How to run a re-engagement email campaign

You will learn

Learn how to create and send a re-engagement email campaign.

Note that a re-engagement campaign differs from a winback flow because it is a one-off email rather than a sequence of emails.

• A winback flow is triggered by the Placed Order event and sends when a certain amount of time has passed without an additional purchase.
• A re-engagement campaign is a single email that is sent infrequently to those who may not receive a winback flow. Once a year is a good rule of thumb. 

You can run a similar re-engagement campaign for SMS subscribers. Simply swap the email-based segment criteria for SMS-based criteria, like "can receive SMS marketing" and "clicked SMS."

Run a re-engagement campaign

To run a re-engagement campaign, take the following steps: 

1. Create these 2 segments: one for unengaged purchasers and another for unengaged non-purchasers.
2. Send a personalized email campaign to these subscribers featuring your latest releases and an easy way to update their preferences or unsubscribe.
3. Suppress profiles that don't engage with your re-engagement campaign to preserve strong deliverability.

Split your unengaged subscribers into 2 segments

First, split your unengaged subscribers into segments: those who have made a purchase and those who have not made a purchase. This allows you to easily determine which group is more valuable once you send your campaign.

Unengaged subscribers - purchased

This segment should contain people who:

• Are subscribers and subscribed more than 60 days ago
• Haven't opened an email in the past 120 days
• Have had an email bounce less than 5 times over all time
• Have placed an order at least once over all time

Unengaged subscribers - never purchased

Your second segment should have exactly the same conditions as the first, except they should have never placed an order:

• Are subscribers and subscribed more than 60 days ago
• Haven't opened an email in the past 120 days
• Have had an email bounce less than 5 times over all time
• Have placed an order 0 times over all time

Send the campaign

Send a campaign to these unengaged subscribers. Consider the following best practices for re-engagement campaigns: 

• Make the email personal. Try using a text-only email for a personal feel.
• Use the {{ first_name }} tag to customize the email for each recipient.
• Try a "friendly from" address like "Marissa from Klaviyo."
• Include a prominent unsubscribe and manage preferences link, in case subscribers want to update their settings rather than unsubscribe completely.
  
• Include content about any new products that have been released since they've become inactive.
• Consider offering a discount to entice them to buy.

Include prominent unsubscribe and manage preferences links, in case subscribers want to update their settings rather than unsubscribe completely. You may also want to consider segmenting your newsletter by sending frequency to avoid bombarding subscribers with emails and causing them to become inactive in the first place.

Use batch sending

When you're ready to send out your campaign(s), you may want to use the batch sending option. This distributes deliveries over a longer span of time, which can be a safer option if you're sending to a large group of unengaged people.

After you've sent the campaigns, monitor the results closely to see if this is something you would like to repeat annually. If you see an open rate above 10%, you can consider the campaign successful. It's possible that one segment will have a higher open rate than the other, in which case you may only want to email one segment for future re-engagement campaigns.

You may also want to suppress anyone who does not respond to these emails. You can do this by creating and exporting a segment of those who received either email but did not open them (see below). Once you've exported the segment, navigate to Audience > Profiles > View suppressed profiles > Import to suppress these profiles from receiving future emails. 

In the segment below, replace Campaign Name 1 and Campaign Name 2 with the names of your re-engagement campaigns.

Additional resources

Check out flows for re-engaging and sunsetting subscribers: 

• Guide to creating a winback flow
• Guide to creating a sunset flow