In the past month, I’ve received a handful of emails from companies that were trying to reengage or reactivate me as a customer. Have you seen these types of emails before? The emails with catchy subject lines like “We miss you [your name]” or “Did you forget about us? Here’s 10% off your next purchase”.
Such emails are completely intentional, you have been segmented into a customer group that hasn’t bought from or interacted with them for a certain time. This can be two weeks, a month or even a year since you last used a business.
The company is essentially throwing their fishing net back into the sea of previous customers, hoping for some of these “fish” to latch on. Do you think this is a successful marketing strategy? Let’s dive deeper into client reactivation campaigns.
What is client reactivation?
Reactivation campaigns are a marketing technique to reach out to leads who have once expressed interest, purchased, or engaged with a business in some way. These leads are categorised as cold or abandoned, and the goal of reactivation is to ‘warm’ these leads up to start the nurturing process again.
A reactivation email campaign can target three types of leads:
- Customers who haven’t bought or engaged with your business in a while – We want to reactivate these clients. For example, offer exclusive deals and bring up what they are missing out on (think FOMO!).
- Leads that didn’t convert – The hope is to re-engage and activate these leads, you want them to end up converting.
- Existing customers – We want to retain these leads. Provide value in different ways, for instance, offering relevant tips or guides.
Why do we use client reactivation techniques?
There are normally three reasons why we lose customers:
- Something went wrong – Although hard to admit, businesses make mistakes. As unavoidable as it is, the consequence of these mistakes is that you lose customers and revenue.
- Competitor offered a better deal – This applies to price-sensitive consumers that base their decisions solely on the price of a product or service.
- Absence of nurturing – As soon as a customer feels neglected or undervalued, your customer may be snagged up by your competitor. If you fail to nurture and build customer relationships, they may start looking elsewhere.
82% of companies say it’s cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones.
This is why we use client reactivation campaigns – it is significantly more cost effective. The most popular channels that can be used to reactivate customers include email, SMS, social media, and website (push notifications).
How do client reactivation campaigns work?
A segmented, well-planned strategy is absolutely crucial to reactivation campaigns. It is not a good look if you attempt to reactivate a customer that was unhappy with your service or you send a “we miss you” email to a customer who bought from you yesterday.
- Segment the customers who have not engaged with your business in the last 6 to 12 months. This timeframe varies depending on the industry and what you sell, for instance – would it be effective to reactivate a customer 6 months after they purchased a $80,000 car from you? Chances are, they would not be interested in buying again in this short period.
- Find out what the reasons are for the inactivity or non-conversion. This would require you to study your last interactions with inactive leads – notice any patterns or trends?
- Create engaging and tailored communications to gain the interest of these leads.
- Make sure you add a clear call-to-action at the end of the email so they have an outlet to reengage, for example, including links to new products or a blog post.
- If this is appropriate for your business and offering, follow up with direct phone calls.
Reactivate your clients with LANA
Now that you know what and how client reactivation campaigns are used for, it’s time to start implementing them. Don’t know where to begin? LANA is here to help!
Get in touch with the LANA team today and we’ll change the way you see client reactivation campaigns with our software. See our website or book a live demo for a sneak peek into the LANA platform!
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