Sigh…they’re gone. The customer that once was so engaged and eager to open every one of your emails has left your latest ones untouched, gathering dust in their inbox. Maybe one more email will get them back? Nope—still unopened. Should you give up? Call it quits?
Before you hang a plaque above your desk that reads “Don’t Cry Because It’s Over, Smile Because It Happened,” there’s one more tactic we recommend trying: the winback campaign. Winning back a churned customer, however your brand defines churn, isn’t always easy, but with the right strategy in place, you can bring your once-loyal customers back into the fold.
Our latest ebook, Please Don’t Go: Building an Effective Winback Campaign, will guide you through the process of defining churn, knowing when to implement your campaign, and questions to ask yourself as you build it.
Below is a quick preview of the content we share in the ebook.
What is a Winback Campaign?
It’s important to distinguish between winback and re-engagement. Re-engagement campaigns often focus on one marketing channel while winback campaigns focus on the customer-brand relationship as a whole.
Winback campaigns are built around a customer’s entire relationship with your brand, across all channels, to provide a seamless experience and build loyalty in the hopes of increasing customer lifetime value (LTV).
Make It Personal
As the proponents of personalization, it’s no surprise that we’re recommending a personal touch be added to your winback campaigns. Think about it, if someone ghosts and you’re trying to win them back, what would grab their attention more, a text that just says “Hey” or a text with their name in it?
No one, including your customers, wants to feel like one in a sea of many. Customers want to feel like the only one on your subscriber list, getting unique, customized content delivered directly to them. The ability to customize content relies on the right technology for collecting customer data. When you have a customer who has been loyal and since churned, you likely have a mountain of information about that customer that can be utilized in your winback campaigns.
As you build your winback campaign, you’ll need to ask yourself some questions to make sure you’re reaching the right customers and personalizing your campaigns to fit their needs.
Five Steps to Campaign Success
In the ebook we highlight five important steps for building a winback campaign.
These five steps are:
- Defining Churn
- Looking at a Churned Customer’s Past Behavior
- Looking at a Churned Customer’s Current Behavior
- Segmenting Churned Customers
- Developing Cross-Channel Communications for Segments
Within each of these steps there are questions for you to consider. For example, in the first step, “What action, or inaction, defines churn?” These questions will make sure your entire team is aligned from the beginning of the campaign creation.
Our goal is to equip you and your team with the right tools and resources to develop a campaign that delights even the ghostiest of ghosts.
For the full list of guiding questions and a more in depth look at winback campaigns, and examples from top brands, download the ebook.
