Customer winback

Sara Heegaard March 3, 20222 minute read

Sara is a copywriter focused on lifting up Recharge's merchants, partners, and their customers. Before Recharge, her past lives included writing and editing at four different subscription... Full bio

What is a customer winback?

A customer winback, or win-back, is when a business regains its inactive customers or former customers. This is often achieved via a win-back campaign, or a calculated marketing plan aimed at recapturing lost customers. The goals of a customer win-back strategy are primarily to increase customer retention, reduce customer churn rate, and increase customer lifetime value (LTV). These efforts can also have the potential to increase customer satisfaction.

Customer win-back strategies

In order to recapture lost customers, a business must first determine why customers have stopped using their products or services, which can be done through studying trends in customer feedback and purchase history. This can identify potential pain points to improve in the buying process, identify high-value customers, and pinpoint existing customers to target with winback strategies. 

It can also be helpful for businesses to segment their customer base so they aren’t applying the same win-back strategies to every existing customer. By making sure that win-back strategies are tailored toward a particular segment, brands can reach the right customer with the most compelling effort for their unique preferences and needs, be it win-back emails or a special discount on certain products. After all, there is no one “right” win-back strategy—it all depends on the needs and preferences of a business’s unique customer base.