Seeing a dip in customer engagement can be quite disheartening for store owners. While it’s normal for shoppers to lose interest or get distracted over time, it doesn’t mean that the connection is lost entirely. A thoughtful re-engagement campaign can work wonders to spark interest and bring back customers to your store.
In this informative guide, we’ll walk you through what re-engagement campaigns are, why they’re important, and share actionable strategies you can use to reconnect with your customers today.
Let’s get right into it!
What Are Re-Engagement Campaigns?
Re-engagement campaigns aim to revive the interest and encourage action from shoppers who haven’t interacted with your store in a while. They might have ordered in the past, signed up for your email list, or joined your loyalty program, but have since gone inactive.
These types of campaigns are typically triggered after a certain period of inactivity. For example, you might send out a special offer to a customer who hasn’t made an order after 60 days. Depending on your marketing strategy, you can deliver re-engagement campaigns through emails, push notifications, and SMS.
Thoughtful, well-timed re-engagement campaigns can help keep your brand top of mind and strengthen customer relationships. It’s a great way to make the most of your existing customer base and turn silent subscribers into loyal repeat buyers.
Why Are Re-Engagement Campaigns Important?
Attracting new customers can cost up to seven times more than retaining an existing one. Instead of starting from scratch with new leads, re-engagement campaigns allow you to reconnect with shoppers who’ve already shown interest in your brand. This creates fresh opportunities to build long-term customer relationships.
Here are just some of the key reasons why they’re worth running:
Reduce customer churn
Customer churn (or customer attrition) refers to the number of customers who stop doing business with a company over a given period of time. It’s an important indicator of customer satisfaction and loyalty. While it’s usual for some shoppers to drop off over time, you don’t have to let it happen passively. Re-engagement campaigns can help you reconnect with dormant customers before they forget about your brand completely, or worse, turn to a competitor.
Revive interest in products or offers
Re-engagement campaigns also excel in spotlighting specific products that are most likely to appeal to your shoppers. Customers get busy, and they simply might’ve missed a launch or a restock that would’ve sparked their interest. With the right tools and platforms, you can send relevant reminders based on your customer’s purchase history.
For example, you can recommend new arrivals based on their browsing history, or offer complementary items that match their old purchase. It’s an effective way to drive fresh sales without starting from scratch with cold leads.
Strengthen brand recall
A lot of brands are vying for your customers’ attention, so staying top of mind is important. Checking in with shoppers who haven’t engaged for a while can help reinforce brand recall. Re-engagement campaigns don’t always have to be salesy. For instance, you can send helpful tips, loyalty points reminders, or simply let them know what’s new in your store.
These thoughtful touchpoints help create familiarity and visibility, so when they’re ready to buy again, they’ll think of your brand first.
Clean your email list for better engagement
Re-engagement is not always about winning customers back. They also help you identify which customers are no longer a fit for your store. By running a “Still want to hear from us?” campaign, you give your subscribers a chance to opt in again or unsubscribe completely from your list. This helps you maintain a more engaged email list, leading to better open rates, deliverability, and click-throughs.
5 Effective Re-Engagement Campaign Strategies & Examples
It’s time for the exciting part—bringing insights to life through actionable strategies. In this section, we’ll walk you through the most effective re-engagement campaign ideas you can try in your store. Along the way, we’ll showcase real-world examples and introduce helpful tools you can use to launch them with ease. Let’s go!
1. Winback offers
Winback offers are straightforward and effective–they offer a special incentive to re-engage inactive shoppers. This can be a discount, free shipping perk, or even limited-time store credits. It’s powerful simply because it offers a compelling reason for shoppers to come back.
Take this example from Foodpanda:
After a certain period of app inactivity, they sent a warm email and offered a voucher for the user’s next order. It’s thoughtful, personal, and encouraging.
WooCommerce store owners can use Advanced Coupons to create tailored winback promotions just like this. With this plugin, you can set specific cart conditions to determine who can claim your offer. For instance, you can create unique offers for:
- Customers who haven’t placed an order in the last 60 days
- Shoppers who purchased a specific product in the past
- Users who signed up but haven’t made a purchase within X days
The possibilities are endless, and you can even stack conditions together to create highly specific promotions to win back old customers.
2. Loyalty program reminders
This is an interesting statistic to consider: the average shopper belongs to 14.8 loyalty programs but is only active in 6.7 of them. Over time, even your most loyal customers can lose track of their points or forget the rewards they can enjoy. This is where re-engagement campaigns can help.
Consider sending out loyalty reminders to spark the interest of inactive members. This email from Marriott Bonvoy is a great example. It blends gamification with subtle re-engagement, showing how many nights a member completed this year, along with a reminder that points and rewards are waiting for them:
WooCommerce Loyalty Program can help you create a similar experience in your store. This plugin allows you to launch a points-based rewards system and track each customer’s points activity in real time. From there, you can automatically send out reminders to nudge customers who have unused points:
RELATED READ: How To Start A WooCommerce Loyalty Program (Tutorial)
3. Abandoned cart follow-ups
Cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges in ecommerce, with abandonment rates averaging 70.19%! A well-timed follow-up email or re-engagement message can make a difference. Abandoned cart campaigns remind shoppers of what they left behind in their carts and offer them a chance to complete a purchase.
Here’s a good example from Power Mac Center:
After a shopper added an iPhone 15 to their cart and abandoned checkout, they received a follow-up email highlighting the item they left behind, along with a free shipping incentive to encourage customers to complete their purchase.
🎯 POWER TIP: Push notifications are another powerful way to send cart abandonment reminders. Tools like PushEngage allow you to send out automated messages when someone abandons their cart in WooCommerce. With our integration with PushEngage, you can even send out coupons directly as push notifications to sweeten the offer! Learn more about this feature here
4. Account reactivation campaigns
Some customers go quiet for a long time–they might have stopped opening your emails, logging in to their account, or redeeming their rewards. Re-engagement campaigns can help reignite these connections before they disappear completely. You can use urgency and exclusivity to encourage shoppers to take action. Take a look at this good example from the Todoist app:
After a long period of user inactivity, they send an account reactivation email that offers 3 months of free Pro access. The tone is warm but firm, with a clear call to action and an incentive for coming back.
If you have a WooCommerce store, you can use Advanced Coupons to create limited-time coupon offers with cart conditions based on when they last ordered from your store. You can also send out store credit reminders to encourage them to return and redeem their rewards.
5. Surveys or feedback requests
Feedback requests can give you invaluable insights about why shoppers stopped engaging or what might bring them back. It invites them to a conversation, letting them know that you value their experience. Here’s a good example from WPForms:
They send out an annual customer survey email, seeking honest feedback. The message is casual and clear. Even better, they sweeten the request by offering a chance to win a reward.
You can apply the same strategy by reaching out to inactive customers and asking what they’d love to see more of or how you can improve their experience. To encourage responses, you can offer a small thank-you gift, such as a discount coupon or bonus store credits.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is re-engagement in marketing?
In marketing, re-engagement includes all strategies that are used to reconnect with customers who have interacted with or purchased from your business but have since become inactive. These can be customers who have ordered before, inactive email subscribers, or even loyalty program members who haven’t redeemed rewards in a while. Some re-engagement tactics include sending out winback emails, store credit reminders, cart-abandonment follow-ups and feedback requests.
What is the difference between re-engagement and retargeting?
Re-engagement includes strategies to reconnect with past customers who are already in your database but have become inactive after a while. Re-engagement strategies are usually done through direct channels like email, SMS, or push notifications. On the other hand, retargeting is about reaching out to shoppers who visited or browsed your website but didn’t convert at all. This strategy typically uses paid ads (such as Google Ads) to bring those visitors back to your store.
What does engagement mean in advertising?
Engagement measures how actively your customers interact with your content or campaigns. This can include metrics like email open rates, click-through rates, website visits, post comments, and coupon redemptions. Tracking engagement can help you understand what kind of content resonates with your target audience.
Conclusion
Re-engagement campaigns are one of the most effective ways to reconnect with shoppers and make the most of the customer base you’ve worked hard to build. In this helpful article, we walked you through how to make the most of this strategy.
To recap, here’s what we learned:
- What re-engagement campaigns are
- The key benefits of re-engaging past customers
- Powerful re-engagement campaign strategies, including:
- Common FAQs
Plugins like Advanced Coupons allow you to craft tailored win-back campaigns to bring valued shoppers back to your WooCommerce store. With features like cart conditions, store credit, auto-apply coupons, and loyalty program reminders, it’s easier than ever to re-engage the right customers at the right time!
We hope this article helped you out! Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments.
