receiving too many emails, or emails that aren’t relevant for them. Letting people update their preferences goes a long way to re-engaging with them.

Spy

Reactivation Email That Gives You a Reason to Stay

In addition to letting subscribers easily update their preferences and including an offer, this email from Spy also includes the top ten reasons why someone should stay on their subscriber list. Highlighting the value subscribers get from being on your email list not only helps with your reactivation email campaigns, but also with convincing people to sign up in the first place.

Office

Creative Way to Update Preferences

This email from Office asks their subscribers if you’re sending relevant emails to them in a more creative way than simply including a button. While it’s ideal to be sending relevant emails to your subscribers from the moment they sign up (something you can achieve with personalized product recommendation emails) this email does a good job at making up for sending non-targeted emails.

BuzzFeed

Cute Customer Retention Email Campaign

If your initial few reactivation emails didn’t do the trick at winning back your inactive subscribers, then it’s time to up the ante. This ultimately involves directly asking your subscribers whether they still want to be on your email list or not.

This email from BuzzFeed asks this question flawlessly. The only thing lacking is a link for people to update their preferences.

Ideally, your subscribers will want to stay on your list and start re-engaging with your email marketing again. What better way to guilt people into this than the image of the cat that BuzzFeed included?

Boden

Win-Back Email with Original Copy

This email from Boden also does a great job at asking disengaged subscribers whether they still want to receive emails or not. The copy in this email is what makes it stand out.

“What’s with the cold shoulder?” and “I need space” and both original lines and a fresh change from the stale “We miss you” and “I miss you too” lines all-too-common in win-back emails.

Including a mention of a sale that’s currently happening also helps.

Stonyfield

Reactivation Email with Creative Use of Imagery

What makes this email from Stonyfield stand out is the creative use of imagery. We definitely encourage you to think outside the box when it comes to how you use images in your reactivation email campaigns.

Just keep in mind that email inboxes will sometimes not display images properly or even at all. So always design your emails to still work without the images too.

Virgin Trains

Great Use of Subject Line for a Reactivation Campaign Email

When your disengaged subscribers just won’t open your emails anymore, the last option is to send a final reactivation email with an attention grabbing subject line.

This email from Virgin Trains does an excellent job at this. The email was sent with the subject line “All Seat sales cancelled forever”, a message sure to get even some of the most disengaged subscribers to open the email.

Virgin’s broader branding is definitely on show within the email too. It’s always email marketing best practice to keep your emails on brand as much as you can.

Lowe’s

Simple Yet Effective Win-Back Email

If you’re starting to feel that these emails set the bar too high for you to meet, rest assured that sometimes a simple email like this one from Lowe’s does the job. It’s just a simple email with some text, two buttons, an image of a sticky note and a little bit of out-of-the-box thinking.

Habitat

Reactivation Email with a Unique Strategy

Habitat takes an interesting strategy with this reactivation email – promoting their social media. Some people will prefer connecting with your brand over social media than with email, so it’s best to remind people of your social media profiles.

This kind of win-back email can easily be added to your reactivation email campaign series. The only thing lacking is that it doesn’t provide any links to unsubscribe or update one’s preferences.

Your Turn

Now it’s over to you to create your reactivation email marketing campaign. Winning back your subscribers isn’t an easy task, and you’ll never be able to win back all of your disengaged subscribers. Don’t be dissuaded though, bringing these customers back on board is usually much easier than customer acquisition in the first place.

By using the emails in this post as inspiration and following good email design guidelines, you’ll be able to win back customers and improve your bottom line.

The post 10 Reactivation Email Campaigns that Win Back Customers appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

You might think that winning back your inactive email list subscribers and customers is like trying to squeeze water out of a stone – that no matter what you do, they’ll never come back. But given that it’s at least 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, win-back email campaigns are a must-have in your email marketing arsenal.

If you haven’t already, I would highly recommend reading a previous post on our blog – How to Re-Engage and Win Back Your Store’s Customers with Email Marketing. This post provides a lot of information and best practice tips on how you can use email marketing to win back your customers.

As a follow up to this, here is a list of brilliant win-back email campaigns from other companies, to give you some inspiration for creating your own. So if you’re looking for sample emails to win back old customers, you’ve come to the right place.

Win Back Email Offer

The first email you send in your win-back campaign should include some sort of offer to recapture the attention of your subscribers. After all, 80% of people sign up to email lists to receive discounts.

1. American Apparel

Inactive subscribers may not be particularly interesting in reading through dense and wordy copy in the body of a win-back email. The minimal copy in this email from American Apparel is concise, which helps to retain the attention of their subscribers, by keeping the message of the email short and sharp.

The email places heavy emphasis on the ‘We Miss You!’ graphic. However, I think the email should instead emphasize the 15% off discount code. This would boost the likelihood of customers following through with the call to action of the email to shop on their website.

2. Buca di Beppo

This win-back email from Italian-American restaurant chain Buca di Beppo has a lot of good things going for it.

Firstly, the image and caption in the top half of the email is engaging. This is combined with a red, white and green colour scheme, which helps to establish the restaurant’s brand.

The offer provided in this email gives the customer a number of options – they can spend it online, in one of their restaurants, and to dine in or to go. This makes the $20 gift certificate much more appealing to customers, who are more likely to make use of it.

However, this makes the email a little bit wordy overall and could have been more concise; a disengaged subscriber might not spend the time to read through and comprehend the email.

3. Sephora

The offer is really clear in this Sephora email. Like Buca di Beppo, they also provide an online and offline option for their $15 gift card, making the offer more enticing for customers.

By using separate buttons for the different calls to action, the layout of the email makes it neater and easier to read when compared to the email from Buca di Beppo. The buttons at the top of the email help readers to easily navigate to different sections of the Sephora website.

While I like the colourful visual design of the email, I think the inclusion of some images of their products would give subscribers some ideas of what they could be spend their gift card on.

4. Missguided

Rather than offering a discount, Missguided instead offer free next day delivery in this win-back email. This is something that small e-commerce stores can do, if a % off or x dollars off offer isn’t possible.

Similar to Sephora, the buttons at the top of the email provide a quick way for readers to click through to the section of the Missguided website that they’re interested in.

The fun but concise copy works well with the simple layout of the email, engaging readers while also allowing them to read through it easily and quickly. However, disengaged subscribers might not want to take the time and effort to scroll through the pretty long email.

5. The Bakerista

This email from The Bakerista is my favourite of the win-back emails targeting disengaged customers with offers. The design of the email is clean, and draws attention to the buttons and images. Again, their offer is able to be used in store or online, giving the customer more options to make use of the discount.

I also like their message at the very bottom of the email, which thanks the subscriber for being a part of their email list, and also giving them the option to unsubscribe if they wish.

However, my one small suggestion would be to have a stronger call to action. Something like ‘Order Now’ or ‘Get 25% Off’ would be better as call to actions than ‘Get Back On Track’.

Win Back Email Benefits

The second email you should send in your win-back campaign is ‘the pivot’. This is your opportunity to let these inactive subscribers and customers know why they should be shopping at your e-commerce store. Basically, the aim of this email is to convince them to come back to you.

6. Polyvore

Opting for a Messenger format, Polyvore’s win-back email is visually appealing, and helps to position their brand as up to date and current. The copy is also easy for the reader to follow and subscribers are encouraged to read through the email by following the conversation. The call to action is also cleverly weaved into the design of the email.

While they mention that there are “So. Many. Sales.”, this is a little vague. Had Polyvore listed some specific sales at their store, this email might have been more convincing for customers to return to shop with them, by giving them a better idea of how they can benefit from these sales.

7. Astley Clarke

Although the design of this Astley Clarke email isn’t as eye catching as Polyvore, they do a much better job at convincing their inactive customers to return to shop at their store.

Despite being a bit lengthy for a win-back email, they make use of some funny copy in listing 17 benefits for coming back to Astley Clarke. This is effectively combined with an offer code, which generates urgency by mentioning that the offer ends in two days. As a result, customers are more likely to be won over.

The only thing I would improve with this email is to cut down the text. 17 seems like a strange number for the email to focus on. Instead, listing out 10 or even 15 reasons to shop at Astley Clarke would reduce the word count and make the email easier for readers to digest.

8. Spy

Spy’s email has all the elements you need to win back inactive subscribers on your email list.

They list a number of benefits for staying subscribed to receive their newsletter.

Listing fewer reasons than Astley Clarke did in their email, this email is cleaner and easier for subscribers to read. Each reason has different calls to action, allowing readers to click through to the content they’re interested in.

Spy even manages to include some social proof, with some positive reviews from other customers. This makes this win-back email all the more convincing for disengaged subscribers.

With a 20% off discount as the cherry on top, this makes Spy’s win-back email impossible to ignore.

Remove inactive customers

Keeping your email list clean is important. First of all, constantly cleaning out your list helps you to keep a good deliverability rate. It also means that you won’t be wasting money sending newsletters to subscribers who won’t open them.

So as a last resort, you should do one of two things. The first option is asking your inactive subscriber if they wish to stay on your email list, manage their preferences or unsubscribe. This allows subscribers to actively choose whether they want to keep receiving your emails, receive fewer emails, or none at all.

Alternately, you could just let them know you have removed them from your email list, and then give them the option to resubscribe. I would recommend this second option – inactive subscribers are probably not going to read this email after ignoring the all the other ones you’ve sent them.

9. Nordstrom

Nordstrom get right to the point with this email. Without any distracting images or copy, this places the focus on the calls to action. By including an option to receive fewer emails, subscribers can manage their preferences to only receive relevant content.

As I previously stated, this allows subscribers to make a choice about their subscription to your newsletters. While some inactive subscribers may engage with this email, if they haven’t opened any of your previous newsletters or win-back emails, chances are that they won’t be inclined to open this one.

10. Urban Outfitters

Like a similar email from Polyvore, Urban Outfitters’ email design has a Messenger format, which helps the brand feel current. Subscribers might feel more inclined to interact with this email, compared to one from Nordstrom, because of the engaging design and copy.

However, I would recommend allowing subscribers to manage their preferences. If they haven’t been opening your newsletters, you might be either sending them too many emails or irrelevant content. Allowing them to choose what they receive could keep them interested in your emails.

11. JetBlue

The main issue with this email from JetBlue is that it’s too wordy. To make this email more concise, I would cut down most of the copy, and probably remove the bottom third of the email. I do love an acrostic poem, but this might work better for JetBlue if they include it in an earlier win-back email.

I would also place more emphasis on the calls to action. By replacing the links with buttons, this would draw more attention to the calls to action and increase the likelihood that subscribers will click through.

12. DSW

DSW do their final win-back email well. The concise copy is able to be read quickly and easily, and works well with the image in the email. The call to action is clear, and invites the subscriber to actively engage with the email if they want to remain on the DSW email list.

If an inactive subscriber has reached this point in your win-back campaign, this means they haven’t opened your previous win-back emails or a number of your newsletters before this. Unfortunately, this means they probably won’t open your final win-back email either. Using a method similar to DSW basically means that you don’t have to send a fourth follow up if they remain inactive.

Conclusion

No matter how hard you try, sometimes you can’t just win back a lost customer or inactive subscriber. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t at least try. Armed with some inspiration and tips on creating your own win-back campaign, you should now start using email marketing to get subscribers to keep opening your emails and customers to keep returning to your e-commerce store.

You can also check out these customer reactivation strategies to increase you chances even further.

To give your winback emails the best chance of being opened, also be sure to check out our collection of winback subject lines.

The post 12 Examples of Irresistible E-Commerce Win-Back Email Campaigns appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

It may be after their first order, after a month, or after a few years.

You’ll be left with two options at this point:

1. Do nothing and let them get away
2. Re-engage with inactive customers and win them back through email marketing

If you’re reading this blog post and are serious about growing your business, I’m going to assume you want to implement the second option.

In the next four minutes, I am going to show you how to correctly segment inactive customers, what emails to send them, and what to do with customers who fail to engage with you completely.

Segment your inactive customers

The first step is to segment your email list and isolate customers who have not done the following things:

1. Purchased from your store within a certain time frame
2. Opened any of your last X emails

Time frame and total amount of unopened emails are variables, meaning that every business will work on unique time frames and unopened emails based on how many emails they send per month and how often customers repeat order.

To find the right time frame, look into your sales data and see how regularly your customers order. For example, if you’re an online grocery service, you may find your typical customer orders every seven days, whereas if you’re a clothing retailer, customers may order once per month or bi-monthly.

If I were running an online grocery store where my customers order once per week, then if a customer had not placed an order within 40 days, I would consider them inactive and place them in my re-engagement list. For a clothing store where customers on average order once per month, I’d consider them inactive after three months of no orders.

Each business is different, and you’ll have to define your user inactivity based on how average customers order, how often they need a new version of your product, and your email frequency.

Don’t make the activity period too long that they forget about your business completely.

Note: You will need to test around a little when deciding a time frame to qualify a subscriber as inactive to see which frequency is ideal for your business.

You’ll also be able to filter your list by email opens. If a customer has not opened any of your last 10 or so emails, then it’s safe to say you’ve lost their engagement and they are now inactive.

Segment your inactive list into categories

If you manage a large email list or have a number of customer profiles, you must further segment inactive customers into different categories to ensure they receive the right personalized re-engagement campaign.

For example, if you run an online clothing store, you may want to categorize your inactive customers by:

• gender
• item purchased
• brand/collection purchased

This categorization will allow you to personalize your re-engagement emails to win back more customers; customers who love shoes can be sent a unique offer about shoes, for example, or customers who buy a particular fashion brand can be given a voucher for that brand, and so on.

Each category should have its own re-engagement email series. Mass blasting your inactive customers with an annoying, un-personalized, generic email is not how you win them back.

Types of emails to send

Studies show that, on average, only 24% of your disengaged customers will open your first re-engagement email, but as many as 45% will read emails sent thereafter.

What this tells us is that a re-engagement campaign shouldn’t just be a single email, but a series of emails to re-ignite lost customers.

Here is a simple three-step template you can use to create your next reengagement campaign:

Step 1: The offer – Return Path found that offering customers a discount or a percentage off their order were twice as successful as re-engagement emails that didn’t contain any kind of offer.

There’s a high probability that some of your inactive customers are using a competitor or their email inbox is continually being bombarded and you have lost their interest.

A personalized offer is the easiest way to grab their attention back and nudge them off the fence to turn them into a paying customer. Come up with a relevant offer for each category of customers that will urge them to take action.

The offer can be a percentage off their order, a fixed amount, or a free trial of your product or service.

Here’s an email from Blue Apron sent to inactive customers offering them 50% off in they order within the next 24 hours:

Source

The value proposition is clearly stated in the email and the time construct (24 hours) encourages inactive customers to act now or lose out on 50% discount.

Here’s another win-back email from Paleo Robbie, a food delivery service, offering inactive customers a voucher to kick-start their healthy eating in January:

This win-back email works because it was sent at the start of the year, at a time when many of us set health-related New Year’s resolutions.

Tip: Since only 24% of users will open your first re-engagement email, you can re-segment the other 76% in your list and send them a similar email, with a new subject line and some fresh content detailing your same offer.

Wait at least 3 days before doing this to give inactive customers a chance to read your original email.

Any inactive customer who takes action and redeems your offer should be placed back into your active email list and they should not receive any more re-engagement emails.

Step 2: The pivot – You’ve sent two different emails to customers with personalized offers and they’ve failed to take action on either.

Now it’s time to pivot your message and focus on showing them the value they are missing by not using your product.

Chain Reaction Cycles do this by sending customers five compelling reasons why they should come back, listing their USPs and giving customers a £10 discount off their next order.

Source

You can send inactive customers testimonials, good press you’ve received, or even content such as blog posts or videos to emphasize the value of your products and get them spending again.

Tip: Just like in Step 1, you can create two or more emails. For example, the first email will show your unique USPs and the second email will take customers to a blog post or customer reviews.

Step 3: Purge the dead wood – No matter what methods you try, you won’t be able to re-engage all your inactive customers, and that’s okay.

Customers come and go, so to ensure your email list is responsive and deliverability is at its highest, inform all inactive customers that you’re deleting them from your newsletter and give them the option to re-subscribe.

Bath and Body Works send all inactive customers a final email letting them know they are going to be removed from their newsletter.

Source

AirAsia also employ the same tactic, using humor to win customers back.
Sending emails to customers who aren’t engaging is like beating a dead horse: it only damages your email performance and skews your email metrics.

When to send your emails

The timing of your re-engagement emails is crucial.

You don’t want to make the mistake of sending them at the same time or day as your regular campaigns. Inactive customers have shown signs that they are tired of your content, and so it’s time to mix things up.

Here are a few things you should consider when deciding on when to send your emails:

Show me the money – Most people get paid at the end of the month, so disposable income is high and many are looking for an excuse to spend money. If your business doesn’t have seasonal offers (mentioned below), consider sending out your re-engagement emails at the end of each month when the majority of people receive their salary.

Seasonal holidays – It is extremely useful to leverage seasonal holidays if you sell seasonable products. For example, retail clothing brands will have spring, summer, fall, and winter product lines, whereas electronics brands look forward to Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas.

If your niche has enough holidays throughout the year, tie in a holiday with a great personalized offer when sending your emails to make the biggest impact, like Paleo Robbie in the example above.

Day – If none of the above fit your business model, according to Co Schedule, Tuesday is the best day to send emails.

Source

I don’t advise sending re-engagement emails on a Monday because most people go back to work with an inbox full of emails. The first thing they do is delete all the emails that aren’t relevant to their needs and focus only on the most important.

If you already send your regular emails on a Tuesday, then go with Thursday instead, which was voted the second best day.

What to do if you cannot engage with your list

Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and other inbox service providers (ISPs) have made it easier for your subscribers to block your emails without actually unsubscribing from your newsletter.

If a customer marks your email as spam, all future emails will be redirected to their spam folder without you ever knowing.

Gmail and all the other major ISPs want to see evidence that your subscribers love recieving your emails, which means they open and read them. Continued sending to an address that hasn’t opened a significant amount of campaigns in row due to being uninterested or marking your messages as spam is proof that you’re not regularly cleaning your list and will damage deliverability for your when sending to your present and FUTURE subscribers!

As long as the user is still subscribed to your email list, you have one final way to re-engage with them: Facebook.

Using Facebook custom audiences, you can upload your inactive email list and serve them the exact message in your re-engagement campaign through Facebook ads.

Create a page on your website with the same content as your emails to serve to your inactive customer list. With the average Facebook user spending 50 minutes per day on the platform, its a great way to reach subscribers who may not be reading your emails.

Note: Facebook ads require marketing capital – you’re charged per click or per 1,000 impressions. Inactive customer lists under 5,000 people won’t usually require more than $50 in ad spend to reach them. You can also do the same with Google Ads, but it’s much more difficult to get your message across through display ads.

Your turn

Although you will spend a lot of time, money, and effort building an active email list, no matter what you do, customers will at some point stop engaging.

Marketing Sherpa believe that 75% of an email list, on average, is inactive – that’s a lot of locked up revenue in your list that can be cracked open with the right email techniques.

The best thing about a re-engagement campaign is that once it is set up, everything can be automated using SmartrMail. You write the emails once, set the parameters to define your inactive customers, and then let SmartrMail do the rest.

When was the last time you ran a re-engagement campaign for old customers? Better yet, how much money are you leaving in your email list?

The post How to Re-Engage and Win Back Your Store’s Customers with Email Marketing appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.