Win Back Reactivation

Win-Back Reactivation

Overview

Lapsed customers — those who have not purchased within 2× their typical repurchase cycle — represent a high-ROI recovery opportunity because they already know your brand. Win-back campaigns targeting these customers typically yield 5–15% reactivation rates, compared to 1–3% for cold prospecting. For Shopify, Klaviyo's predictive churn risk segment automates lapsed customer identification without manual RFM scoring. For WooCommerce, AutomateWoo provides a dedicated "Win Back" automation trigger. The strategic work is structuring a three-step email sequence, personalizing offers by customer LTV, and sunsetting contacts who remain unresponsive.

When to Use This Skill

Note: For proactive churn prevention before customers lapse, see @customer-retention-engine. This skill focuses on re-engaging customers who have already become inactive.

• When a large portion of your customer base has not purchased in 90–180 days
• When overall repeat purchase rate is declining year-over-year
• When you have never systematically targeted lapsed customers before
• When lifecycle marketing is in place but there is no specific win-back workflow
• When wanting to identify which lapsed customers are worth discounting vs. sunsetting

Core Instructions

Step 1: Choose your win-back automation tool

Recommendation: If you already use Klaviyo for cart abandonment or post-purchase flows, add win-back there — no additional tool needed. If you are on WooCommerce without Klaviyo, AutomateWoo is the most cost-effective option.

Step 2: Set up lapsed customer segments

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Shopify / BigCommerce with Klaviyo

Klaviyo includes a Predictive Churn Risk property on every customer profile, calculated automatically from purchase history. No manual RFM setup required.

1. In Klaviyo, go to Lists & Segments → Create Segment 2. Create three segments using Properties about someone:

Early Lapsed (60–120 days):

• Predictive Churn Risk equals High
• AND Date of last order is between 120 days ago and 60 days ago
• AND Email marketing consent is subscribed

Mid-Lapsed (121–180 days):

• Predictive Churn Risk equals High
• AND Date of last order is between 180 days ago and 121 days ago

Deep-Lapsed (181–365 days):

• Predictive Churn Risk equals High
• AND Date of last order is between 365 days ago and 181 days ago

3. Alternatively, use Klaviyo's pre-built Winback flow template: go to Flows → Create Flow → Browse Templates → search "Win Back" → the template creates segments and email sequence automatically

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WooCommerce with AutomateWoo

1. Go to WordPress Admin → AutomateWoo → Workflows → Add Workflow 2. Set the trigger to Win Back Inactive Customer 3. Configure trigger settings:

• Days since last order: set to 60 for early-lapsed, create a second workflow at 120 for deeper lapsed
• Order status: completed

4. Add a Send Email action for each step in the sequence 5. AutomateWoo automatically excludes customers who have placed an order since the workflow started — no manual cancellation needed

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Manual segmentation (any platform)

If you do not use an automation tool, export your customer list filtered by last order date:

• Shopify: go to Customers → All customers → use the date filter "Last order date is before [date]" → export as CSV → import into your email platform
• WooCommerce: go to WooCommerce → Reports → Customers → filter by last active date
• BigCommerce: go to Customers → Export and filter by last order date in your spreadsheet

Step 3: Build the win-back email sequence

A three-email sequence performs better than a single message. The sequence escalates from warm reconnection to an explicit offer to a last-chance message:

Subject line examples that work:

• Email 1: "It's been a while, [first name]" / "We've been thinking about you"
• Email 2: "Still thinking about [last purchased category]?" / "A little something for your return"
• Email 3: "Your offer expires tomorrow" / "This is our last email — we mean it"

Klaviyo sequence setup: 1. Go to Flows → Create Flow → Start from Scratch 2. Set the trigger to Segment → [your lapsed segment] 3. Add Email → Time Delay (5 days) → Email → Time Delay (7 days) → Email 4. Add a Conditional Split after Email 1: if the customer has placed an order since the flow started, exit them from the flow 5. For the discount: go to Content → Coupon Codes → create a unique dynamic coupon for each recipient (Klaviyo generates unique single-use codes automatically)

Step 4: Personalize offers by customer LTV

Not all lapsed customers deserve the same discount. Tailor the offer based on historical spend:

In Klaviyo:

• Use the Historic Customer Lifetime Value property in your email template
• Create two versions of Email 2 using A/B test or conditional content blocks:
• High LTV (over $300 lifetime): free shipping + 15% off
• Standard LTV (under $300): 10% off

In AutomateWoo:

• Add a Check Customer Total Spent condition to your workflow
• If total spent > 300: proceed to the high-value email variation
• Otherwise: proceed to the standard email variation

Step 5: Cancel win-back sequence on purchase

This step prevents sending a discount email to a customer who already bought.

In Klaviyo: Klaviyo handles this automatically — any profile that exits the lapsed segment (by making a purchase) immediately exits all active flows for that segment.

In AutomateWoo: the "Win Back Inactive Customer" trigger natively cancels pending workflow steps when an order is placed — no additional configuration needed.

Manual check (custom setups): Before sending each email in your sequence, verify the customer's last order date is still beyond your lapse threshold. Cancel the remaining sequence if they have purchased.

Step 6: Sunset unresponsive contacts

Continuing to email completely unresponsive lapsed contacts hurts your sending domain's deliverability.

In Klaviyo: 1. Go to Lists & Segments → Create Segment:

• Email marketing consent is subscribed
• AND Last opened email more than 90 days ago
• AND Last clicked email more than 90 days ago
• AND Date of last order more than 180 days ago

2. Send a single Re-permission email: "We'll stop sending you emails unless you click to stay subscribed" 3. Anyone who does not click within 14 days: go to the segment → Manage Members → Suppress All — this removes them from all future sends without deleting them 4. Suppression is reversible — they can re-subscribe at any time

In AutomateWoo:

• Add a final step to your win-back workflow: after 30 days of no engagement, add the customer to an "unsubscribe" list or use the Unsubscribe Customer action

Best Practices

• Lead with connection, not desperation — the first message should feel warm ("We've missed you") rather than transactional; aggressive discounts on message 1 train customers to wait for the win-back offer
• Personalize with previous purchase context — referencing what the customer previously bought increases open rates by 25–35% vs. generic "we miss you" subject lines; Klaviyo's {{ event.extra.product_name }} pulls last purchased product name automatically
• Respect the email sunset — suppressing non-engagers after 90 days of inactivity protects your domain reputation and improves deliverability for everyone else
• Vary offer levels by LTV — a 15% discount that wins back a $500 LTV customer is excellent ROI; the same discount on a $40 LTV customer barely covers the cost
• Set a 60-day cooldown — after a completed win-back cycle (converted or suppressed), do not re-enter the customer into another win-back flow for at least 60 days
• Use SMS for mid-lapsed only — SMS has high engagement but also high unsubscribe rates when used for lapsed contacts; reserve SMS for the mid-lapsed tier (121–180 days) where the customer relationship is still warm

Common Pitfalls

Related Skills

• @customer-retention-engine
• @lifecycle-marketing-automation
• @email-marketing-automation
• @email-list-segmentation
• @loyalty-program-optimization

Customer Lapse Audit Tool

Problem Description

The growth team at a mid-sized e-commerce company has noticed that repeat purchase rates have been declining steadily. Leadership suspects a large chunk of the customer base has quietly gone inactive, but there's no current tooling to measure or categorize this. Before they can launch any re-engagement efforts, they need a reliable way to identify and group lapsed customers based on how long it has been since their last order.

The company wants a TypeScript module that queries their customer database and returns structured segments of lapsed customers. The output should help the marketing team understand the urgency and appropriate communication strategy for each group, and prioritize the most commercially valuable customers within each group. Some customers are reachable via SMS for more urgent contact, but SMS permissions must always be respected.

Output Specification

Write a TypeScript file lapsed-segments.ts that:

• Defines the lapsed segment configuration (the distinct groups, their day thresholds, offer intensity, and eligible channels)
• Implements a function getLapsedCustomers(segment) that queries the database and returns matching customers

Also write a short README.md explaining the segment definitions (names, day ranges, offer strengths, and channels) in a table.

Assume the following are available via imports:

• db from './db' (with db.customers.findAll(...))
• subDays from 'date-fns'
• A Customer type from './types'

Do not implement the database layer itself — focus only on the segment configuration and query logic.

Win-Back Campaign Cleanup and Deliverability Protection

Problem Description

The engineering team at an online retailer has been running win-back email campaigns for six months. Two problems have emerged. First, a handful of customers have complained that they received promotional emails the same day they made a purchase, which damaged trust and generated unsubscribe complaints. The team suspects pending campaign jobs aren't being cancelled when an order is placed. Second, the company's email deliverability scores have been declining — investigation points to a growing list of completely unresponsive contacts who are still receiving campaign emails month after month. Industry best practice recommends removing these contacts from the active mailing list, but the legal team insists on giving them one final opt-in opportunity before suppression.

The team wants two pieces of functionality implemented to address these issues: a robust order-completion handler that terminates any in-flight win-back activity when a purchase happens, and a periodic cleanup job that identifies contacts who have never engaged with win-back emails and gracefully sunsets them.

Output Specification

Write a TypeScript file win-back-lifecycle.ts that implements: 1. onOrderPaid(order) — handles the cleanup when a customer makes a purchase 2. runSunsetWorkflow() — runs periodically to suppress chronically unresponsive contacts

Also write a short process-notes.md describing:

• What the order handler does step by step
• The criteria used to identify unresponsive contacts and what actions are taken

Assume the following are available via imports:

• db from './db'
• winBackQueue from './queue'
• sendEmail from './mailer'
• subDays from 'date-fns'
• Types Order from './types'

Automated Win-Back Campaign Engine

Problem Description

A DTC (direct-to-consumer) brand has identified several thousand customers across different lapsed segments and wants to automatically enroll each of them in a targeted re-engagement campaign. The marketing team has found through past experiments that simply blasting all lapsed customers with the same coupon code results in low conversion and erodes brand trust. They want a smarter approach: tailoring both the offer given and the product recommendations shown based on each customer's purchase history, and rolling out the outreach in a considered sequence rather than all at once.

A key concern is duplicate enrollments — customers must not be re-enrolled in a campaign if they were already targeted recently. The team also wants to ensure incentives are earned and meaningful: discounts should be valid for a limited window and non-transferable, and the opening message should focus on reconnection rather than an immediate push to buy.

Output Specification

Write a TypeScript file win-back-engine.ts that implements: 1. selectWinBackOffer(customerId, offerStrength) — returns the appropriate offer based on the customer's purchase history 2. getWinBackRecommendations(customerId) — returns personalized product suggestions 3. triggerWinBackSequence(customerId, segment) — orchestrates the full campaign enrollment including deduplication, offer creation, product recommendations, and job scheduling

Assume the following are available via imports:

• db from './db'
• winBackQueue from './queue'
• createUniqueDiscount from './discounts'
• subDays, addDays from 'date-fns'
• Types Customer, Product, LapsedSegment from './types'

Do not implement database or queue internals — just the campaign orchestration logic.