Lapse Winback

Customers are most likely to return when you reach them at the right moment — not too early, and not after they have already lost interest. The Lapse Winback event helps you re-engage shoppers around the time they are expected to place their next order, giving you a timely opportunity to bring them back before they churn.

RetentionX helps you turn each customer's estimated next order date into a high-intent winback opportunity. When a customer is approaching their next expected purchase, RetentionX pushes an event to Klaviyo, allowing you to trigger a dedicated flow while they are still most likely to return.

Bring Customers Back Before They Lapse

Most winback flows are triggered only after a customer has already gone inactive. The Lapse Winback event allows you to act earlier by reaching customers shortly before, on, or after their expected next order date. This makes the message more timely and gives you a better chance of recovering the next purchase. 

When RetentionX identifies a lapsing customer, it can push a "Lapse Winback – RetentionX" event to Klaviyo, which you can use to trigger a dedicated winback flow.

To turn these events into automated flows in Klaviyo, follow the steps below:
 

1. Pushing Events to Klaviyo

1. In RetentionX, go to Automations > Email & SMS Flows.

2. Open the tab Customer Winback and navigate to Lapse Winback.
   

3. Click Activate.

4. Specify how many days before the estimated next order date the event should be pushed. For example, you can send the event 3 days before the expected next order date.
   

And that's it! RetentionX will start pushing "Lapse Winback – RetentionX" events according to your settings.
 

2. Setting Up the Flow

Now you’re ready to build your winback flow in Klaviyo:

1. Log in to your Klaviyo account.

2. Navigate to Flows and start building a new flow.

3. Select "Lapse Winback – RetentionX" as the trigger. You’ll find the trigger under Your metrics > RetentionX.
   

4. Add profile filters to remove contacts from the flow, for example, if they have not accepted marketing or if they have placed an order since starting it.

5. Since events are pushed to Klaviyo after the daily re-sync of your RetentionX account at midnight, we recommend adding a time delay as the first action after the trigger. This ensures that emails are sent at a reasonable time of day.

   Tip: Use RetentionX’s Time Analysis to identify the optimal sending time.

   

6. Add conditional splits based on customer type. For example, split customers by first-time buyers vs. repeat buyers as they usually need different messages. A customer who has only placed one order may still need more trust-building, education, social proof, or a stronger reason to return. A repeat customer already knows your brand and may respond better to loyalty messaging, subscription savings, or reminders of what makes shopping with you worthwhile.

7. Add the first email to your flow. We recommend starting with a template you’ve already used so your design, tone, and branding stay consistent.

8. Decide how aggressive your winback strategy should be. Not every customer needs the same incentive to come back, and offering discounts too early can reduce margin unnecessarily.

   Tip: Use RetentionX’s Best Coupon Codes to identify which incentives drive sustainable retention.

9. We recommend adding one additional email or SMS message to this flow as a reminder.

10. Preview and test your email flow to ensure the event data is being used as expected before setting your new flow live.

Measuring Performance

Once your flow is live, RetentionX automatically imports the flow performance data so you can see exactly how your winback flow is performing. The following KPIs are available:

• Recipients

• Open rate

• Click rate

• Revenue

• Revenue per recipient

You can monitor performance over the past 7, 30, or 365 days — KPIs update automatically overnight.

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