How to use email to win back your customers: 5 examples of irresistible winback emails

Companies often focus on acquiring new contacts, forgetting about those customers who have been reached and courted with so much effort. And it's a short step from neglecting these customers to losing them. So here are some tips to recover your customers with the right campaign and regain their trust.

Receiving a yes from a contact after a long courtship and surprising him with your trump cards is always a source of great satisfaction. But if you think that acquiring a new contact can cost up to 5 times more than maintaining an existing one and that on average about 40% of revenues come from those customers who have already bought in the past, you would realize how important it is to put practice a customer recovery strategy that convinces them to trust you again.

Customer recovery emails are a great tool to implement a strategy of getting people to come back and an effective weapon to grow sales and keep your contact list clean and active. So let's find out what they are, what their advantages are and, above all, what best practices and examples you can follow to create your own recovery campaign.

What are recovery emails?

Also called email winbacks , these recovery campaigns are all you need to reconnect and reawaken the interest of all those contacts in your database who have stopped opening and clicking your messages.

Their purpose is to stimulate the engagement of the recipient through discounts, promotions or content targeted to his interests.

These recovery campaigns are often sent automatically after a certain amount of time has passed since the recipient's last interaction , using Marketing Automation to set the right sending conditions (which you will have determined after proper testing).

4 benefits of customer recovery emails

Customer recovery campaigns, as well as being a practical signal of the importance that each customer has for the company, can guarantee a series of advantages that should not be underestimated:

• increase the average return on investment and promote sales, as they are addressed to a customer who has already shown interest in your brand
• keep the database clean and healthy , reducing the number of inactive customers on the one hand and favoring the unsubscription of unrecoverable ones on the other
• protect deliverability , allowing your emails to no longer be ignored by contacts and thus avoiding the risk of ending up in the spam folder
• improve the performance of your future campaigns (about 45% of reactivated contacts start opening subsequent messages again).

How to create a customer recovery campaign

1. Identify inactive customers

Even before creating a customer recovery campaign, make sure you identify the segment of inactive contacts that you risk losing at any moment. In fact, the life cycle of the user within a database can go through a series of different phases and each contact list has more or less active segments in terms of engagement.

Our advice is therefore to always monitor the various levels of engagement in your database and to analyze the behavior of your recipients to determine the degree of interaction with your campaigns . On the practical side, you can consult the statistics of your mailings and take advantage of tools such as engagement filters to define the cluster of users to stimulate and send your customer recovery campaigns only to the identified segments.

2. Write an effective subject line

Without the right subject line, there's a very good chance the user will ignore your recovery campaign as well. Therefore, writing an object that intrigues and makes the recipient understand the intent of the campaign right away is essential. You can also consider entering the lever you intend to use to stimulate the user already from the object, such as an ad hoc discount code.

Items starting with “We miss you” have an average open rate of 24%, while those containing the word “Discount” get an average open rate of 20% (Source: Klaviyo).

3. Create content that keeps people coming back

Without a reason that convinces the customer to buy from you again , getting their trust back will be very difficult. Whether it's an ad hoc discount code, a suggestion of a product or service that, based on your data, might be of interest to him, or the creation of a showcase of best-selling products to exploit the psychological mechanism of social proof , find something the customer can't resist.

4. Send the message at the right time

Recovering customers is more effective when sending is done with timing, without letting too much time pass since the contact's last activity . The customer reactivation rate reaches 28.5% in fact when the sending takes place within 3 months of the last action taken.

5 examples of customer recovery messages

Making the customer feel important: the example of Tula

With the subject “We never do this but we miss you” (“We never do this but we miss you”) the Tula brand makes the recipient feel unique and important by offering an ad hoc discount code that facilitates the purchase.

Because it's effective

The discount code , the object that intrigues and leverages the uniqueness of the promotion, the inclusion of reviews from other customers: three elements that make this campaign a winner (+ the bold discount code that certainly doesn't go unnoticed).

Give a reason to come back: the example of Glotrition

In this Glotrition campaign, the real strong point is the copy , which provides a concrete motivation for the customer to come back , explaining that the constant and continuous use (therefore also the periodic purchase) of the brand's products is necessary in order not to age like the dog of the visual (used in a metaphorical and ironic key, another plus of this campaign).

Because we like it

The metaphorical association between the "wrinkles" of the dog in the image and the wrinkles that the brand's flagship product would make disappear from the customer's skin is ironic and very persuasive.

Remind the customer of the renewal of the service: the Netflix reminder email

The end of an era. The copy chosen by Netflix, in complete cinematic style that goes very well with the brand, immediately captures the customer's attention . Under the guise of a simple expiration notice email, the brand hides the intention of preventing a hypothetical cancellation of the service by the user.

Because we like it

The copy is consistent with the brand and leaves its mark . The email does not have an insistent and annoying tone and the invitation to continue the subscription service is subtle, imperceptible and non-invasive.

Communicate something new to renew interest: the example of Grammarly

With this recovery email, Grammarly informs the customer of a new product/service and invites the user to discover it by recovering the downtime on the application.

The copy reminds the user that in the past the use of the tool was useful for him to stimulate him to use it again.

Because we like it

The email has a simple, clean and concise style . The CTA button at the bottom is original and very impactful.

Give a sense of urgency: the example of Skillshare

In this recovery campaign, Skillshare is offering a one-day limited discount to give a sense of urgency to the promotion and encourage the customer to get back active. The promotion therefore assumes the characteristics of an indispensable and unrepeatable offer , to be grasped instantly.

Because we like it

In addition to the offer, the brand warns the user of the latest news that he hasn't discovered yet, creating curiosity and interest. Giving a discount on an additional month to a subscription that has recently been enriched with new features is a great way to let the user discover new things for a limited time and convince him to continue with his subscription beyond the month of promotion.

Now it's your turn

These were some theoretical and practical tips to start recovering lost customers by exploiting the full potential of the email channel. Now it's your turn! Start creating your recovery campaigns with your email marketing platform and discover all the advantages of this strategy to increase your sales and reactivate the interest of your contacts.