Anatomy of a flow: Winback

If you are uncertain about the product and sales cycle for your brand, using a conditional split can help you find the ideal timing of your flow path.

Simply add a conditional split with the following condition:

• Random sample > Only include > 50% of people.

Now your flow is split into 2 branches where 50% of your audience will be sent down the YES path and 50% of your audience will be sent down the NO path at random. This will allow you to test 2 distinct flow paths with different time delays between the messages.. Let’s say you estimated a sales cycle of 75 days, but you feel that might be too long for your brand. In the YES path, add a time delay of 75 days, and in your NO path, add a time delay for a shorter time, say 55 days.

From there, you should send the same email or SMS message to both branches. Then, monitor your engagement data to determine which time delay yields stronger engagement and conversions.

You can use your winback flow to determine whether or not it’s time to try and reach someone on a different channel by separating those who have engaged with your messages from those who haven’t.

To do this, add a conditional split after your first time delay with the following conditions:

• What someone has done or not done > Person has > Opened Email at least once in the last 60 days.
• OR what someone has done or not done > Person has > Clicked Email at least once in the last 60 days.

Customers who have shown engagement in your emails will go down the YES path. You can send them personalized messages with product recommendations or tailored incentives to get them to consider another purchase..

The customers who go down the NO path have shown that they are not engaging with email. You can drag a Profile Property Update action into this path and tag these customers with a new custom profile property. You may call it something like “Winback on social” and set the value to True. From here, you can build a segment that captures all of the profiles who have been tagged with this property, and sync that audience to another platform like Facebook or Google Ads. From there, you can retarget these lapsed customers through paid ads as a last attempt to win them back.

You may want to split this flow based on whether or not someone is enrolled in your rewards or loyalty program. If they are, you should craft messaging that specifically addresses what they are missing out on or what they could be earning if they re-engage.

The conditions that you use will depend on whether you are using a third-party app to manage your loyalty or rewards program. Your conditional split may look something like this:

• If someone is in or not in a list > Person is in > VIP subscriber list.
• OR Properties about someone > Loyalty member > is true.

Now, customers who are part of your loyalty program will go down the YES path. Use this opportunity to tell them that you miss seeing them on your site, and remind them of their member benefits. Since they were highly engaged at one point in time, you can offer them a bonus reward or incentive to re-engage. If your loyalty app has different tiers, you can further branch this flow based on the recipient’s current tier and customize the messaging to help push them to the next tier.

For customers who go down the NO path, you can send a standard winback series that incentivizes them to come back and browse your site.

You may want to create different experiences for your customers depending on the category they purchased from in the past. To achieve this, you can use a trigger split.

Let’s say you want to personalize your re-engagement message for customers who purchased an item from your best-sellers category. Add a trigger split to your flow with the following condition:

• Collections contains Best Sellers

If someone’s last purchase contained a best-selling item, they will go down the YES path. If they did not purchase a best seller, they will go down the NO path. You can tailor the messaging in the YES path to showcase your other best sellers and highlight new products added with a 15% off discount. Customers in the NO path will instead receive a re-engagement email with a discount, but may contain a “recommended for you” product feed instead.

You most likely have customers in various locations. Whether it’s a different city, state, or country, you can customize your winback flows to be location specific if it makes sense for your business..

For example, you may want to encourage lapsed customers to purchase online or check out the new products at one of your store locations. Branching based on location will make it easier to promote in-store events, offer in-store support, or share relevant information based on the recipient's location. Say your company has a store location in Paris, France.

Add a conditional split in your flow based on the following condition:

• Properties about someone > state/region > equals > Paris.
  

Recipients who meet the condition will go down the YES path, where you can invite them to visit the local Paris location if they have questions or want to check out your new products. All others will go down the NO path and receive messages relevant to your ecommerce store.

Depending on the incentives you want to offer to lapsed customers, you may want to create a different experience for your customers based on how much their previous placed order amount was.

Add a trigger split with the following condition:

• Placed order value is at least 100.

Customers who spend more than $100 will go down the YES path. You can offer a fixed dollar amount off of a purchase of $100 or more for their next order to win them back. Fixed discounts tend to be more appealing to consumers when they are applied for customers with higher-value purchases.

Customers whose last purchase was $100 or less will go down the NO path. For them, you can include a small percentage discount, like 10%, in your first re-engagement message.