Let’s be real – acquiring customers is not an easy task! In fact, it’s pretty costly, time-consuming and challenging. Research shows that 70% of businesses agree it’s cheaper to retain customers than to attract new ones. Regardless of this fact, most of the businesses still focus on acquiring new customers rather than taking good care of the existing. When companies fail to do so, it is when a win-back campaign can make a difference.
The main reasons why customers are leaving are because they are not satisfied with the way they are treated, or because there is something about your product or service that does not sit well with them anymore. Therefore, if customers are leaving, you have to do something as quickly as possible.
So, instead of putting all your efforts only into customer acquisition, bear in mind that customer re-engagement is the other part of the story, if not the more important one. Email automation will certainly help with reaching the wanted results for customer re-engagement and to generate more sales. Remember how much effort you’ve put into bringing people through your door? Well now, don’t leave the door open!
We’ve selected 4 types of win-back campaigns that will help you increase your retention rate and keep customers happy:
1. Ask for Feedback
If for some reason, your customers are not visiting your web or app for some time, it means that something is not the way they expected. You need to find out what is the reason causing that. Is your product not useful to them anymore? Or maybe they have experienced some problems using your services.
From this perspective, the best thing you can do is ask people for feedback. This is where email automation can help you to identify the problem, solve it and get back to people with good news.
2. “We Miss You” Campaign
Let’s assume you are in a position where you are losing a lot of customers. Before you go ahead and invest a lot of time & money in trying to acquire new customers, you should try and win back these lapsing customers. One way you can do this is to create a “we-miss-you” campaign.
It’s about reaching customers who haven’t been around for some time saying, “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while and I really miss you!”. It’s the simplest way to show people you care.
However, to be more certain, you can always A/B test your win-back campaigns asking different types of questions or using different phrases. For example, you can say “We really miss you” or “It’s not the same without you” and see which one shows better results. Sometimes, it’s ONE word that makes all the difference.
To maximize your chances of bringing people back, you can offer something for free! It can be a gift card, a sample of your products, or a discount. In any case, offer people a token of appreciation to show them you care!
Example:
For the purposes of a food app, we created a win-back campaign. The segment included people who were inactive for 8 weeks. By inactive we consider all the users who didn’t open the app or made any action in it whatsoever. Our goal at this point was to find out the reason why this was happening. Whether it was our service or some other external factors.
So, we sent a “We-miss-you email” to all of them. What we expected was around a 30% open rate. However, we obtained 22%, which is satisfactory taking into consideration that it’s a win-back campaign. In a few words, we brought back 70% of the users who opened the email back to our funnel!
Remember that a lapsed customer can become one of your biggest sources of feedback and brand advocacy. Don’t leave that on the table.
3. Product Updates and New Features Campaign
Another thing you can do to boost your win-back campaign is to introduce new features and updates. It may be something that will interest people and possibly bring them back. Each business is different. So maybe you can solve a certain problem, introduce a new feature, or maybe improve an already existing product or service. Whatever the case, let people know.
Let’s take Domino’s for an example. After collecting feedback from customers, they realized that people don’t like the taste of their pizza. They considered all the comments and created a new solution to satisfy customers’ needs. It was called “The Pizza Turnaround”.
4. Campaign with personalized content based on user history
People nowadays are busier than ever. They don’t have that much time to shop, so they find brands they prefer and do the shopping online most of the time.
When there is a situation where you, as a brand, have to engage your subscribers, one other thing you can do is send personalized content. This means you have to show the most relevant items to customers!
In this phase of a win-back campaign, you have to seriously consider personalizing the content you send to users! With the help of software for behavioral targeting, you can show people content related to what they have previously bought or browsed. This is a perfect way to save them time or even encourage them not to go to your competition.
So, the messages you send to people will be based on their browsing and shopping history. By showing people what they’re looking for, you’re making their experience a lot easier.
Conclusion:
To be constantly aware of your customers’ needs, you have to test, analyze, and improve your processes all the time. With a bit of marketing magic and the right tools, you can find out why your customers are lapsing and revive the relationship once again.
So, make sure you leverage customer data you have and use it to learn when and how to send things and when to let go. Remember, if you are not willing to engage your customers, it means you are ready to lose them!
If you need support with the process of enabling push notifications or selecting the right systems for the complete process of marketing automation, do not hesitate to contact Alite International. We have been working with multiple large organizations in supporting their move towards full marketing automation. Send us an email on kiril.jakimovski@alite-international.com.
