The lifetime value of customers (LTV) is due to repeat business that offers steady returns. Data reveals that acquiring new customers can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. That’s why it’s important to retain your customers and find ways to bring back those who have become inactive.
Why repeat business is so important
Real growth depends not just on expanding your number of customers but keeping them around to maximize their LTV. That’s why businesses see greater ROI from retention than from constantly attracting new customers who purchase only once.
Data reveals that acquiring new customers can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Also the success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is just 5-20%.
Simply put: keeping your customer pays. The challenge is finding a way to effectively do that. The first step is being proactive about staying connected.
Use automation to connect with your customers effortlessly
Why bother reaching out just to show you care? Not doing so can cost you customers. Estimates of what prompts customers to leave find that 68% leave due to “perceived indifference” on the part of the business.
Manually sending out emails and texts to foster that customer connection would take a lot of work. But setting up rules for automated messaging means you can just set it and forget it.
Be sure to regularly contact your email subscribers so that you keep your business on their radar. If they opt in for SMS/MMS, that’s even better because texts tend to get noticed more than emails.
It allows marketers to be in touch in a way that’s less invasive than a call and more immediate and likely to be read than an email. In fact, 70% of customers polled by VoiceSage consider texting a good way for businesses to be in touch with them.
But what if you’ve done that, and they still have remained inactive for a year or whatever length of time signals a loss of interest for your product line? Then you need a concerted strategy to win them back, and Remarkety can help you do that.
Start with segmentation
Remarkety can automatically set up a list with all your inactive users so that you can target them specifically with a retargeting campaign. Depending on the customer’s status for subscription opt-in, you may use email, SMS/MMS, social media ads, or a combination of all the channels if possible.
Don’t rely on only a single email
For your email subscribers, plan on three different templates to use. It is possible that you’ll achieve conversion on the first, though it is smart to have variants prepared to be sent as second and third messages to follow up in the same way you do for abandoned carts.
Use SMS and MMS where possible
If your customers are also subscribed for texts, then you should definitely reach out to them that way, as well. Customers are both more likely to open their text messages and more likely to click on links in a text than in an email. SMS/MMS delivers 19% rate open rate in contrast to the mere 2% of links within emails, according to VoiceSage.
Hook them on social media
While reactivation emails and SMS can be a powerful tool in customer retention, sometimes you can’t use them because customers have unsubscribed. Even if they haven’t, they may just have your messages go to spam where they don’t see them at all.
That’s why Remarkety allows you to carry over data to your social media campaigns with seamless integration and create customer segment lists for retargeting your unresponsive customers. You can make a list of customers who have bought in the past but not responded to your emails in 6 months to see if a Facebook ad may get their attention.
Grab their attention with the subject line
We all like to be noticed and missed. The same goes for customers who do respond more to emails designed to win them back.
Using “miss you” in the subject line draws 13% read rate. “Come back” messages are also effective, with a 12.7% read rate.
To combine the benefit of personalization with the tried-and-true formula for attention, try subject lines that include the recipient’s name as in these examples:
We miss you, Zoe!
It’s been a while, Josh.
It’s not the same without you, Robin.
These subject lines let your customers feel appreciated, which fosters a feeling of loyalty that may win them back even without a special promotion. But sometimes you need more than that to make them feel seen and valued.
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Relevancy is key
Customers are always more responsive to relevant recommendations, and you can work that into your reactivation messaging. The focus has to be on them and their interests, tastes, and concerns:
- Recommend relevant products or promotions that they might like based on their history.
- Let them know about changes in your business that may address their concerns.
For example, once the pandemic struck, many customers had new concerns about the safety of the products that would be shipped to them. At the time, even customers who had been inactive may have been brought back with an assurance that the retailers upheld sanitary standards.
Customers who may have stopped ordering online because they were not happy about restrictive or costly returns would have been willing to give eCommerce another chance if told about a more liberal return policy.
Incentivize an immediate purchase
Some sellers highlight a limited time promotion into the first reactivation email, while others wait on the second or third email in the series. If you’re a seller who doesn’t normally offer free shipping, offering it for the returning customer’s purchase can prove effective.
Offer a special coupon code good for a week or so to motivate a purchase now. A possible subject line is this:
“See what’s new, Robin. Then buy it at 20% OFF with FREE SHIPPING.”
Always include a CTA
No matter which approach and which type of subject line you devise to attract attention, always include a clickable link and CTA to direct your customer to. When your customer responds to the email in some way, even without buying, it’s still a win in terms of engagement and preventing future emails from being designated as spam.
When your email recipients repeatedly ignore your emails, that activates algorithms to automatically put them in spam where marketing goes to die. Part of your goal in reactivation is to get them to be receptive to your messaging, and it starts with being sure your messages do arrive in their inboxes.
All smart marketers know that winning back inactive customers is essential for business success. The smartest ones know that using Remarkety will help them do it.
