Win Back Dormant Customers With a Customer Reactivation Campaign
If you’re in sales or marketing, your primary concern is bringing in new customers. That’s to be expected—after all, new business is the engine that sustains businesses growth. But if you aren’t trying to re-engage inactive customers, you may be missing out on a huge source of untapped revenue: A 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits up to 95%. That’s where a customer reactivation campaign can help, and it’s why customer reactivation is one of the highest ROI opportunities in your sales and marketing strategy.
What is Customer Reactivation?
The aim of customer reactivation is to “wake up” or “win back” dormant and disengaged customers. Marketers and salespeople reach out to lapsed customers who have previously expressed interest but for some reason or other have since disappeared. Reactivation campaign generally involve custom messaging and/or special offers designed to bring inactive customers back into the fold. Some of the benefits of a customer reactivation campaign include:
- Increased revenues – Reactivation campaigns can increase your bottom line by reselling or upselling to dormant customers. The revenue opportunities are even greater if a dormant customer had a positive experience with your brand or solution in the past. And considering that attracting new customers can than keeping existing ones, the potential ROI of a customer reactivation campaign can be significant.
- Strengthen existing client relationships – Successful customer reactivation campaigns can provide insights into what your existing customers are thinking and feeling; information that can be used to help strengthen existing relationships by better serving the customers you already have before they become inactive. For example, if you learn that inactive customers became dormant because they never heard from you after making a purchase, you may be able to head off future turnover with a monthly newsletter or targeted outreach aimed at existing customers.
- Gain competitive intelligence – Inactivity can sometimes mean that a customer has moved on to a competitor, in which case a reactivation campaign can help you answer one of the most important questions related to customer turnover: Why? Whatever you learn about your competitor—lower pricing, better engagement, more support, etc.—can tell you a lot about your offering and your brand’s position in the space you occupy.
- Reduced customer acquisition spend – The cost to acquire new customers is 5-7X higher than it is to retain current customers. Customer loyalty requires far less resources, both human and monetary, than allowing customer churn, forcing your sales team to start anew with prospects currently unknown to your company. Reactivating existing customers or subscribers (dependent on your business model) allows your sales team to take advantage of existing relationships.
How to Win Back Inactive Customers
Customer reactivation strategies and best practices include:
- Ask them to come back – This is especially true for customers who had a positive experience with your brand in the past and only became inactive due to lack of engagement by your sales and/or marketing department. Saying “hello” can remind these customers why they were interested in your solution in the first place. Asking dormant customers to get them to come back also provides the opportunity to ask what it would take to come back. The answers you get can strengthen your reactivation strategy overall, helping you deliver the right message or the right incentive that will help you win back more previous customers. Simply telling your inactive customers “we miss you” can go a long way towards re-engagement with them.
- Provide a special offer – You already know an existing customer’s preferences, so you can customize promotional offers based on past interactions and purchases to entice them to buy again. Delivering targeted offers may also help upsell existing customers. If you properly convey the value proposition of the offer and explain how it helps the customer solve a critical business issue, you can expect this strategy to re-engage many of the customers who have become dormant since first making a purchase. Keep the time frame short, so that the re-engagement has a higher chance for success.
- Make it easy– Before you ask dormant customers to come back, make sure you have systems, and processes in place that make reactivation easy. For example, if reactivation involves filling out an online form, minimize the number of fields customers needs to complete. Another example is setting up a special phone number, email address or landing page that puts existing customers in touch with a reactivation specialist who can answer their questions and fulfill their request faster than going through traditional contact channels. Perhaps you send them an SMS text message with a link to begin the process. (Tip: Open rates are incredibly high at 99% with an average rate of 97% for opened text messages within 15 minutes.)
Customer Retention Strategies
Marketers and salespeople re-engage dormant customers using multiple channels and strategies. According to the HubSpot’s Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2021, customer retention methods that deliver the strongest ROI include:
- Email marketing
- Direct mail
- Social media engagement
- Webcasts/webinars
- Outbound telemarketing
Telemarketing is a Key Strategy of Customer Reactivation
Telemarketing may not be the most widely used customer reactivation strategy, but it is arguably one of the most effective. Consider some of the unique benefits of a customer reactivation telemarketing campaign:
- Telemarketing offers a human touch lacking in email and social media outreach
- Telemarketing collects more insights from existing customers than passive outreach campaigns, which means more business intelligence and metrics for continuous business improvement
- Telemarketing allows you to deliver more customized messages about new products or services, targeted to specific individuals
Telemarketing is a proven way to reengage dormant customers. Intelemark can help.
Our highly-skilled agents know how to communicate with inactive customers who are a huge source of untapped revenue for your business. We deliver customized messages targeted to dormant or lost customers, and in the process gather valuable intelligence about why you lost them in the first place—intelligence that can help you strengthen retention of existing customers and prevent more from falling through the cracks unnecessarily. Contact Intelemark today to plan a Customer Reactivation Campaign before dormant customers (and untapped revenue) are gone forever.
