Any company that has been selling for a few years has, in its invoicing software or its online store, a list of people who bought at some point and then disappeared. They already know you, and writing to them usually costs less than finding new buyers. A win-back email campaign tries to get back in touch without turning an old list into a problem.
The risk is real: addresses that no longer work, people who mark the message as spam, the question of whether you are allowed to write to them at all. That is why the work starts with the list and the rules, and the copy comes only at the end.
Who you are allowed to write to: consent and an existing relationship
For commercial messages by email, the basic rule is the recipient’s prior consent. There is also a narrow exception for existing customers: messages about your own products or services, similar to those bought, sent to addresses received directly from the customer, provided the person was able to refuse when the address was collected and can refuse in every message. It does not automatically cover an old list.
Whether your list meets these conditions is not for us to decide. It depends on how and when the addresses were collected and on what the form said at the time. You check with your data protection officer or a lawyer, and we prepare a clear picture: where each group of addresses comes from, from what period, with which tick box. Unclear contacts are set aside.
Segmenting by last order
“Lapsed customer” means something different from one company to the next. For someone selling coffee or consumables, a buyer is inactive after a few months of silence. Someone who fits central heating boilers can wait years between two orders without the relationship being lost. The threshold is set from your own data: how long usually passes between two orders from the same person.
Then we divide the list by how recently the person bought, how often and for what value. For companies that sell to other companies, a phone call from the salesperson sometimes does more than any email.
- Just gone cold: they are slightly past the usual interval; a reminder is enough.
- Inactive with a good history: they get the whole series.
- One-time buyers: a short message, without assuming they remember you.
- Very old: the riskiest addresses; they are checked carefully or no longer used.
Cleaning the list before the first message
Mailbox providers judge a sender by how recipients react. A send to thousands of old addresses, many of which no longer exist, can damage the domain’s reputation for all the company’s email, including invoices and quotes.
So we remove duplicates, run the list through an address verification service (chosen with the data protection officer’s agreement, since it receives personal data) and take out what no longer exists. We check the domain’s authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC, the records by which recipients’ servers recognise that the message comes from you). Then we send in small batches, starting with the most recent segments, and watch the bounces and complaints.
The message series in a win-back email campaign, step by step
A single email saying “we miss you” with a discount code is the easy option. A series in a few steps, a few days apart, leaves room for different reasons to come back and stops by itself when the person orders.
Tone matters more than design: short messages, written as one person to another. A discount is not compulsory. For many service businesses, a reminder at the right moment (the annual service, the renewal of a subscription) is a better reason than price.
- The reminder: who you are, what the person bought from you, what is new since then.
- Something useful: a guide, a maintenance tip, something new in the range they bought from.
- The offer: if it makes commercial sense, with a clear deadline and no hidden conditions.
- The direct question: do you still want messages from us? One button for yes, one to unsubscribe.
What to do with those who do not respond
Those who open nothing and click on nothing in the series come out of the regular sends. Their addresses, and those of people who have unsubscribed, go onto a suppression list so that they are not re-imported at the next sync with the store. How long an inactive buyer’s data is kept is decided by the same data protection officer.
The measurement is honest if we keep a control group: a small part of each segment does not receive the series, and at the end we compare the two groups’ orders. Otherwise you take credit for people who would have come back anyway. And one limitation: if people left because of quality or price, no email will fix that.
Frequently asked questions
Can I also send the messages to people who never subscribed to the newsletter?
Not automatically: it depends on how the data was collected and on what they were told at the time. There is an exception, with strict conditions, for messages about similar products sent to existing customers, but whether it applies to your list is for your data protection officer or a lawyer to confirm. Until that is confirmed, these addresses are set aside.
Is a discount really necessary to bring people back?
No. A discount given to everyone also rewards those who would have bought at full price, and teaches people to wait. Often something new, or a reminder linked to the product they bought, works better.
How often is a campaign like this repeated?
The first round, on a list built up over years, is a separate project, with checking and cleaning. After that, win-back becomes an automated flow: each person enters the series when they pass the inactivity threshold that has been set.
This is a typical project description: it shows how we usually approach this kind of work and does not present a project carried out for a particular client. Every real project starts from your company’s situation, and the stages, timescales and price are agreed after the initial discussion.