How to Use Email Marketing Automation to Re-engage Lapsed Customers

 

Every business faces the challenge of customers who have gone quiet. These lapsed customers may have stopped opening emails, visiting your site, or purchasing products, and bringing them back can be crucial for long-term success. This is where email marketing automation becomes a powerful tool for re-engagement. By using automation, you can deliver targeted and personalized campaigns that reignite interest and encourage lapsed customers to reconnect with your brand.

Here’s how to use email marketing automation to re-engage lapsed customers effectively:

1. Identify Lapsed Customers

The first step in any re-engagement strategy is to define what constitutes a lapsed customer. For some businesses, a lapsed customer may be one who hasn’t purchased in 90 days, while for others, it could be six months of inactivity.

Best practices:

Use your email marketing platform to track customer activity, such as email opens, clicks, and purchase behavior.

Segment customers based on inactivity—those who haven’t engaged with your emails or made a purchase within a set timeframe.

Define criteria that align with your business cycle to accurately identify which customers need re-engagement.

2. Create a Re-engagement Email Series

Once you've identified lapsed customers, the next step is to set up an automated re-engagement series designed to reignite their interest. A single email might not be enough, so a series of emails gradually escalating in engagement can be more effective.

Email ideas for re-engagement:

The "We Miss You" Email: Start with a friendly reminder that you’ve noticed their absence. This email should acknowledge that it’s been a while and subtly prompt them to reconnect.

Offer an Incentive: If the first email doesn’t work, follow up with a more enticing offer, such as a discount, free shipping, or a limited-time promotion to incentivize action.

Survey or Feedback Request: Ask lapsed customers for feedback on why they’ve been inactive. This can provide valuable insights into how to improve your offerings and make the customer feel valued.

Final Call to Action: The last email in the series should communicate a sense of urgency. Let customers know this is their last chance to take advantage of your offer before their benefits or discounts expire.

3. Personalize Your Re-engagement Campaigns

Personalization is key when re-engaging lapsed customers. If a customer feels that your email is generic or irrelevant, they’re less likely to open it, let alone take action.

Best practices for personalization:

Use their name: Personalized subject lines that address the customer by their first name can increase open rates.

Tailor content: Leverage past purchase behavior, product interests, or browsing history to offer them products they’re more likely to want.

Dynamic content: Incorporate personalized recommendations or upsell complementary products based on their previous engagement.

4. Segment Your Customers Based on Lapse Duration

Not all lapsed customers are the same. Some may have only recently disengaged, while others might have been inactive for a year or more. Using email marketing automation, you can segment customers based on how long they’ve been inactive and craft tailored messages for each group.

Example segments:

Recently Lapsed (30-60 days): These customers may only need a small nudge, such as a reminder of what they’re missing.

Moderately Lapsed (3-6 months): Consider offering stronger incentives, such as exclusive discounts, to re-engage this group.

Long-Term Lapsed (6-12 months): These customers may need a combination of a survey, significant offer, or reintroduction to new products or services.

5. Incorporate a Sense of Urgency

Lapsed customers often need a reason to act now, rather than later. Incorporating urgency in your re-engagement campaigns can help move them toward immediate action.

Best practices for urgency:

Time-sensitive discounts: Offer a special discount that expires within a few days.

Low-stock alerts: Notify customers if products they’ve shown interest in are low on stock, motivating them to act quickly.

Event-based re-engagement: Align the campaign with special events or holidays to give customers a reason to make a purchase.

6. Leverage Customer Testimonials and Social Proof

Sometimes lapsed customers need reassurance that your products or services are still relevant and valuable. Including social proof, such as testimonials or reviews, can help rebuild trust and interest.

Effective tactics:

Share customer success stories or testimonials from people who have recently purchased the product they were interested in.

Use review ratings to highlight popular items they haven’t bought yet.

Include user-generated content, like photos or videos from satisfied customers, to create a sense of community and trust.

7. Test and Optimize Your Campaigns

Even with automation in place, it’s important to continuously test and optimize your re-engagement campaigns. Monitor the performance of your email series, including open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Key testing areas:

Subject lines: Test different subject lines to see which ones generate the highest open rates. Personalization, emojis, and a sense of urgency can be tested.

Email timing: Experiment with the timing and frequency of your emails. Does sending the re-engagement series over a week work better than over two weeks?

Content types: Test different types of content—product recommendations, discounts, or surveys—to see what resonates most with lapsed customers.

8. Clean Up Your List

Not every lapsed customer will re-engage, and that’s okay. If a customer remains inactive after your re-engagement campaign, it may be time to remove them from your email list. Regularly cleaning your list improves your email deliverability and ensures you’re focusing on customers who are likely to engage.

Best practices:

After sending your re-engagement series, if no action is taken, send a final email offering an option to stay on your list or unsubscribe.

Remove customers who remain inactive, as sending to uninterested contacts can hurt your deliverability rates and increase the risk of being marked as spam.

Conclusion

Re-engaging lapsed customers through email marketing automation is a powerful way to bring back lost revenue and strengthen customer relationships. By identifying inactive customers, creating targeted re-engagement series, personalizing your content, and testing your campaigns, you can effectively reignite interest in your brand. With the right strategy in place, automation can help turn lapsed customers into loyal, active buyers once again.