Acquiring a new customer costs far more than winning back one who already knows you. Even so, e-commerce databases fill up over time with contacts that have stopped responding. The good news is that a large share of them can be reactivated if you reach them with the right offer at the right moment. In this article, we show you how to do it with the help of artificial intelligence.
Table of contents
- 01 What does winning back inactive users deliver?
- 02 How does personalized mailing to inactive customers work?
- 03 Which communication channels should you use with inactive customers?
- 04 Which tips will boost effectiveness?
- 05 Summary
01 What does winning back inactive users deliver?
Using artificial intelligence algorithms, find the group of customers who are not active and try to draw them back by sending an offer tailored to their needs.
This scenario helps to reduce:
- customer churn,
- the number of inactive customers,
- acquisition cost.
Every day, companies have to face the challenge of engaging inactive potential customers. They often spend enormous sums acquiring new customers and advertising in paid media, yet they are not always able to convince them to stay.
02 How does personalized mailing to inactive customers work?
The approaches in this article rely on automatically sending a personalized email to a group of inactive customers at their predicted purchase time. This means that artificial intelligence algorithms determine when a customer is most likely to make a purchase and then send them a personalized email with incentives to return to the store.
This approach can bring many benefits:
- it can help generate first purchases from customers who previously visited the site but did not complete a transaction;
- it can reduce customer churn, because people who make a purchase will be encouraged to stay with the company longer;
- it can help reduce the number of inactive customers;
- it can help lower customer acquisition costs, since re-engaging inactive customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones.
03 Which communication channels should you use with inactive customers?
Another way to engage inactive customers is to use communication channels such as SMS, phone calls, or advertising campaigns on social media. It is important to match the communication channel to the customer's preferences.
For companies operating in the e-commerce industry, an important element in winning back inactive customers is personalizing the shopping experience. Delivering personalized product recommendations, special offers, or discount coupons can encourage a customer to return.
04 Which tips will boost effectiveness?
- try running an A/B test of your subject lines. Do not rely on a single subject line;
- test different send times. Not all customers open their inbox first thing in the morning;
- to the group of least active customers, send a goodbye email in which you can say that for some time now you have noticed they are not responding to your emails, and that if they do not reply to the goodbye email within 24 hours, you will remove them from your database;
- instead of constantly sending discounts and promotions, you can create surveys that will improve your marketing communication.
A goodbye email is an effective way to clean up a list of addresses that, although present in it, do not respond to any of the messages sent. In such a situation, you should send this user a message containing an unsubscribe link, placing it directly in the body of the email rather than in the footer. By cleaning your database of addresses like these, you can keep it at an appropriate size, which will have a positive effect on the number of delivered messages, an increase in OR/CTR metrics, and a boost to conversion itself.
05 Summary
Winning back inactive users is one of the cheapest ways to drive growth in e-commerce, because reactivating an existing customer costs less than acquiring a new one. Use artificial intelligence to reach customers with an offer at the predicted purchase moment, match the channel to the customer's preferences, and personalize your communication. Remember database hygiene too - a goodbye email to permanently inactive contacts improves deliverability and key metrics.