What is Customer Re-Engagement?
Customer loyalty is essential to building a successful brand. Household names like Amazon Prime and Spotify have kept the same customers subscribed for over a decade. From Netflix’s “Are you still watching?” prompt to Duolingo’s famously pushy reminders, these brands have mastered re-engaging with customers before they churn.
But with more services competing for their attention than ever, keeping customers engaged is hard. And unless you’re a huge business, getting new customers in the door gets expensive fast.
Let’s look at re-engagement in more detail and see how businesses of any size can benefit.
What is customer re-engagement?
Imagine a shopper visiting your e-commerce shop and adding a few items to their cart. But for some reason, they abandon their cart. Or a customer that has your mobile app once or twice and hasn’t used it in a while.
These are issues every business will want to find solutions to. They have to engage with customers so they can renew a subscription, complete a purchase, reuse an app, or take an action a business wants. That might include:
- Dedicated re-engagement emails (e.g. personalized offers for inactive subscribers)
- Regular messaging through a loyalty program (e.g. birthday coupons)
- Relevant content (e.g. valuable blogs going out to the email list)
Why you need to re-engage customers
The amount of marketing promotions consumers receive daily makes it challenging to keep their attention. It’s up to brands to be creative to stay on top of their minds. Here are some reasons why a re-engagement campaign is worth it.
It’s cost-effective
Perhaps the biggest attraction for customer re-engagement is that it saves money. Acquiring new customers involves spending on ads, lead nurturing, etc. But with an existing customer, sometimes a nudge is enough.
If you leverage technology, you can save even more. For example, you can integrate AI call center software with CRM systems. That way, agents comprehensively view each customer’s history leading to personalized re-engagement strategies based on granular segmentation.
It improves customer lifetime value
Brands receive loyalty when they prioritize tailored customer experiences and nurturing relationships. When customers feel valued, they come back. For example, deploying a conversational AI for sales chatbot available 24/7 means you can answer queries day or night with a small team.
Customer re-engagement reduces churn rates
When customers leave, they take their business with them. When they’re really gone, it’s harder to win them back than winning new business. Even a 5% decrease in churn can increase profit by 25-125%!
It enhances brand awareness
People don’t like being marketed to unless the content is relevant and interesting to them. That’s why businesses invest so much in producing valuable content.
However, consistently producing valuable content is tricky, especially for a small team. This is why you should embrace handy tools like an AI post generator. By skipping writer’s block, you can get your brand in front of inactive subscribers with new content on a regular cadence.
Quick tips for re-engaging customers
So, how can small teams bring inactive customers back from the brink?
- Understand why customers became disinterested. The first step is to understand the cause of the problem. Think about why engagement dropped. Could they not navigate the site? Did they not understand the product? Was the price too much, or were they dissatisfied with the service? If in doubt, send a customer survey to your email list and see what comes back.
- Act on customer insights. Next, take all the data you have gathered and segment your customers. This means using behaviors or signals to group them. Categorize them by total spend, website visits, email interactions, on-site behavior, etc. Then, start tailoring your content to those segments.
- Measure performance and optimize. Assess the result of your re-engagement campaign and make necessary iterations. A/B test different subject lines and messages until you find winning combinations.
The bottom line
Acquiring new customers is important. But never let it get in the way of serving your current customers. If your existing customers aren’t as active as you’d like, start up a re-engagement campaign now to stop them from walking away for good.
