Reactivating inactive customers is an inexpensive and excellent way to get dormant customers and clients buying from you again, and helps you avoid the mistake of thinking they’re dead and buried forever!
The advantage you have by taking this approach vs trying to generate brand new clients from scratch, is the significantly lower amount of friction you’ll encounter to getting engagement.
Because they’ve already bought from you, they know they can trust you and have already seen the value you provide in your services.
What this means is the selling part has already been successfully executed, and now it’s simply a case of establishing what level of interest remains in their mind, such that they would consider returning and paying you once more for your services.
There are many articles and blog posts on the web already written regarding customer reactivation emails, and so we’re not going to cover the exact same stuff here.
What will help you the most is understanding what the fundamental parts of those tactical re-engagement emails are, so you can create your own flavour and format that best suits your business.
How to Maximise Your Re-engagement Campaigns’ Success Potential
Follow these 5 simple steps…
1 – Craft a Powerful & Eye-Catching Headline that Immediately Acknowledges the Customer Hasn’t Bought For a While
Make sure your headline grabs your reader’s attention and is clear in terms of why the email is being sent. You want the client to be reminded of the fact they’ve not bought from you for some time, and you want them to do something about it – so tell them straight.
Which means avoiding soft, pappy headlines such as;
- How’s it going?
- Just checking in…
- We’ve missed you!
- Have we done something to upset you?
These are just wasted words that do not directly address your real point.
2 – Use Personalisation
It doesn’t take much effort to use the name of the past customer and it can make a significant difference to your email open and engagement rates.
On the majority of email platforms now, you can achieve personalisation using the {firstname_fix!} function. The actual command wording my vary slightly from platform to platform, but more often than not, it’s going to be that.
A nice touch is to also use the customer’s name at least one or two more times throughout the email. Again this technique isn’t used often and always has a positive effect on the customer, as we all like reading or seeing our name.
3 – Make an Offer
In the body of the email, remind the customer that you consider them just that—‘a valued customer’ – and you want them back. Give them a strong reason why they should return, by sweetening the communication with a great offer in the form of an incentive or reward for coming back, e.g. a discount or some kind of freebie.
4 – Put a Deadline on the Offer
Be sure to ask them to take action and always use a deadline on your offers, as this activates the FOMO response – the fear of missing out!
Because nobody wants to miss out on a great offer do they?
The time component helps focus their mind by creating a sense of urgency, and this will drive more engagement.
And, of course, stick to your word and retract the offer once the deadline has passed, otherwise the next time you use that approach the appeal will lessen because you won’t be believed.
5 – Combine the Elapsed Time Since Last Purchase, Personalisation, and the Offer in your Headline
To create maximum impact with your headline so you generate more email opens, combine 3 of these tactics into your headline, e.g.
- Mark – Amazing offer for you as one of our most valued, long term clients!…
- Michelle – Special deal when you buy/book your next [insert product/insert service]!…
- Tracey, did you miss our exclusive offer on your next [insert product/insert service] purchase?…
Because you only have a limited amount of headline real estate, it’s going to be hard to also include the time-sensitive details; this is especially so with mobiles which offer even less real estate than do PCs.
So make sure you grab the attention as early as possible in the headline by front-loading the information.
Ok – now it’s time to re-engage your inactive customers!
Discover how we can help you start generating more website traffic.
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