12 Re-engagement Email Campaign Examples (+34 Subject Lines)

Published in

Automizy

10 min readMar 7, 2019

Let’s admit it, we all have an email list we subscribed for but we are never active or show them interest. It is just a fact from every email inbox.

But as an email marketer, you shouldn’t accept the fact that some contacts lose touch. Instead, you MUST wake the sleeping contacts in your mailing list and try to re-activate them back again with re-engagement email campaigns.

With effective re-engagement campaigns, you can get customers back, and it costs cheaper than acquiring new ones.

In this guide I will show you:

So let’s get to work.

Why Should You Use a Re-engagement Email Campaign

Your new email subscribers show a high engagement with your brand, yet, some subscribers turn to inactive contacts after some time.

Here are a few reasons when it happens:

They lost interest in your newsletter, product or service
They found an alternative to your solution
They couldn’t understand how to use your solution
They abandoned their shopping carts
They didn’t understand all the benefits that your product offers
They simply forgot about you

Subscribers turn inactive, that is a reality. And that is why you should use re-engagement email campaigns.

According to Invesp, turning an inactive subscriber into a customer costs 5 times cheaper than acquiring a completely new customer, where inactive subscribers generate 7% of overall business revenue.

Instead of increasing your budget to increase your customer acquisition, you could start creating re-engagement email campaigns and achieve the same objective with fewer resources.

12 of The Best Re-engagement Email Examples

We have collected a list of 12 of the best re-engagement email campaign examples, let’s go through it one by one.

We miss you emails

1. Duolingo

This email from Duolingo is a classic we miss you re-engagement message. Using their mobile app avatar, with a sad crying face to draw emotional interest from their inactive users.

Sometimes all it takes to win back lost subscribers is a cute, casual message that shows you’ve been paying attention to them.

2. Webflow

Subscribers might try your product for a while and then they might change their mind. You can prove to them that they are wrong with a re-engagement campaign. Reassure them that your product is worth keeping.

“ Since we last saw you, 10,234 designers started using our CMS”

Webflow did show some compelling statistics and a vision about what their solution. It’s very engaging.

Bold typography and outstanding design accompanied by a video.

Time-triggered re-activation emails

3. ModCloth

This email from ModCloth is pretty tricky — by offering a coupon as a 6 months anniversary treat. Who doesn’t love to feel extra special? No one.

By understanding their data and for how long a customer has been inactive, they manage to launch time-triggered re-activation emails.

That helps them send even more effective emails. It draws those people back to the website, where they might use their coupon to make a purchase and get back to the active customers’ list.

4. Aweber

Customer retention is way cheaper than acquiring new customers. For that, never leave inactive subscribers behind and make them your first choice of increasing your conversion rates.

Here’s an example of a re-activation re-engagement email sent to inactive blog subscribers.

Once a contact clicks on the green CTA, contacts will keep receiving emails, those who do not click it will be removed from the mailing list after 7 days.

You can create a similar re-engagement email sequence in Automizy, your sequence would look like the following:

Abandoned cart recovery emails

69.89% of website visitors abandon their shopping carts. Creating an automated cart recovery email campaign is crucial to turn prospects into customers.

5. Asos

Re-activate your potential customers after they left their favorite product in your webshop’s cart with a win back email.

Let them know that these items are still waiting for them, and create some sense of urgency so they would complete their purchase quicker.

With a humorous headline and copy, ASOS sent the following re-engagement email template.

The email includes a picture of the abandoned product highlighting the free delivery. It could motivate the customer to complete the purchase.

Reactivation emails

6. Grammarly

Grammarly re-engages inactive subscribers by presenting them with a “Wrinkle in Time” badge. Oprah W. must be so proud of them.

With a short and a creative CTA button “ GO”, they cracked the ingredients of a winner re-engagement email campaign.

7. ReturnPath

ReturnPath builds a GIF animated re-engagement email so subscribers can select their preferences.

They show how to select your communication preferences, with two cute illustrations accompanied with related CTA buttons for options. Whether to stay on the email list or unsubscribe.

Customer Retention email templates

8. Starbucks

Remembering your customer’s birthday can spark that special interest feeling customers appreciate.

Offering a special present can blow your recipients excitement and get their back on your website to claim their gift.

The anniversary re-engagement email below has a playful design and shows that the sender cares about the customer.

9. SplitWise

This re-engagement message from Splitwise is minimalist and easy on the eyes.

The subject line is “ Long time no see, Kelly.”

The CTA button is ‘loud and clear’.

Instead of offering a discount, Splitwise invites readers to offer feedback.

It gives the feeling they keep relationships personal with their customers.

B2B re-engagement email examples

10. Hubspot

Confirming opt-in status of your contacts is considered as a B2B re-engagement strategy.

You give your contacts the opportunity to confirm their opt-in status by clicking a CTA.

Below is an example of a B2B engagement email from Hubspot.

It is best to present what’s in there when you confirm subscription to set the right expectations with your contacts.

“ Give me a reason to stay here or I’ll turn right back around” -Tracy Chapman

Welcome back email

11. Sears

It is best to send a customer appreciation email once a contact clicks on the CTA that would keep him/her on your email list.

This can be a great strategy for your re-engagement email series. In which you send an appreciation email to contacts who clicked the CTA to remain in your contact list.

In Automizy’s re-engagement sequence builder, it would look like the following.

Contact who do not click the CTA to remain in your email list will get “Unengaged” tag. Yet, those who click the CTA will receive an “Engaged” tag, followed by awelcome back email.

Re-engagement thank you email

12. Brooklinen

Sometimes a break to say thanks has a higher influence to re-engage subscribers more than any other email type. This is a great example of using a thank you email for re-engaging subscribers.

We’ve seen the re-engagement email examples to win back inactive customers, now it’s time to learn how to create one.

How to Create a Re-Engagement Email Campaign to Win Back Inactive Customers

You don’t want to be crying over customers who did not show any sign of engagement during the recent month or two.

Creating a re-engagement email sequence in Automizy’s email automation software wouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes.

Let me walk you through the process, a step by step.

1. Set up re-engagement email trigger

In Automizy’s email automation software, you can create personalized and automated email workflows that can get triggered when a contact:

Gets added to an email list
Submits a registration form on your website
Clicks a link in an email, or
Gets a tag

For this re-engagement email sequence, we’ll trigger it by contact tag “ Subscriber”.

2. Create your re-engagement email

After setting up your trigger, create your re-engagement email.

You can create responsive email templates without any coding knowledge.

Drag and drop different email elements, fill them up with your content, choose your colors and you’re ready.

There are a default padding and design setup that looks great without any modification. Feel free to use default setting and build your mass email newsletter in 20 secs!

You can also upload your ready-made HTML email template to the…

3. Add the waiting period and condition

Apply a “ wait period” before you set your email open condition.

Give your contacts some time to interact with your email. It will also help you to be more accurate when deciding on who are your engaged and unengaged customers.

After the waiting period, apply the condition “ Has opened an email” and split your automation for the two branches, “ Yes” branch and “ No” branch.

4. Create action and contact tags to re-engage with inactive users

Users go on the “ Yes” branch if they’ve opened the first email.

In this case, you create an action by clicking on “ Do this”.

After you click, select the tag you want to add to contacts who opens your re-engagement email.

For those who did not open your email, add “ Unengaged” tag to them. Or if you want to give them a second chance to re-engage, resend your email to non-openers.

This way you’ll be able to send email to your engaged contacts and exclude the unengaged ones from your future emails.

When complete, the whole sequence would look like the following workflow.

You might need to create drip email campaign.

34 Re-Engagement Email Subject Lines to Win Back Inactive Email Subscribers

B2B Re-engagement email subject lines

1. We noticed you’ve been a little distant lately 6
2. Don’t leave a good thing behind
3. Are we on the same page?
4. A good deal is always good news (in your inbox)
5. We want to help meet your goals. Let’s reconnect.
6. Do you still want to hear from us?
7. Busy bee? Let us help.
8. Your relationship with XYZ Company is important to us
9. You haven’t read our recent messages. Should we stop emailing you?
10. We’re wondering…
11. Is XYZ Company still welcome in your inbox?
12. Do you find our updates/suggestions/info valuable?

We miss you subject lines

1. We’ve missed you! Here’s 15% OFF EVERYTHING — even furniture!
2. 20% off. Because we miss you
3. We still miss you. (And you still have 20% OFF!)
4. We’ve Missed You — NEW Special Offer Inside
5. WE MISS YOU! Don’t Pass up This Unique Code Inside + Complimentary Shipping
6. We miss you! We’re singling you out for this: 20% OFF expires TONIGHT

Win back email subject lines

1. We Want You Back!
2. Do you still want updates from us
3. Don’t let someone else snatch up your items!

Retention email subject lines

1. A message to {{firstname}}
2. Thanks for being our customer
3. Happy first anniversary to us
4. Thank you for choosing us
5. Are you sure you want to leave this behind?

Reactivation email subject lines

1. Let’s Catch Up….
2. Long time no see, {{firstname}}
3. {{firstname}}, it’s been a while…
4. {{firstname}}, we miss you!

Welcome back email subject lines

1. Welcome Back, {{firstname}}!
2. Glad to have you back {{firstname}}
3. Welcome back to XYZ
4. Welcome Back to XYZ! Check Out What’s New…

Conclusion

The motto for your re-engagement email campaigns should be “Near, far, wherever you are.”

You can get customers in a cheaper way from your existing inactive contacts. why would you leave that behind and go for more expensive methods of generating leads? Logic wins 😉.

Speaking of re-engagement, will you come back for another blog article?

If you already run re-engagement campaigns, feel free to share with us your emails so we can add it to our email collection here.

Originally published at https://automizy.com on March 7, 2019.