Harsh as it sounds, any relationship can get stale if neither of the sides is putting in the effort. For businesses, that often manifests in old-time customers expressing less and less interest in what the brand has to offer. Thankfully, there are ways to bridge the growing distance between you and your formerly loyal customers before they check out completely.
Meet winback emails, an elegant solution for revitalizing customer relationships and motivating an inert audience to give your brand another chance. In this post, you’ll learn how to craft these campaigns and what to keep in mind when sending them out. We’ll also supply you with impactful customer winback email examples to set you up for success.
Content:
What is a winback email?
A winback email is a targeted email campaign intended to re-engage inactive or lapsed customers and encourage them to return. You can strategically send these emails to users who haven’t interacted with your brand for a while — whether they stopped opening your emails, making purchases, or using your service. The goal is to pique their interest with personalized offers, reminders, or updates.
Unlike general promotional emails, winback email campaigns are sent to a narrow group of people and catered to their current needs. They are more focused on rebuilding the relationship, often appealing to the customer’s emotional, curious, or nostalgic side. In short, they’re meant to serve as a reminder of why the customer signed up in the first place.
It’s common to send winback emails after 30–90 days of customer inactivity to catch them before they leave for good. However, there are some exceptions. For instance, abandoned cart emails, which are usually sent just after 6–24 hours of inactivity, can also count as winback emails.
For SaaS or membership-based services, the optimal time window would be after a missed renewal or subscription expiration. You can also use a special occasion (the brand’s anniversary or holiday sale) as a reason to reconnect by sending a customer winback email.
The benefits of sending out winback emails
Winback emails aren’t just a nice touch — they’re a powerful tool to boost revenue, improve customer retention, and maximize your ROI. Here’s why they’re worth implementing:
- Prioritizing long-term relationships over quick gains. Winning old customers back is cheaper than acquiring new ones, especially considering that customer acquisition costs have risen by 60% in recent years. By investing in customer relationships, you get a more predictable, reliable revenue stream while strengthening brand loyalty.
- Straightforward way to spark conversions. Even a small percentage of re-engaged customers can lead to a significant increase in purchases. Many users leave simply due to inactivity, not dissatisfaction — giving them a reason to return can drive more sales.
- Working toward building a more engaged, tuned-in mailing list. If many subscribers ignore your emails, your future campaigns may land in the spam folder. Winback campaigns help maintain your contact list hygiene by re-engaging passive users and letting go of those who aren’t interested anymore.
- Stronger bonds with customers. A well-crafted winback email feels like a warm, friendly check-in and reminds customers why they loved your brand in the first place. Whether through personalized recommendations, limited-time offers, or relevant updates, these emails rebuild lost connections.
- Deeper understanding of customer needs. Winback emails help you analyze why customers leave and what incentives work best to make them stay. Including survey links or feedback requests to better understand disengagement reasons can give you even more insights into their motivation.
- Subtle way to encourage repeat purchases. Once a customer is re-engaged, they’re more likely to make repeat orders, interact with your brand online, or stay receptive in general, which can increase their customer lifetime value (CLV).
Overall, customer winback emails contribute to building a holistic, thoughtful messaging strategy where each and every aspect of customer lifecycle is accounted for.
What should a proper winback email contain?
Obviously, a great winback email needs to grab attention, but that’s not all. It must offer value and make it easy for the customer to re-engage, otherwise, there will be no reason for them to pay attention to your offer. Let’s go through the essential elements and triggers that make it work.
A clear and persuasive subject line
First impressions matter — if your email subject line feels neither urgent nor relevant, the email will remain unopened, following the fate of your previous campaigns. Your winback email subject line must spark curiosity, making the user wonder what they’ve been missing. At the same time, it’s crucial to not reveal too much to keep the intrigue going.
Gentle acknowledgment of the absence
The winback email should feel personal, conveying the real human sentiment behind it — “you’ve been with us for a while, and we really cherish your presence.” This is where you should remind the customer why they signed up in the first place. Is it your unbeatable commitment to quality? The fun community behind your brand? Or, the groundbreaking update your service has gone through? Make sure to highlight what they gain by paying you a long overdue visit.
Make sure your tone remains warm and friendly, not pushy. It’s a good idea to express gratitude for their past engagement, emphasizing your attentiveness and making them feel special. “Hey [Name], we noticed you haven’t shopped with us in a while, and we miss you! Let’s catch up — here are the new arrivals you may love.”
With SendPulse, you can quickly craft a winback email like this one and let the built-in AI assistant improve your copy to suit your goals even better. Thanks to the A/B test feature, you can then compare different email templates or subject lines to discover the winning formula. Once it goes live, the integrated analytics tools will give you insights into your campaign performance and mailing list quality.
A strong incentive to return
If your customer is falling out of love with your brand, they may need a bit more than a simple reassurance that you’re still there for them. Give them a real reason to come back, whether it’s a personal discount, exclusive content, or a glimpse of what’s to come next.
- “To celebrate our friendship, here’s 15% off your next order!”
- “Check out our new arrivals, selected just for you!”
- “Redeem your unused points before they expire!”
- “Come back and get 20% off your next purchase! Use code: WEMISSYOU20 before [Expiration Date].”
The incentive shouldn’t just mirror your existing promotions — if that happens, your customer will likely feel slightly cheated.
A strong call to action
The easier it is for the customer to take action, the more likely they will. With winback emails, you really only get one shot at making them return, so you have to make that shot count. Utilize bold, tap-friendly, effective CTA buttons to make sure the recipient has an easy time converting at any point through your email.
Use trigger words like:
- “Claim Your Discount Now”
- “Browse New Arrivals”
- “Reactivate My Account”
It’s important to use action-driven words and avoid vague CTAs like “Click here” — be specific about what they’ll get.
A FOMO driver
Sense of urgency encourages quick action instead of procrastination, which is especially important if you want to win hesitant customers back. To prevent them from pondering and second-guessing your offer, introduce a time limit: “Watch out, this deal expires in 48 hours”.
You can also drive the fear of missing out through other means, like exclusivity: “This offer is one-of-a-kind, for our most loyal members only.”
Feedback capture
If a customer isn’t interested anymore, it’s helpful to know why. To get that kind of intel, you can ask them a simple question in your winback email: “Tell us why you left — your feedback helps us improve!” If you choose to do so, provide a quick survey link or a one-click response option to not bore your customers with lengthy questionnaires when their motivation is already low.
SendPulse offers you diverse feedback capture tools, from automated emails to chatbots and pop-ups. Our survey type guide can help you navigate different feedback collection formats and channels, finding the perfect combination for successful customer re-engagement.
A clear way out
Some customers truly want out, and there’s not much you can do besides letting them go gracefully. To be transparent and honor their potential choice to move on, include an easy way to opt out from your campaigns in your winback email.
Keep it simple, respectful, and lighthearted: “Don’t want to hear from us? No biggie — unsubscribe here. You’re welcome back anytime.”
30 hot winback email subject line ideas
A great winback email subject line should immediately grab attention and urge the customer to look inside, but there’s more than one way to achieve that effect. Here are some powerful winback email subject line ideas categorized by approach.
The “We miss you” approach:
- We miss you, [Name]! Here’s a little something…
- It’s been a while — let’s catch up!
- Come back, [Name]. We have a surprise for you!
- We haven’t seen you in a while — everything okay?
- Still interested? We’d love to have you back!
The incentive approach:
- A special gift just for you — open to claim!
- How’s it going? We have some goodies for you
- 20% off — just because we miss you!
- Come back and enjoy your 15% off
- We saved you a deal, but it won’t last!
The mystery approach:
- Something exciting is waiting for you…
- You won’t believe what we have for you!
- We’ve been busy — check out what’s new!
- A lot has happened since your last visit
- Your account is waiting… Come back and see what’s new!
The playful approach:
- Did we do something wrong?
- Knock knock… anyone there?
- You’ve probably been too busy. We get it
- It’s not the same without you
- Psst… we have something special for you!
The urgency approach:
- Act now — your cart is about to expire!
- Heads up: Your discount disappears soon!
- Oh no, your deal is about to expire
- You would hate to miss out on these deals
- This offer won’t last much longer
The feedback seeking approach:
- Let us know what went wrong
- Share your thoughts with us
- Was it something we said? Let’s fix it!
- What can we do better? We’d love to hear from you!
- Quick question, [Name] — can we make it up to you?
Ultimately, you need to decide on the right tone of voice based on your audience demographics and where they are in their customer journey. If you create your winback campaign in SendPulse, there’s an option to personalize your subject line as well as the email body using variables such as the user’s name, last visit date, etc.
5 irresistible winback email examples
One thing is to know how everything works in theory, another — to see it implemented in real life. The truth is, it is sometimes necessary to break a couple of rules in order to get what you’re after. The following customer winback email examples prove just that.
Respecting the user’s time
If you know your audience consists of accomplished, highly productive individuals, there’s no need to guilt-trip them into visiting your platform — if they had the time, they would probably have done so already.
Instead, you can give them a quick summary of what they’ve been missing, respecting their freedom to act or not to act on it.
This approach works best for premium and tech products and services whose audience prefers to think and act independently and make informed, data-backed decisions. This is also a good reason to integrate social proof into your winback campaigns, making them more trustworthy.
Staying cheerful
Who said winback campaigns should be serious and uptight? You can also crack a joke and charm your customers with your charismatic brand persona, as this lip balm producer does. The colorful, upbeat email like this one is more likely to stand out in the customer’s inbox.
This campaign is reinforced with a positive customer testimonial conveying that fun feeling of applying a deliciously flavored chapstick. The email has lots of white space and popping CTA buttons to prevent the reader’s eyes from wandering off.
Aiming to make the customer’s life easier
If your customers are indeed too busy to follow your updates, they will appreciate you stepping forward and, instead of adding one more task to their to-do list, offering to take some of that load off their shoulders.
This polite winback customer winback email example ticks all the boxes, providing the recipient with an effortless way to boost their quality of life without having to perform extensive product research. The emphasis is put on the potential savings, and the whole ordering process is broken down into clear steps.
Using seasonality to make a comeback
Sometimes, you’re not in the position to give out personalized site-wide discounts, and that’s completely okay. You can also use regular seasonal sales as an incentive for your dormant customers to revisit your brand.
This spooky winback email hits the mark without being pushy or manipulative — it reveals just enough information about the sale and offers a little tease for curious customers to follow. No additional information means no distractions, making the readers more likely to click the CTA button.
Going against the grain
Every marketer’s natural inclination is to stay on the customer’s good side, appeasing them with gifts and showering them with compliments. But, what if your audience is tired from overly sweet promotions and craves a bolder, more authentic approach? This customer winback email example shows that you don’t always have to be nice to get what you want — sometimes, a more daring tone is needed to get the job done.
This kind of tough love can actually reinvigorate your sleepy audience and make them appreciate your brand charisma. It will also make your campaigns more memorable, helping you stand out from the competition without using fancy visuals or other gimmicks.
Create an effective winback email with SendPulse
SendPulse offers everything you need to create personalized email campaigns that look good on any device, thanks to our customizable responsive templates and dynamic content feature. Our automation tool enables you to align your messaging with the events on your website, helping you automate entire sales workflows.
Our platform also comes with a CRM, a chatbot builder, a website builder, pop-ups, and other tools for effortless omnichannel communication. Get your account now — you can explore our toolkit even with a free plan!
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