Creating Effective Email Winback Flows

Winning a new customer is just the first step in building a successful relationship with your brand. The real opportunity – and challenge – lies in converting that initial purchase into a long-term relationship. This is where re-engagement becomes essential. Keeping customers engaged and connected to your brand is critical to encouraging repeat purchases.

Ideally, you can proactively guide customers toward their next order using targeted post-purchase flows and inspirational email campaigns. However, even with strong strategies in place, some customers will inevitably become disengaged and move into "overdue" status. Here's what to consider to design effective win-back flows.

Why Most Winback Flows Don't Work

Let's be real—most brands default to triggering winback flows at the 90-day mark without questioning if it's the right approach. The rationale? If a customer hasn't made another purchase within three months, their likelihood of churning skyrockets. This is true, especially in industries like Beauty & Cosmetics or Supplements.

So, what's the go-to reaction? Toss out a discount to rope them back in before they're gone for good. This strategy is not just overplayed—it's borderline ineffective.

How to Make Them Work

1. Orchestrate your Email Journey

Most brands are already bombarding customers with discounts in their regular campaigns. Now you're asking them to suddenly act on yet another one, just because it's labeled as a winback offer? Here's why that logic doesn’t hold up:

• Email Fatigue: Engagement drops dramatically after 30-60 days, so fewer people are even seeing your offers, let alone acting on them.
• Flawed Assumptions: Discounts assume price is the problem—but do you really know why the customer hasn't returned?
• Recycled Incentives: Chances are, you've already thrown similar offers at them. Why would this one change their mind? Remember, your customers don't differentiate between campaign emails, post-purchase flows, or winback attempts—to them, it's all just more emails from your brand.

Before creating or adjusting your winback flow, take a step back and map out the email journey you currently have in place. This helps you understand exactly when and why a customer receives each email. To get a firsthand perspective, we recommend adding yourself as a new customer to the recipient lists. Seeing the journey through your customers' eyes will give you invaluable insight into their experience—and might reveal overlaps, redundancies, or missed opportunities you didn't notice before.

2. Use the Right Trigger

Most brands rely on default triggers from their email platform or follow an industry benchmark—often set at 90 days—to initiate winback flows. But if you want your winback attempts to deliver results, timing is everything.

RetentionX analyzes the overall purchase behavior of your customers to understand patterns: As new customers who have just placed their first order behave completely different to repeat customers that are already loyal to your products and brand, our Time Between Purchases report tracks the median duration between orders, such as the time from a customer's first to second purchase or second to third. This analysis reveals typical purchasing intervals while highlighting key differences between new customers and repeat buyers. If you're assuming the same repeat purchase time for both new and repeat customers, you may be reaching out to your customers way too early or too late.

Based on this, the Estimated Next Order Date predicts when individual customers are most likely to place their next order. When a customer doesn't make their next purchase within the expected median timeframe, RetentionX flags them as "overdue."

These overdue customers are easy to identify by creating a customer segment. To ensure the segment includes only active customers who still have a realistic chance of placing the next order, limit your criteria to those who have made a purchase in the last 12 months. This helps focus on customers who are still engaged and likely to complete their next purchase.

As customers dynamically join or leave the segment based on their buying behavior, this segment is a perfect audience to send your winback flow to - as soon as a customer joins the segment, this can trigger your winback flow, e.g. in Klaviyo. Learn more about creating segments based on RetentionX data in Klaviyo here.

You might wonder the advantage of using RetentionX over Klaviyo's estimated next purchase date. Here's the key difference: Klaviyo calculates the average time between all orders placed by a customer, but this doesn’t account for shifts in behavior over time. RetentionX, however, uses data from all your customers and breaks it down by order count, capturing behavioral changes as customers make more purchases.

3. Build a Lifecycle Strategy

Customer behavior changes over time! Customers who’ve placed only one order engage differently than those who’ve already shopped three times. That’s why factoring your customers' lifecycle into your winback strategy and communication is crucial. Personalize messaging, product recommendations, and incentives to align with their lifecycle stage: new customers need a distinct approach compared to loyal customers who missed their next order.

Also, keep in mind, that once a customer completes a flow e.g. in Klaviyo, they won't re-enter the same flow again.

To maximize impact, identify overdue customers based on their order count—for instance, those overdue for their second order—and create multiple flows using conditional splits. A segment for this strategy could look like this:

4. Personalize the Content

Personalization shouldn’t stop with your customers’ lifecycle! Dive into your data insights to pinpoint exactly what your customers are looking for. Craft a sharp, focused email flow highlighting those preferences to boost the chances they’ll click through and make an immediate purchase.

That's why, you should evaluate:

• Which incentives work best for your different customer segments
  → Best Coupon Codes
• What's the next best product to offer based on their purchase history
  → Follow-up Purchases
• Which products have a high impact on brand stickiness and should be promoted
  → Orders Leading to a Follow-up Purchase
• What are the conversion rates of your winback flow
  → Best Marketing Campaigns
  
  

5. Use an Omnichannel Approach

Many brands limit their win-back efforts to email, but the most effective strategies go beyond a single channel. Omnichannel campaigns work by delivering a cohesive, unified experience across multiple platforms, maximizing the chances of re-engaging your customers.

For instance, if a customer has opted into SMS marketing, they might respond more quickly to the urgency of a "last chance" discount text. Start with an email and follow up with a text to reinforce the message.

If the customer still hasn't re-engaged, consider offering an incentive through a retargeting ad on social media. While this option is more costly, it’s often still more affordable than acquiring a new customer.

That's why we strongly recommend using the same customer segments across all your marketing channels. This ensures your overdue customers receive consistent messaging, creating a powerful and persuasive omnichannel win-back strategy.

Get Some Inspiration

When setting up your winback flow, consider both the number of emails and their content, including the optimal timing of introducing incentives as a last resort to regain interest. The strategy you choose should align with your brand values and business goals, balancing short-term profitability with long-term customer loyalty.

A typical winback flow includes 2-3 emails spaced over two weeks, as the chances of re-engagement decline over time:

• Email 1: Tell them what they missed (Day 0 - Customer becomes overdue)
  

  The first email is crucial—it's one of your last chances to encourage a repeat purchase. Show appreciation for the customer and acknowledge their absence. Let them know they're valued.
  
  
  
  Personalization is key: use a direct, personal tone and recommend products for their next order based on the customer's purchase history. Once you identify which products are frequently purchased by other customers who bought the same items, these are likely to be relevant for this customer as well.
  
  
  
  
  

• Email 2: Offer an incentive (Day 7)
  Introduce a compelling incentive to encourage action and reward their loyalty. Make sure the offer is attractive enough to drive a repeat purchase but still aligns with your profit margins.
  
  
• Email 3: Remind them on their Incentive (Day 14)
  

  Your final winback email is a follow-up on the incentive offered. Emphasize the urgency by setting a clear time limit on the offer, creating a sense of exclusivity and prompting immediate action.
  
  

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