How to Create a WooCommerce Customer Winback Campaign That Converts

Are you looking to create a successful winback campaign that regains your customers’ lost interest?

Repeat customers generate 5 to 7 times revenue per visit compared to the average shoppers.

That's why you must have a proper plan in place to rekindle your relationship with existing customers, in case they become inactive.

And there isn't a better way than a winback campaign to give your lapsed customers a nudge and pull them in.

In this post, we’ll look at what causes buyers to become disengaged, the good and bad examples of win-back emails, and finally, how to set them up with FunnelKit Automations.

Ready for it? Let’s get started.

What is a Win-Back Campaign?

A winback campaign or re-engagement campaign is a sequence of targeted emails that are sent to your lapsed customers that encourages them to come back to your store and shop again.

As per the KPMG research, 30% of people are likely to buy from a website they’ve bought from previously. It’s because there’s know, like and trust factor with them.

But due to the reasons mentioned in the previous section, customers can eventually become inactive and stop buying.

Win-back emails attempt to bring those customers back to the shop. More precisely, a customer winback campaign:

• Remind shoppers of you
• Acknowledge that they haven’t shopped in a while
• Offer a solid incentive to re-engage

Guess what? 45% of people who interacted with your winback campaign are likely to open your future emails too!

So you should definitely set up your win-back campaign emails!

Reasons Why Your Customers Become Disengaged

There could be several reasons why customers become inactive. Here are our top 3 reasons:

1. Competitor’s impact

They may have stopped buying from you because they’ve found a competitor, i.e., someone who’s perhaps undercutting you in price, selling better products, or marketing them better.

2. Slashed their budget

Maybe the items you sell are in the 'desire' segment and not the need segment. So when they decided to cut budgets, they just stopped using your products.

3. Offline purchases

Yes, if you're selling physical products, you’re not just competing with online players but offline players too. In case you're only selling digital - that's obviously not true for you.

Winback Campaign Examples: The Good and Bad

Let’s now look at some bad and some incredibly well-executed examples of the winback campaign.

These examples are quite interesting so get ready to learn a lot, as we proceed.

The Bad Winback Email Examples

Example 1: Land's End

This customer win-back email is from Land’s End - an online clothing brand:

What we didn’t like:

• There are too many call-to-action buttons in this email. "Yes! let’s stay together", "modify your preferences", and "refer a friend" - so 3 CTAs in one email!
• It’s hard to understand what this email wants the recipient to do.

Example 2: Birchbox

Birchbox provides monthly beauty and grooming subscription boxes. Below is an example of Birchbox’s customer win-back email:

What we didn’t like:

• The problem with this email is that even though it offers a jaw-dropping discount of 20% - it doesn’t acknowledge the fact that the recipient hasn’t bought from them in a while.
• The absence of a conversation and context-setting- are the two major areas where this email lacks!

Example 3: Girlfriend Collective

The following email is from Girlfriend Collective - an online recyclable clothing store for women:

What we didn’t like:

• It’s simply a normal email like the ones we receive from our friends and family - it doesn’t have any CTA buttons asking users to explore their new products.
• Even though they’re providing $20 off on their next purchase, this email is missing the visual element.

The Good Examples of Winback Campaigns

Now let's take a look at some well-crafted, successful winback campaign emails.

Example 1: The Bakerista

Here's the first one from The Bakerista:

What we liked: 

• The Bakerista does a fabulous job of infusing personality into the content and an even better job with the irresistible offer.
• It also addresses the fact that not all of its customers shop online and hence gives an option for a BOGO deal to offline buyers.

Example 2: Grammarly

Grammarly sends out an email with the following content in its winback campaign:

What we liked:

• Grammarly takes on a creative approach by writing personality-infused content with bold, minimalistic graphics. The CTA stands out for getting more clicks.
• They acknowledge that the customer has been inactive for a while and address that in the email copy.

Example 3: Penguin Random House

Penguin Randon House is a publishing company. This is another excellent example of a good winback campaign email:

What we liked:

• The whole winback email uses the context of a text message to have a conversation with you. Further, it highlights 21 of their recommended books to check out - which is quite convincing and creative at the same time.
• It has the CTA that says - “Rekindle your love of books” - this personalized action text is a clear example of good email marketing that really knows its customers.

Let’s now look at what goes into making a high-converting win-back marketing campaign idea.

5 Essential Elements of an Effective Customer Win-Back Campaign 

In this section, we'll look at the 5 elements of a well-written win-back email.

If you include all five of these, you will have a winning win-back campaign strategy in your hands.

Let's take a quick look:

Now let's explore each of these elements one by one.

#1: The Timing Of Your Win-Back Campaign

The period of inactivity depends on what you’re selling.

For example, if you’re selling daily usage products like skincare items that generally last for a month, then 3 months is a good enough period of inactivity.

In the case of items that last for 3 months, you may consider 6 months of not having bought - a period of inactivity. 

It’s also important to specify when their last purchase was made.

So, if their last purchase was two years ago - perhaps they’ve moved on and are never coming back.

But if they did buy, let’s say 6 months back but not in the last 3 months - then there are still chances that they can be back! 

#2: A Catchy Subject Line

A catchy subject line ensures that it grabs the attention of the customers in their cluttered inboxes.

As per Klaviyo.com - "It's been a while" performed excessively well and clocked an open rate of 35%, which is very impressive.

The other subject lines that perform well are - "We miss you" and "Discount included".

Here are some catchy subject lines that we recommend:

• Where have you been, <first name>?
• Just checking in, all ok?
• Frankly, we're thinking of you
• Not sure what's been keeping you busy
• Off the radar? what's up...
• <first name>, here's a li'l gift for you
• It's been a while

You'll notice that these subject lines sound friendly and none of them are creepy.

Curiosity-evoking subject lines such as ‘Coupon inside’, ‘Special gift inside’, etc. are also likely to get high open rates.

#3: Authoritative "From" Line

If you've been sending emails from your brand name alone, then we would suggest that you put your own name along with the brand name.

For example,

Mike from Organify or Mike at Organify

You could also do:

Mike @ Organify

So this shows that it is coming from a real person and that commands more attention as compared to emails coming from the brand name alone.

Pick from these templates:

• [Your Name] at [Brand Name]
• [Your name] @ [Brand Name]
• [Your name] | [Brand Name]
• CMO/CEO at [Brand Name]

#4: Short & Meaningful Email Body

It's best to keep your win-back emails short and meaningful to get high click-through rates.

You must do two things in your win-back emails:

• Acknowledge that they have been absent for a while
• Tell them what they're missing

Here's a brilliant example of a customer win-back email from SkillShare:

Notice the strong and bold headline 'We've missed you!'. It starts off on the right note by setting the context.

SkillShare also takes a moment to remind inactive customers what they've been missing out on.

That is followed by an incentive to return. That takes us to our next element.

#5: Strong Incentive

Discounts encourage customers to come back and make a repeat purchase.

If you think discounting won't work for you, here's an interesting stat:

82.4% of online shoppers stick to a brand that offers consistent deals.

That's definitely impressive. You can make your coupon code personalized to make it even more enticing.

And time-limit it for a greater impact.

Here's an example from RuffleButs offering a discount of 20% on their winback campaign:

Why Use FunnelKit Automations to Create a Winback Campaign?

FunnelKit Automations is the most powerful marketing automation engine designed for WordPress.

You can send email as well as SMS-based campaigns to segmented audiences based on your use cases.

Here are other reasons that make FunnelKit Automations better than other CRMs for creating your winback campaign sequences:

#1: To send customer winback emails at the right time

FunnelKit Automations lets you create automated winback campaigns and smartly execute them.

With the winback event, you can configure the number of days your customers have been inactive.

Once this event gets triggered, you can set up a number of actions based on your requirement.

#2: To design captivating emails using the drag & drop builder

Want to create emails that capture your users’ attention?

You can create beautiful emails with FunnelKit Automations’s built-in email editor tool.

Your perfect winback email is now just a ‘drag and drop’ away!

#3: To find out their reason for inactivity using link triggers

Link triggers help capture the response of your users and gauge their interests.

These are the links which when clicked allow you to perform an action on the backend such as adding a tag, updating their contact fields, adding them to a list, etc.

Use link triggers in your feedback emails to know the reason for their absence and direct them to a particular action you want.

Once you’ve analyzed your link triggers, you can create better offers to rekindle your relationship with them.

#4: To encourage purchase through dynamic coupon codes

We’re pretty sure everybody loves a discount.

The next thing you can do for a successful winback campaign is to add a personalized and limited-time coupon code in the sequence.

FunnelKit Automations lets you create personalized coupons that work for a specific user.

Here, we have used the “COMEBACK{{first_name}}” coupon code that’s valid for 3 days.

Now you can add an email action to send this coupon code to your email list.

#5: To track the revenue made from your winback campaigns

View and analyze the response of your winback campaigns in FunnelKit Automations without having to leave your WordPress dashboard.

You can view the engagement and orders for your automated campaigns and take decisive actions to re-engage your customers.

Apart from that, you can also view the orders placed, revenue generated from your winback campaign, number of unsubscribes, recoverable carts, and more.

Analyzing the metrics will let you take better decisions and improve the success rate of your winback campaigns efficiently.

How to Set up a Win-Back Campaign in WooCommerce using FunnelKit Automations

After all the discussion above, let's now look at the step-by-step process to create your win-back campaign with FunnelKit Automations.

Step #1: Install and activate FunnelKit Automations

To set up your winback campaign email, get a copy of FunnelKit Automations.

Please note that FunnelKit Automations also has a free version (called the Lite version) but we will be using the Pro version here because of its advanced features.

Once you have the premium version, go to your FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels) account and download the following files:

1. FunnelKit Automations Lite

2. FunnelKit Automations Pro

3. FunnelKit Automations Connectors

Now install and activate all three plugins by uploading them to your WordPress website.

Once you have all the plugins installed and activated, it'll show up here in your plugins section:

Now it's time to activate the license.

Go to your account and copy the activation code of FunnelKit Automations Pro and Connectors.

Paste it in the Settings section:

This is how you can activate FunnelKit Automations.

Step #2: Add an automation

Go to Automations under Campaigns and click on Add New.

Enter a name for your automation - ‘Winback campaign’.

Step #3: Add 'Customer Winback' event under WooCommerce

Select the event - 'Customer Win Back' under WooCommerce.

Define this period to target the right customers through your winback campaign.

Here we've put in 'Over 30 days ago' and 'Under 90 days ago', which means that these customers haven't bought in the last month but they did buy in the last 90 days.

Next, schedule your win back campaign to run every day at the defined time:

So if you specify 11:00 am here, it means that every day the automation will run at 11:00 am (in your store's time zone) on the inactive customers.

Step #4: Add a personalized coupon code

You can create personalized discount coupon codes right from FunnelKit Automations.

Click on the (+) icon below your winback campaign event trigger and hit Action.

Then select 'Create Coupon' from the action section.

Next, select the coupon code that you created for the win-back email.

Here's how you can personalize it:

You can select from a range of merge tags to personalize the name of your coupon code:

This is the coupon code - 'ComeBack{{customer_first_name}}' which means that if the name of the user is John then the coupon code he'll receive is: 'ComeBackJohn'

Apart from that, you can set an expiry (validity) for this coupon, which will create urgency in your campaign.

Urgency will make your win-back campaign a lot more effective.

The evergreen discount is a great addition to your win-back email. So do offer a discount!

Step #3: Craft Your Winback Campaign Email

Write a short and meaningful email for wooing back your inactive customers.

You can even design beautiful emails using FunnelKit Automations's drag and drop builder tool.

Here, we've created an email using the drag-and-drop builder:

Use a catchy subject line, have a short & meaningful email body, and a powerful call to action (CTA) button.

Once done, make your automation live.

Add this win-back email to your marketing strategy and you will exponentially increase your customer retention rates, turning your dormant customers into loyal customers.

Are You Ready to Create Your Winback Campaign?

Now that you've read the in-depth guide on win-back email campaigns, you know the answer.

Take inspiration from the examples and recreate the win-back customer email templates that bring back your inactive customers.

For that, you need to have a great tool that lets you set up winback triggers, create personalized coupons and design beautiful emails.

And we can't think of any CRM other than FunnelKit Automations to assist in your winback strategy.

FunnelKit Automations is the most superior plugin available for WordPress that lets you perform all the stated tasks above and even go beyond that.

It has 800+ events and actions, allowing you to achieve all the use cases for your business.

So, what you're waiting for?

Set up your post-purchase sequences including the winback campaigns with FunnelKit Automations and rekindle your relationship with your customers.