Creating an effective win-back email campaigns
As per an HBR study, the cost of acquiring a new customer can be 5 to 25 times higher than the cost of retaining an existing customer.
This statistic alone speaks volumes about the need to have an effective customer win-back strategy, but inactive customers pose a further risk of giving you a poor sender reputation. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) take note of inactivity trends and mark sender email addresses as SPAM based on the same, making it crucial for a sender to minimize the number of inactive subscribers.
Here are a few things which can help achieve this:
Data to identify targets
When you start thinking along the lines of ‘how do I re-engage my email-subscribers,’ the first thing to do is to identify the specific set of subscribers with whom you want to reconnect.
First and foremost, use the available data to define clear parameters for identifying someone as an inactive subscriber and deciding which of these subscribers are worth winning back. These parameters may vary depending on the nature of a business. For instance, a customer-centric approach may take order value as its baseline, making customers who have placed high-value orders in the past and then gone inactive a prime target for the win-back email campaigns. On the other hand, a subscriber-centric approach might put more emphasis on customers who have not opened the last 5-10 emails.
Also, once you start running a campaign, the incoming data can help you identify the approach or copy that achieves best results.
A subject line to hook attention
The job of a good subject line is to grab the reader’s attention and get him to open the email. Humorous and sentimental sentences go a long way towards achieving this and they are also effective in overcoming the subscriber’s apathy and inertia towards clicking open your mail.
Email subject lines which use phrases like ‘miss you’ or ‘come back’ to establish an emotional connection with the reader have a 12-13 percent read rate, according to research done by Return Path.
Similarly, good-natured humor is a great tool to build instant rapport and instill curiosity in someone who would have just kept scrolling and ignored your mail otherwise.
A creative copy to reel-in subscribers
Once the subscriber has opened up your mail it is your job to convince him either to reconnect, which is preferable, or to let go completely. The message should be crisp and clear without any beating around the bush, and it can try to incorporate some, or all, of the following approaches:
Remind the subscribers about the unique benefits you offer them and the history they share with you.
- Try to find out the reason for inactivity and if possible, address it. For example, some subscribers may be satisfied by reducing the email frequency.
- Offer a discount or a coupon as an incentive.
- Even in the case a subscriber chooses to discontinue with subscription, try to collect data about the reasons behind this.
Take a look at this amazing sample email sent out by teespring to win back old customers:
Now, wait no more
By taking note of these key pointers and making just a little bit of extra effort to establish a real bond with subscribers, considerable headway can be made towards customer retention. We suggest you start crafting an effective win-back email campaign right away. You can also tap into Epsilon’s award-winning Email marketing solution to connect with your customers on an individual level.
