Retaining customers is thirsty work. It’s estimated that 7 out of 10 customers will never buy from you again. But with soaring acquisition costs becoming the new normal, it’s better to work with the customer base you’ve got than chase the new and shiny. Klaviyo winback flows are a quick win way to achieve this. They’re relatively simple to introduce, low cost to implement and aside from some optimisation you can set them and leave them.
In this piece we’re going to help you retain more customers with customer winback flows featuring advice from Klaviyo, Swanky Agency and PAASE. We’ll cover
The clue is in the name, but winback flows are essentially automated email flows designed to ‘win back’ customers that have lapsed. A lapsed customer is someone who hasn’t made a purchase or interacted with your brand in a set time period. This could be a one-time customer who hasn’t returned, or a lapsed subscriber. The time period of what defines a lapsed customer varies, but usually 3-6 months of inactivity is a good indicator.
You might assume that there’s no point in trying to win back a customer who has lapsed, but retaining an extra 2% of your existing customer base can generate thousands of pounds of additional revenue and considerably increase lifetime value. Klaviyo’s in-house expert, Jordan tells us that “winback email flows typically have an open rate of 29% and as many as 45% of customers who open winback emails will continue to open emails from your brand afterwards.”
It's also worth noting that winback flows are different to abandoned cart flows, which usually take place before a customer has ever placed an order. If that's what you're looking for, you can read more on abandoned carts in a relevant blog post below.
We asked Sarah Hanney, Email Specialist at Swanky Agency to share her ingredients of a successful customer winback flow in Klaviyo.
Rather than bulk-sending a generic email to all lapsed customers, use segmentation and data feeds (e.g. purchase history/browsing history) to target recipients with relevant messages.
Introducing a small discount may encourage some shoppers to re-engage with your brand. This doesn’t have to be huge - 10% off or a free gift is a good place to start and work out from here based on the results.
People like to offer their opinion even if they're not planning to buy. So asking for feedback in your winback flow is a great opportunity to collect valuable information that can help with future marketing strategies.
To showcase best practice customer winback examples, we’ve called on Josh Lewis, Growth Marketing Manager at DTC brand, MOJU Drinks.
Josh says,
Since introducing the flow, the average email open rate is 35% and average CTR is 4%. For customers who have placed orders with MOJU multiple times, they have separate flows for upsell to subscription – once they subscribe they receive all sorts of benefits to keep them interested and engaged!
We asked Ashley Scorpio, Senior Vice President at Hawke Media to share advice on measuring the effectiveness of winback flows. Ashley says,
These include:
Make sure to use proper link tracking embedded into every link and CTA so you have full visibility into the entirety of your lead flow, from the email landing in the subscriber's inbox, all the way to the order confirmation email and beyond.
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