3 persona based re-engagement journeys to win back customers

According to Marketing Sherpa marketers loose over 25% of their active email marketing database every year. Essentially, if no action is taken, 25% of your subscribers stop engaging with your brand – this means lower email marketing metrics and ultimately lower overall results whatever your objective, be that leads or sales. Often subscribers that are disengaged won’t bother to unsubscribe so your emails start moving to their junk boxes which then leads to a negative impact on the rest of your list.

As marketers we are all aware that repeat customers are an incredibly valuable asset to our business and that it costs so much more to earn new customers than it does to keep the old ones happy and engaged.

Designed by our Principal Consultant, the aim of this guide is to show you, (through the lens of a brand and 3 personas), how you can curate the optimum re-engagement campaigns to re-ignite the spark your subscribers felt when they first started their relationship with you.

The Brand

What do we know?

This business has a large cohort of customers who are disengaged. (They have not opened for over 12 months)

What’s the documented objective for this re-engagement campaign?

To move 10% out of the cohort into re-engaged

To increase opens, clicks and purchases

What data do we need?

Open and click history. Purchase history

The Persona Based Campaigns

Persona 1 – The Active Customer, but not opened in 12 months

What do we know? The customer is active and have purchased in the last 12 months, however has not engaged with our email content in the last 12 months. Although still a purchaser, this disengaged customer could be harming our sender reputation.

What do we want them to do? We want to get them engaging in our content and new products.

What tactics do we use? As they are already a customer in the past we can use FOMO tactics to drive them back

The targeted campaign:

Email 1 – The FOMO

You’re missing out on the best deals online right now. Show the items that are on sale/the best deals etc

Email 2 – The Best Sellers

What are the top items on your site? Show them what they are missing out on.

Email 3 – Social Proof

Show them how happy you make your customers. Use testimonials, case studies and imbed stories from social or feedback sites.

Persona 2 – The Lapsed Customer and not opened in 12 months

What do we know? The customer has not bought from you for 12 months and has stopped engaging.

What do we want them to do? Buy an item and re-engage

What tactics do we use? FOMO. Incentives. Objection Handle.

The targeted campaign:

Email 1 – FOMO

You’re missing out on the best deals! Show the items that are on sale/the best deals etc

Email 2 – The Best Sellers

What are the top items on your site? Show them what they are missing out on.

Email 3 – Social Proof

Show them how happy you make your customers. Use testimonials, case studies and imbed stories from social or feedback sites.

Email 4 – Incentivise

Offer an incentive to bring them back. Free delivery. Vouchers. Think about the Customer Lifetime Value for this cohort if you were to bring them back.

Email 5 – Remind/Signpost

Think about the challenges facing the customer right now. How can you help overcome them? Could you push them to purchase from store or promote other channels that they might be interested in? This could be the right time to promote telephone numbers or online chat.

Persona 3 – Prospect and not opened in 12 months

What do we know? The prospect has created an account, never purchased and has not opened an email in the last 12 months.

What do we want them to do? Buy an item and re-engage!

What tactics do we use? Incentivise nudging to the first purchase.

The targeted campaign:

Email 1 – Incentivise

Use the incentives early, this audience may be holding off for the right deal.

Email 2 – Best Sellers

What are the top selling items at the moment? Remind them about what they could be missing out on.

Email 3 – Social Proof

Show them how happy you make your customers. Use testimonials, case studies and imbed stories from social or feedback sites.

Email 4 – FOMO

You’re missing out on the best deals! Show the items that are on sale/the best deals etc

Email 5 – Remind/Signpost

Think about the challenges facing the customer right now. How can you help overcome them? Could you push them to purchase from store or promote other channels that they might be interested in? This could be the right time to promote telephone numbers or online chat. At this point you could also increase the incentive.

Testing

It’s so easy to overlook the importance of testing. Continuous experimenting and testing is the quickest path to improving results for your business. Dedicating time and resources to testing these journeys, with various timings, content and subject line will allow you to implement the best email marketing journeys for your business.

For more inspiration on re-engagement campaigns we recommend you take a look at this blog, which takes you through real life brand examples of awesome re-engagement campaigns.