The old adage “it costs less to keep a customer than convert a new one” is still true today. But what about a former customer who has unsubscribed from your list? You might think it would take more time and money to resubscribe and resell to them than to an unknown user. After all, they actively opted out of your list at some point! Perhaps they have a reason to dislike you or no longer need your product? On the other hand, an unknown user has no history with you, and no pre-conceived ideas to block their path to purchase. It sounds reasonable, but we’ve actually seen that previously unsubscribed users are easier to resubscribe and often more likely to convert than a new lead. They’re easier to target, too. You just need a strategic win back campaign.
Factor Your Lead Nurturing CPL
While a win back campaign can have a lot of practical applications, the biggest draw is the ability to target previously unreachable users who already know you. Your history with these unsubscribed users makes them much more likely to convert than unknown users, and more quickly, too. They are more susceptible to your marketing efforts since not as much selling is involved. Your previously invested time and money gives you an advantage over totally new users. If you’ve already factored your lead nurturing CPL, you can see how this shortened time to purchase can help lower your lead nurturing timeline and costs. Factor your current cost per lead as well as your lead nurturing cost per lead now, before running a win back campaign, so that you can compare the results once the campaign concludes.
Target Your Unsubscribed Users
Once you’ve established a baseline, it’s time to set up your win back campaign. The first step is to generate a list of previously unsubscribed users and creating an ad campaign designed to specifically target these users alone. We’ve outlined the details of how a win back campaign works previously, but the general idea is that we’ll use this list to pre-ping publishers and determine if a user browsing a site in our network is on your unsubscribed list. If they are, we’ll show them one of the dedicated ads for these known users. You may determine that these users should see a specific offer related to previous purchases, or they copy of the ad may simply speak to their familiarity with you.
If the user is not on your defined list of unsubcribers, they won’t see the ad, and you won’t pay anything. Pre-pinging allows us to be highly targeted and precise with a win back campaign. And everything is sent using hashed, encrypted data that is secure and follows all relevant privacy regulations.
Segment Your Lead Nurturing Campaign
As the resubscribed users start rolling in, we recommend segmenting your lead nurturing efforts to track your win back campaign follow-up separate from your traditional lead nurturing. This allows you to vary creative and provide richer offers to previous customers. It also enables you to track performance specifically for the win back campaign and compare against your lead nurturing efforts to new leads. Then you can calculate your lead nurturing CPL for new lead generation and win back campaigns and see which is more cost-effective, evaluating both time to purchase and average order size. Since former subscribers were also often customers, they typically have a shorter time to purchase and higher sales, which can drastically lower your lead nurturing CPL.
Track Resubscribed Email Addresses
Segmentation and reporting is great for calculating lead nurturing CPL at the point of the first sale, but we recommend following these resubscribed users all the way through the customr lifecycle. This will determine their lifetime value. And a high lifetime value with a repeat customer is even better than a lower cost per lead. Do they buy more or less frequently than other leads, or than other customers who never left? How much do they spend? And how does that compare to their behavior prior to unsubscribing? The answers to these questions will help you determine the right ratio of win back campaign leads to new leads that you need to cultivate long-term customers and optimize your business.
Ready to put those unsubscribed emails to work? Let’s get started.