Campaign Tutorial: Reactivation

Keeping your customers happy and engaged is very important. Gathering new customers is expensive and time consuming, so re-activation campaigns can help you maintain your current customer base.

To re-activate inactive customers it's important to identify them first and then take action. You can send them a simple email or you can offer them something like a discount or free shipping.

Identifying inactive customers

To identify inactive customers we'll be looking at their order history. You can also do something like this with a last click. See this tutorial for more information on storing click data. With collections you can easily store purchases made by your customers. We recommend using an integration with your webshop for this to fully automate the process. You also need to save the date of the purchase in the collection.

First we want to update the profile every time an order is placed so we always have the date of the last purchase available:

  • Create a field "last_purchase_date" in your database.
  • Select the collection with your orders and open the follow-up manager.
  • Create follow-up with the trigger "Subprofile created".
  • Add a Javascript execution box from the advanced editor and add the following code: profile.fields.last_purchase_date = subprofile.fields.purchase_date;
  • Save the follow-up.

Every time a subprofile is created for a new order the value of the "purchase_date" field will be copied to the profile, so we always have access to the date the customer made their last purchase. Now we can make a selection with inactive customers:

  • Open the database and make a new selection. Name it something descriptive like "Inactive".
  • Add a new "AND" condition to the rule and select "Check on date or period"
  • Select the field with the last purchase date.
  • Set the "before" date to 1 year ago.
  • Optional: If you want to send an automatic email to the selection the "after" date should be set to 1 year ago too, so profiles only receive an email exactly 1 year after their last purchase.
  • Rebuild the selection to test if it works.

Reactivation

Now that you know which customers are inactive it's time to win them back. You can send them a simple email telling them you miss them, but you can also offer them incentives like a discount or free shipping. Make sure your customers know they can unsubscribe whenever they want; This may seem counterintuitive but it keeps your mailing list, and by extension your reputation, clean. However, do remind them of all the benefits your company can offer them!

When you've created the template you can simply set up a daily mailing; Make sure the after date is also set to 1 year ago or they will be emailed daily, which will likely land your emails in their spam folder.

More information

Want more information on follow-ups or selections? Want some information on personalization to make your re-activation emails more alluring? The links below will help you find your way.