Reactivating Inactive Customers

Want more customers? Try reactivating customers who haven’t purchased from you in a while. These are people who have already shown an interest in your company and your products by purchasing from you in the past.  When looking to boost sales, they are a natural place to start.

There are two ways you can approach these customers.

First is to simply attempt to re-engage them with discounts, special offers, and surveys to find out whether they are still engaged with your brand at any level. If they are no longer purchasing from you, you want to find out why. You can use static re-engagement mailings, personalized re-engagement mailings, or personalized URLs for feedback and surveys.

Second is to use outside data resources to gain insight into inactive customer behavior and thereby increase your chances of re-engaging with them.

Let’s say you know that your inactive customer purchased from you 90 days ago, but before that, it was 240 days ago. You might also know the size, color, and item purchased. A list agency like Epsilon can often give you significant additional information on these customers. For example, it might tell you that this same customer purchased 35 days ago from a competitor, has purchased seven times in the past year with your competitors, spends an average of $150 with each order, and that his or her last purchase was 15 days ago.

That is tremendous insight that can help you understand how to re-engage with that customer again. In fact, Epsilon found that while response rates to rental lists averages 1.2%, response rates from house files averages 2.68%. It might take a little more work, but the return is far better.

So before looking outside for new customers, consider rekindling relationships with inactive customers. Use your existing data and additional third-party data to guide your messaging to re-engage those customers and get them purchasing from you over and over again.

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing and Business Development

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou