Breaking Through Inbox Clutter - 5 Winback Campaign Case Studies
Re-engaging lost customers can be a challenge, but these case studies show how to get their attention and win them back.
You probably already know customer reactivation via winback campaigns can be a substantial growth lever. Because dormant/churned customers are familiar with your brand and have purchased from you in the past, they’re likely to be a good fit today.
And for companies sitting on a large number of inactive customers, the ROI could be huge...
If you can get their attention, that is. Unfortunately, inactive customers are often difficult to reach. This can be for a few reasons:
Disinterest and disengagement — Churned customers may have lost interest in the brand or become numb to its sales and promotional tactics.
Forgotten value — Past purchasers might have forgotten the value or benefits the product or service provides.
Made up minds — Some customers may have decided they’re no longer interested due to a poor experience, missing features or lack of value, whether or not you’ve made strides to correct such issues.
Out of reach — It may be difficult to connect with some inactive customers because of unsubscribes, opt-outs or out-of-date contact information.
Given these challenges, how do you break through and recapture their interest?
We’re going to look at five winback campaign examples that did just that with the help of a “pattern interrupt.”
A “pattern interrupt” is a technique marketers have borrowed from the field of psychology, in which an unusual or unexpected impulse is used to disrupt an audience’s typical thought process or behavior. The tactic leverages the human brain’s tendency to notice things that are out of the ordinary.
Utilizing creativity, surprise, humor, curiosity, timeliness and alternative formats, these reactivation campaign examples demonstrate how to break through the noise and win back lost customers.
A winback campaign is targeted messaging that aims to re-engage churned or inactive customers, including those who have canceled a subscription, who didn’t convert during a free trial, or who haven’t purchased from your store in a while.
Winback campaigns are usually made up of 3-5 messages, most often via email, but omnichannel efforts including SMS/text, push notifications, social media and direct mail can prove highly effective. By engaging lost customers multiple times across different channels, you’re much more likely to catch them at the right time to take action.
1. Grocery app’s unique winback email cut through the clutter
This is a great example of how a bold subject line and creative concept can outperform the usual tactics.
Grocery delivery app Getir aimed to re-engage “hard churned” customers who hadn’t used the app in 30+ days.
With the help of UK-based email strategist Oli Clifford, the team at Getir identified three core problems:
Promotional fatigue – Lapsed customers are often indifferent to sales and marketing language.
Lost motivation – These customers had lost the connection with whatever originally inspired them to order from Getir.
Forgotten value prop – Customers had become estranged from the value the product provided to their lives.
To address these challenges, Getir needed to:
Stand out from the marketing clutter overflowing users’ inboxes
Reawaken customers’ original attraction to Getir
Remind them of the value proposition
Getir’s email stood out with an intriguing subject line—a pattern interrupt that made readers more receptive to their message. They also reframed their value proposition in an interesting way. Lapsed customers may need a reminder, but not in the way they’ve already seen a hundred times.
The result: the campaign led to over 300 orders from inactive customers, generating approximately £6,000 in revenue. It drove 27% more orders than their benchmark winback campaign and nearly doubled the order conversion rate. All without offering a discount.
Check out the full post for additional insights.
Your subscription cancel flow is your final chance to save customers who’ve decided to leave but haven’t just yet. Utilizing deflections and persuasive offers, cancellation flows alone can reduce churn by 10-39%.
2. How timely themes can stoke curiosity
Sky, a British telecommunications company, uses an ongoing direct mail approach. The strategy combines a constant drip of both everyday marketing materials and extraordinary themed mailings, such as a pumpkin-shaped Halloween mailing with a peel-and-reveal mechanic. Utilizing engaging designs, interactivity and timeliness, these special mailings capture increased customer interest.
A 2023 Sky mailer coincided with the coronation of King Charles III. Inside a personally addressed gold envelope was a gold-embroidered invitation requesting attendance at “a celebration of glorious entertainment” to be held at the recipient’s own home.
“Sink into the sublime comfort of your cushioned throne,” read the piece, “and feast on the latest shows fit for royalty.” It continued in this witty vein, utilizing a royal aspect in design and copywriting, white still meshing with and promoting Sky’s services and brand.
Crucially, Sky’s branding was only evident after opening the invitation. By piquing curiosity and aligning with a major event, this campaign was twice as effective as standard mailings, showing that creative and themed direct mail can effectively recapture the interest of former customers.
3. Personalized postcards for desensitized customers
Urbani Truffles, a luxury food brand, faced difficulties re-engaging high-value customers who had become unresponsive to digital communications. While they had a large list of past customers, many of them had unsubscribed from email or just weren’t opening messages. To make matters worse, they couldn’t be reached through online ads due to recent iOS updates.
What to do? Working with Leonardo Plebani, founder of ecommerce agency DTC Gang, Urbani chose to reach lapsed customers offline via the “old-fashioned” medium of direct mail. Utilizing postcards with an elegant, minimalist design and a significant discount, the winback campaign resulted in 1,500 ROI and brought customers back onto their email marketing list.
This tactile and personalized approach rekindled interest among lapsed customers, proving that direct mail, when done with aplomb, can reach consumers who’ve become desensitized to digital marketing efforts.
4. The dollars and cents of winback humor
To stand out in crowded inboxes, Dollar Shave Club employs a witty marketing voice. In one playful subject line, the brand asks, "Have you been seeing someone else?"
The body copy continues with the breakup theme, suggesting the churned customer get back together with DSC and reminds customers of the value and convenience of their subscription service.
This unexpected and lighthearted approach got customer attention, resulting in a significant uptick in winbacks and renewed subscriptions. It illustrates the value of incorporating humor and a conversational tone, which disrupt typical email patterns, winning back customers in a relatable and memorable way.
5. The special appeal of a handwritten note
When a well-known apparel and home goods ecommerce brand faced a decline in email and SMS engagement, they found an unusual solution in LettrLabs. In the past the brand’s strategy had been built on traditional catalog mailers, but this was becoming costly with low conversion rates.
Enter a novel solution: automated “handwritten” direct mail. The ecomm brand chose to reach out to their customers and express gratitude in personalized messages that included exclusive discounts on future purchases, generating $1.67M at a 14.7x ROAS.
But more than that, customers loved it. Many recipients sent appreciative replies or shared positive messages on social media, demonstrating that the approach was another “pattern interrupt” that broke through the noise.
Conclusion
While there’s huge potential for new business from dormant customers, reaching them can be a challenge. These winback case studies show how breaking conventional patterns with unexpected elements can help brands recapture the attention and business of lost customers.
