6 Examples of Clever Re-engagement Email Campaigns

What is a customer re-engagement promotion?

Customer re-engagement campaigns are sent to inactive customers or customers who churned after a certain period of time since their last activity. They often carry a discount or a promotion to incentivize customers to complete a purchase or re-subscribe. 

With the skyrocketing costs of acquiring a new customer, investing in keeping your customers happy is the best way to help your business grow. Sometimes you need to incentivize dormant customers, and there is no better way to do it than a fun coupon campaign with automatic reminders. These kinds of re-engaging emails and messages are a surefire way of increasing LTV. Besides keeping an outdated subscribers list with a ton of churned subscribers can effectively lower your sender reputation and cause your emails to go straight to spam.

There’s a data-backed case study by professor V. Kumar, a marketing professor at Georgia State University, which shares tips on how to design “win back” offers you can use in your re-engagement ads. We highly recommend reading it.

In this blog post, we will cover a couple of examples and inspirations for re-engagement email campaigns carrying a discount based on real-life use cases. We have tried to pick offers that differ from each other to show you various examples of promotion conditions that you can offer to inactive customers and churned subscribers. Let’s jump straight to the examples of the best re-engagement campaigns out there.

Examples of re-engagement email campaigns

Martha and Marley Spoon – dollar off discount split over two orders

The first re-engagement email comes from Martha and Marley Spoon is a Martha Stewart’s meal kit subscription box, where customers can choose from over 20 recipes each week. The meal kits come with all ingredients and recipes, all under 30 minutes preparation time.  

They launched a re-engagement email campaign for churned customers (those, who have cancelled their subscriptions) offering $30 off their subscription, the discount divided between their next two orders (boxes), each $15 off. They used a subject line: “FIRSTNAME, we miss you!” using the first name of the customer to personalize the message. 

Promotion conditions: 

• The discount can be only applied in the amounts of $15 off each of the two consecutive orders. 
• The discount expires on 11/14/2021 and the email was sent on 11/07/2021, giving the customers one week to use the offer. 
• The offer is valid only for the existing customer with a certain email address, only for the original holder of the discount. 
• The discount in the form of a voucher code is automatically applied when the customer re-activates their membership. 
• The win-back offer cannot be combined with other promotions.
• Note that they have sent the unique voucher code in the disclaimer of the email, just in case the automatic discount application doesn't work. 

Paul Smith – standalone percentage off discount

Paul Smith is a luxury fashion brand from Nottingham named after its founder, a British fashion designer. The company has launched a re-engagement email campaign sending messages to inactive customers containing a 10% off standalone coupon code HELLO10 to incentivize them to come back and purchase something from the brand. They used a subject line: “We miss you – 10% off everything”.

Hello Fresh – auto-applied percentage discount split over five orders

The next inspiration for a winning re-engagement strategy comes from Hello Fresh SE is a German publicly traded meal-kit company based in Berlin, Germany. It is the largest meal-kit provider in the United States, and also has operations in Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, and Western Europe.

They have sent a re-engagement email to customers, who have unsubscribed from the service, offering six free meals for re-subscribing as part of their Fall campaign. They have used a catchy subject line asking a question everyone would answer YES to: “Want dinner delivered next week?” The email had an urgency to it, as they have added a bold countdown timer for the offer (valid 7 days from reception of the email). 

Promotion conditions: 

• The promotion applies only to former HelloFresh customers who have cancelled the subscription. 
• The customers will receive 27.8% off their next two boxes and 18.54% off their third, fourth and fifth box, which makes up a total promotional value of approximately six free meals (calculating two meals for four people per week plan, it may vary if you want more/less meals for more or less people). This is a very clever construction of a discount, splitting the discount over five deliveries, making the returning customers stick with the company for at least five orders to get the offer. It is also a bit tricky as the customers will not actually get six free meals, just the equivalent of it and under very strict conditions. 
• Offer cannot be combined with other offers or promotions. 
• Offer only applies to US-based customers.
• The win-back discount expires in 7 days from the date of email reception.

FabFitFun – auto-applied free product & access to special offers

FabFitFun is a subscription service that sends full-sized beauty products every three months. It offers monthly and annual subscription options. 

They have sent a re-engagement email campaign with an alluring title: “Your freebie is waiting”. Keep in mind that the subject line for your email re-engagement workflow should be original and creative as this is your last opportunity to win the user back, so do not hold back with more cheeky copy.

They have focused their campaign on a free gift, which is a Mystery Box worth $145. They have also added other perks like up to 70% sale on new products and more customization options for re-subscribing customers only. 

Promotion conditions: 

• Free Mystery Bundle is only available to members who reactivate into an Annual Subscription. 
• The offer expires two weeks after the reception of the email. 
• The promotion cannot be combined with other offers. 
• The bonus sale promotion expires in three days after the email reception. 

Grubhub – Dollar off unique discount to win back customers

Grubhub Inc. is an American online and mobile food ordering and delivery platform owned by Just Eat Takeaway that connects diners with local restaurants.

They have sent a re-engagement email campaign with a subject line stating clearly the promotion details: “Here’s a $10 Perk because we miss you!”. They offered $10 off for orders above $15, auto-applied if a customer enters the specified link. Otherwise it requires a voucher code that is unique to the user (it is mentioned in the e-mail disclaimer). This re-engagement campaign is targeted at the customers who have created an account on Grubhub but have never placed any orders.

Promotion conditions: 

• Orders must be above $15 (before tax, tip and fees) to qualify for the discount. 
• This discount is valid only for first-time Grubhub users. 
• Available only for delivery orders. 
• To redeem, customers must click on the link in the email or enter a unique voucher code that was sent to them in the disclaimer.
• The promotion can be used only once per customer. 
• The promotion cannot be combined with other offers. 
• The promotion is not valid on alcohol purchases. 

Loot Crate – 2+1 free bundle with a standalone discount code

Loot Crate is a subscription box service established in 2012 which provides monthly boxes of geek- and gaming-related merchandise.

They have offered a 2+1 free bundle only for re-subscribers in their re-engagement email campaign. They used a subject line: “We miss you! Enjoy this exclusive offer just for you!”. Customers who re-subscribed to the box got one crate free of charge. 

Promotion conditions:

• This promotion applies only to re-subscribing customers who subscribe to 2- or 3-crate subscription. 
• Excludes gift plans, limited edition crates, Loot Remix and Loot Launcher. 
• Expires two days after reception of the email.
• The promotion requires a coupon code: COMEBACKFREE applied at checkout. 
  

Best practices of the re-engagement email campaigns

Having read through 30+ re-engagement email campaigns, here are the most prominent trends that we saw: 

• Most companies offer percentage or dollar off discounts that are approximately between 10% and 20% off value. 
• Subscription-based businesses sometimes offer split discounts, forcing customers to place more than just one order to use the discount.
• The re-engagement emails often contain “miss” word in the subject line as well as the amount of the perk or promotion details. 
• The promotions usually apply for most of the articles, exclusions being gift cards, taxes, fees and limited edition or high value products. 
• Offers we saw were not very personalized, usually applied to all assortment. They did not target the customer's preferred products nor specific product categories.
• The emails sometimes mentioned the customer’s name but we have not seen more personalization than that. 
• The offers usually lasted between 7 to 14 days since the email reception. 
• Most of the offers were discount code-based, either using standalone (one) code or unique codes (each customer gets another code). Sometimes the companies auto-apply the code at checkout if the customer enters from a link provided in the email. 
  

We hope these inspirations will help you design your next re-engagement campaign and recover as many shoppers as possible. If you would like to launch such a promotional campaign but do not have the right software to do it, we are here for you. Voucherify is an API-first Promotion Engine that can power any of the above-mentioned promotions with all the limitations and distribute them omnichannel. It is also quick and easy to integrate and get started with.

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