How to Re-engage Inactive Customers
Acquiring new customers is more costly than reengaging lapsed ones, and it’s easier to activate inactive customers as well.
Yet, most of us focus on increasing our database and focus on attracting new customers.
Have you ever thought that you may have high quality customers in those inactive segments, who possibly just need a nudge or a reason to start doing business with you again?
Well, the good news is – if you have an omnichannel customer engagement hub like our solution Moments – re-engaging inactive customers just got simple. How? Well, in this blog we tell you exactly how you can tap into your database and create a successful re-engagement campaign.
Step 1: Identify inactive customers
To start off your campaign it’s important to identify your inactive customers and create a separate segment for them. Your inactive customers could be:
- Customers who have not purchased anything in six months
- Customers who have not visited your shop over the last three months
- Customers who haven’t opened an email, chat app message or interacted with you in the last 3 months
Through Moments, you can track events through People to identify your least engaged customers, create apt segments and target them with your re-engagement campaign.
Step 2: Create your re-engagement campaign
The most effective re-engagement campaigns are those which include personalized content, incentives, interactions and is omnichannel in approach. Basically, give them a reason to believe in you again.
Here are some campaigns you can run through Moments.
Drag and drop automation flows: You can send personalized messages to lapsed customers, and create automated rules to:
- Move them to another list or send a message through another channel if they do not interact
- Send a follow up message in case they open but have not taken any action
- Send through a failover channel such as push notification or a chat app in case the email or SMS is undeliverable
Personalized recommendations: Connect your online and offline data to Moments to check their past purchase and browsing behavior. Based on that you can identify their recently viewed or last shopped items, and send them personalized product recommendations. To entice them further you could also add in a bonus discount or free delivery.
Discount codes: Who doesn’t like a special offer or a discount – especially if it is only meant for you. You can run an email or SMS campaign letting them know it’s been a while since they have bought something from you, highlight a few updates they have missed, and incentivize them with a personalized discount.
Feedback and competitions: Everyone like’s a freebie, so why not entice them with a gift or special offer by taking actions like filling out a survey or feedback form, or entering a competition? If you ask the right questions, the survey or feedback form can tell you what your inactive customers are interested in and arm you with information to target them with additional campaigns. Contests and giveaways can act as an easy win – not just for your customers but you as well.
Step 3: Choose the right channels
When you connect your data, it’s important to also collect their channel behavior. However, the lockdown may have changed their channel preferences, and with people receiving dozens of emails per day – a failover messaging channel is crucial to your messaging strategy.
If Email and SMS is your mainstay, choose a chat app such as Viber, WhatsApp and Messenger, or mobile app messaging as your failover.
Why is an omnichannel strategy important? Our recent customer engagement research show that there isn’t a preferred digital channel, with 52% of people not selecting a clear choice. And the increased affinity for digital and willingness to experiment with different channels shows businesses need to be moving towards a more omnichannel-focused or ‘one to multiple’ channel approach.
Step 4: Analyze campaign results
Depending on your customer database, your re-engagement messaging campaign has huge potential to garner higher open rates, click through rates and ultimately sales. But to determine that you need to set a benchmark and based on that analyze your campaign results.
This will also help you decide your future course of action. With Moments you can do this through:
- Analytics: For a broad overview on how your campaign reengaged with lapsed customers, you can view your campaign report though Analytics.
- Engagement: See how your customer has engaged with the campaign to identify the next steps and triggers required in their renewed customer journey.
- Segmentation: View how many customers in your inactive segment have reengaged and review the list.
Once reengaged, keep the communication going and set that customer on the path to becoming a loyal one. And with Moments these five steps are as simple as drag and drop.
To know why keeping constant engagement is important, download our report and hear from customers themselves as to what they are looking for in brand communications.
