Save "At Risk Customers" via Email Engagement

Another customer segment you will want to identify is your "At Risk Customers." These customers are in your top 20% for total spend, but their last order was between 30-365 days ago.

These high-value customers have the potential to be your best customers if you can bring them back into the fold. As we mentioned in chapter four, it is more expensive to go after a new customer than it is to reach out to an existing one. It is a good idea to try to re-engage them with a win-back campaign.

You will want to create an At Risk Customer group and export this report into your email marketing platform. If you are brand new to using a dedicated email marketing tool, several BigCommerce partners have apps available that will directly integrate into your store.

Once they have been uploaded into your email marketing tool, it is time to create a win-back campaign. No matter what you sell, there are strategies that you can use to get at risk customers buying again, and you should experiment to see which types of email and at what frequency works best for you.

Not sure how they should look? Browse reallygoodemails.com/retention for examples of successful emails from many different industries.

We recommend sending a three-phase sequence similar to our Abandoned Cart Saver. The primary objective of these emails is to incentivize an inactive customer to return to your store and make another purchase. There is no one size fits all answer to the timing of your emails, but we have outlined an example flow below.

• First email — Reach out to them the day they go inactive and give them a small discount. Keep in mind that, you do not always have to give a discount. Your subject line and content could be enough to bring them back.
• Second email — Reach out to them 4-7 days after the first email with a reminder of the discount they have available with some personalized product recommendations or new products to show what they have missed.
• Third email — As a last-ditch effort, increase the discount offer, but give it a 48-hour window to create a sense of urgency a few days after the second email.

If you're using an email marketing platform such as CM Commerce, the email sequence will stop if the customer makes a purchase before the remaining emails are sent. For instance, if the first email (the one with a small discount) is enough for the customer to come back, the rest of the emails in the sequence will not fire.

Email marketing is as much an art as it is a science, so we have provided some tips and best practices to get you started:

• Keep both subject lines and email templates short and sweet.
• Consider using the following subject lines: It's been a while, We miss you, Come back, Discount included.
• Have one simple call-to-action.
• It's not always about the money. Try different incentives to see what works best.
• Personalize your messages.
• Be friendly and playful, but stay faithful to your brand voice.
• When offering discounts, consider using $X off rather than %X off.

Now that you've learned how Insights can be used to identify and group your customers, the next chapter will show you how to deliver top selling products to your customers with highly-targeted email campaigns.