According to popular belief, the main goal of email marketing is generating leads, but it’s also an effective practice to retain clients and re-engage inactive subscribers. When it comes to the latter, you can get in touch with the clients who stopped engaging with your brand by sending them strategic winback emails. The main goal here is getting them to become repeat clients. Of course, to execute this strategy properly and capitalize on the campaign, you need to know the best practices used by professional email marketers and experienced businesses. To help you with the task at hand, we prepared a comprehensive guide on how to create successful winback campaigns and the best examples for your inspiration.
Why Send Winback Emails
“Winback emails” are a series of messages designed to rekindle a customer’s interest. This sequence of messages is sent to customers who have lost contact and haven’t bought anything from you in a long time.
So, the primary purpose of customer winback emails is to persuade customers to return and resume using the service.
Naturally, there are several reasons why businesses opt for this type of re-engagement campaign. Here, you can see the common advantages of connecting with inactive subscribers through winback emails.
- According to Klaviyo, after receiving this type of email, about 45% of subscribers will open subsequent messages from your company.
- Research by MoEngage shows that winback email marketing can increase the likelihood of selling to current clients by 60–70%.
- Statistics by Revinate show that significant consumer re-engagement has resulted from winback initiatives that have attained open rates of up to 57% and click-through rates of 11%.
- Rejoiner states that since it’s frequently less expensive to re-engage lapsed customers than to find new ones, winback tactics can greatly improve customer retention.
When to Send Winback Emails
Sending winback emails, especially to people who have stopped interacting with you, should ideally happen once every three months of inactivity. Reaching out strategically can intercept clients who start considering competitors.
Timing is everything. Some companies provide pricey products that turn off customers, but if your sales cycle is efficient you have a better chance of getting them to return or carry on doing business with you. These companies with shorter sales cycles should take immediate action following the anticipated window for purchases. Since they haven’t completely disengaged, dormant subscribers who haven’t clicked or opened emails in months are excellent targets. It might not work well if you wait too long.
Overall, the timing for sending winback emails differs depending on your business specifics, but the accepted standard is around 3 months of client inactivity.
Top Winback Email Examples and Strategies
To generate interest and re-engage clients, a lot of companies employ innovative email marketing strategies, such as gamification in emails, countdowns, personalized product suggestions, and appealing incentives. To give you a more accurate vision of how businesses use these tactics, let’s take a closer look at some customer winback email examples that brands choose due to their effectiveness and performance.
Friendly Reminder
This winback email should be the first one in your sequence. It is a kind way to reconnect with inactive subscribers by reminding them about your offers and products. It usually contains news about the firm or product recommendations.
Winback Email Example: In the emails below, you can see how companies utilize this strategy to refresh their clients’ memory about themselves. You can simply remind them about their previous interactions with your brand, e.g. purchases, subscriptions, earned bonus points, etc.


Emotional “We Miss You” Email
Adding emotional messages is a sure way to go about your winback campaign, especially if a client had spent some time with your brand but suddenly stopped engaging. A “miss-you” note is standard, but you can be even more creative in your email design and copy. Don’t be afraid of using emotional tone and visuals to revive the connection between your company and customers.
Winback Campaign Example: The most important thing about this email is personalization since it creates a feeling of sincerity. Generic messages won’t help you to restore the connection. Be sure to present personalized offers or mention real interactions with this client based on their history of purchases and activities. We also recommend addressing them by their name to reinforce your emotional message.

Winback Email for Feedback
A feedback request email solicits opinions, assessments, or insights about a product, service, or experience. This type of winback email usually aims to gather valuable information to improve services, boost customer satisfaction, and strengthen relationships with others.
Winback Email Strategy: The receivers of this email are specifically asked why they aren’t responding. To pose this question correctly and appeal to answer, you can use a survey, a system of grades, or simply a simple text message asking for comments. You can also offer incentives or discounts to encourage recipients to share their thoughts. For more efficiency, this campaign can be sent automatically by setting up email marketing automation.

Winback Campaign With Incentives
Provide discounts, freebies, and other incentives to entice clients to choose you over competitors, especially those who engage with your emails. Here are some effective strategies to keep your clients coming back:
- Discounts;
- Presents;
- Free shipping;
- Additional reward points;
- Free consultation.
Special Deal Winback Email Example: Entice your clients to come back to you and buy more by proposing enticing deals and benefits. Offering a discount and free shipping, as you can see in the example below, is a good way of appealing to receivers and reevaluating their relationships with the brand.

Product Suggestion Emails for Cross- and Up-Selling
Product recommendations are the primary content of this kind of winback email. It aims to dispel the notion that there are either too many items to look through or that the recipient isn’t interested in any of them. By providing personalized product suggestions, you can boost sales instantly and enhance customer retention as it makes purchasing more pleasurable and rewarding.
Winback Campaign Idea: Create automated email campaigns that aim to persuade customers who have already bought from you once to make a second purchase. These marketing campaigns offer special discounts or promotions on related products to get back customer purchase momentum. In the example below, you can see how a photo service brand tries to get client’s interest in its tools and filters and suggests clients to try them out.

Refresher Winback Email
This kind of winback email campaign serves to remind recipients of your brand and its unique selling points. It seeks to assist them in recalling the initial reason they joined your email list.
Refresher Winback Email Example: To rekindle the audience’s enthusiasm, you can highlight new goods, exclusive deals, or tailored suggestions. This kind of email improves retention and preserves client relationships by enticing lapsed customers to come back. Remind them about the values you share and the advantages they’ll get from staying with your brand. The example we found closely follows this strategy by using friendly and sympathetic language to evoke emotions while listing all the benefits of cooperation to appeal to the rational side.

“Last Chance” Winback Campaign
Before designating inactive clients as dormant or unsubscribed, a “Last Chance” winback campaign is an attempt to re-engage them. It encourages quick action by using exclusivity and urgency, such as a time-sensitive discount or offer.
Example of Winback Email: This campaign can help turn hesitant clients into active ones by effectively generating a sensation of FOMO (fear of missing out). Highlight in the email that this is the final chance to benefit from the brand’s offer. Make sure to inform readers that if they do nothing, they will be automatically unsubscribed.

Social Proof Email
To re-engage dormant users, a social proof winback email uses client endorsements or success stories. This message usually includes reviews and other social proofs. It seeks to increase consumer confidence in your company and goods.
Winback Email Example: Showcasing satisfied customers’ experiences fosters trust and serves to remind recipients of the worth of the product. Show important metrics like the number of your satisfied clients, statistics, achievements, etc. to add authenticity. In the example, you can see the masterful use of this tactic as the company Pasley Health presents the results of its services. “Join Now” is an example of a clear call to action that motivates customers to turn to the company for help.

“Welcome Back” Email
The purpose of a “Welcome Back” email is to kindly re-engage clients who haven’t interacted with your company in a long time. It highlights gratitude for their return and is frequently combined with a unique inducement, such as a discount or special offer. Winback Email Idea: Rekindling interest can be achieved by showcasing new items or improvements since their last visit. Encourage customers to re-engage with your offerings by using a welcoming tone and a clear call to action, like “Explore What’s New.”

Unsubscribe Message
When someone unsubscribes, or you unsubscribe them (after a last-chance campaign), we recommend sending this kind of email. It informs them that although they are no longer on the list, you would still be delighted if they came back.
Unsubscribe Winback Email Strategy: Provide a link for them to bookmark your website or follow your business on social media so they can keep informed without being added to your email list. Giving users the option to easily re-subscribe in case they change their minds is also one of the top strategies for winback campaigns.


More Winback Campaign Examples
Let’s see more customer winback campaign examples and analyze what tactics they use to re-engage clients successfully. Here’s a compilation of inspiring campaigns from famous brands.
Typeform
Subject Line: We haven’t seen you in a while… 🙁

Typeform is a provider of an online tool that allows users to create interactive forms, polls, and quizzes with a conversational, user-friendly layout. The winback campaign example by this company is just as straightforward as its product. To win back their clients’ attention, the firm sends a reminder email, which is one of the effective strategies for re-engagement. In the example, they kindly remind subscribers about their service and offer to view the gallery to get inspiration for using the tool again. The Typeform’s designers use a simple template with minimum visual elements, focusing readers’ attention on the copy and a CTA.
Zoom
Subject Line: Are you ghosting us? Reactivate today

Zoom is a famous video conferencing software that uses chat, video, and audio capabilities to provide virtual meetings, webinars, and teamwork. In this example of a winback campaign, the company uses the opportunity to not only remind about its services but also present new capabilities to the public. By using this tactic, they increase the chances of reactivating clients with exclusive features that might be more interesting and relevant for them. The email design is meant to be in line with the software style and branding with accents on important offer positions. A clear CTA offering to reactivate a Pro account directly represents the purpose of this winback campaign.
RIND Snacks
Subject Line: Still into us?

A food company called RIND Snacks sells dried fruit snacks that are prepared with the entire fruit, including the peel, to optimize nutrition, reduce food waste, and give a nutritious, high-fiber snack choice. Their vibrant winback email design perfectly aligns with the brand’s philosophy and styling. The initial message is simple—saying “I miss you”, but the brand also does something more strategic. The main purpose of this campaign is to evaluate the level of interest with a small survey, which also counts as engagement if clients participate. This way you can both get the needed feedback, get clients to answer your mail, and follow through with the instructions. Additionally, showing how valuable their opinion is for you can help to patch your relationships.
Harvest
Subject Line: Check out what’s new in Harvest

Harvest is a time-tracking and invoicing program made to make it easier for companies and independent contractors to manage their time, monitor the status of projects, and simplify billing. You can see all these advantages listed in the example of a winback email from the software company. The design is rather minimalistic with the main emphasis on a CTA which leads readers to trial reactivation. As you can see, this type of campaign doesn’t need to be always flashy to be effective, even plain colors will do if you know how to place accents.
Cuisinart
Subject Line: Pssst…we have a question for you.

Cuisinart is a well-known brand of kitchen appliances and cookware that produces high-quality items that make baking and cooking easier. The winback campaign example by this brand combines an emotion-evoking approach with smart email marketing strategies. Asking clients to update their preferences is a good strategy that works well for retention. In this case, the brand even reinforces the impression by adding friendly-looking images to encourage people to opt for the customization option. The other variant “Leave” is represented by a crying egg image, which perfectly represents sadness of separation while going in line with the Cuisinart’s line of work.
How to Create a Good Winback Campaign?
Several factors can help you regain your customers in a successful winback campaign. Among them are some of the best practices:
- Optimize subject lines
Make sure the email’s value is clear from the subject line. Create subject lines that are understandable, succinct, and straightforward.
- Create excellent content to regain clients fast
Make engaging, tailored content that appeals to dormant subscribers and encourages them to rejoin.
- Try using a variety of voice tones
While maintaining the aesthetic of your business, experiment with both formal and informal tones to engage your audience.
- Run A/B tests
To see what works best, experiment with different offers, content formats, and subject lines for the best engagement.
- Highlight advantages
Emphasize the principal features or distinctive selling propositions that distinguish your brand.
- Add high-quality images
To build a deeper emotional bond and to entice clients to come back, use pictures or visuals that highlight your goods or services.
- Focus on increasing click-through rates
To entice them to investigate your offer, use buttons or links that are obvious and easy to click.
- Use one call to action
While having multiple CTAs is not prohibited, we recommend opting just for one. Defining a single desired action, such as clicking a link or using an offer ensures that you don’t overburden readers. To cut down on confusion, keep your emails to a single call to action (CTA), like “Shop Now” or “Reactivate Your Account.”
- Personalize the winback email
To make the message feel more personalized, include the names of your customers and mention previous purchases or hobbies, and customize offers based on their preferences.
- Emphasize exclusivity or urgency
Use phrases like “Offer Ends Soon”, “Limited Time Offer” and “Just for You” to entice them to act right away and increase engagement. We also recommend adding a countdown.
- Segment your email list
To customize your message, divide your audience into groups according to their past purchases or length of inactivity to improve targeting. We recommend using the best practices of RFM segmentation for targeting accuracy.
- Analyze outcomes and optimize
Use conversions, click-through rates, and open rates to determine what works, adjust your approach accordingly, and make future campaigns better.
What are the KPIs of Successful Winback Email Campaigns?
Click-Through Rate (CTR):
- For effective re-engagement, aim for a click-through rate (CTR) of 2 to 5% or more.
- According to industry standards, a successful winback email should have a CTR of 2.6% or above.
- When compared to non-segmented campaigns, segmented campaigns can boost CTR by as much as 100%.
- Up to 14% more CTR can be achieved with urgent offers.
- Depending on your sector, aim for an open rate between 15 and 25%.
- Compared to text-only messages, emails with images usually have an open rate improvement of 20–30%.
- There is a 26% boost in open rates with personalized subject lines.
- A/B testing can greatly boost CTR and raise open rates by 49%.
- Depending on the business, a successful campaign should aim for a conversion rate of 1% to 3%.
- Conversion rates can increase by up to 42% when emails contain a single, targeted call to action.
Customer Winback Email Best Practices from Flowium
Set Up Winback Email Flow
Setting up a winback automation of any type, whether it’s a sunset flow or any other re-engagement sequence, is an efficient strategy to streamline marketing. Here’s a simple example of such a sequence to give you a basic understanding of how businesses do it.

- Email #1: Overview + Savings
In this email, you remind them of their purchase from you. After telling them you miss them, you give them a legitimate discount to get them to buy from you again. The discount could range from 10% to 20%.
Even if the discount is optional, remember to include urgency in your email if you choose to include it. Give clients a discount that is good for 48 hours. They will feel a sense of urgency, which will speed up their choice to buy.
- Email #2: The Final Opportunity
If your consumer hasn’t made a purchase yet, you remind them of the discount that will expire in a follow-up email sent during the urgency period.
- Email #3: Higher Discounts
You raise the discount if they haven’t made a purchase yet. At this stage, your consumer may have already chosen to purchase from you, in which case an additional discount will benefit both of you. We refer to this as the discount ladder. You provide a discount on your goods; if that proves ineffective, you raise the discount. All of them will be temporary promotions.
- Email #4: Final Opportunity to Receive the Larger Discount
This is the final email in the winback series in which you notify them of their final opportunity to receive further savings. Although you can be creative with this flow and include as many campaigns as you like, you don’t want to send too many to your clients.
Inform Clients of Improvements
Inform clients of any recent enhancements you have made. Admit what went wrong in the past and demonstrate that you have something worthwhile to offer them if you know why they departed and have updates on the same.
Acknowledge your previous relationship and remind them of the reasons they initially chose you.


Make Your Winback Email More Individual
Send your winback email to clients you’ve had a long-standing relationship with some emotion. You can employ a more familiar emotional tone with these clients.
Ask to Optimize Preferences
Inquire whether subscribers would like to stay on your list. In this manner, you maintain the highest possible click-through rate. Your list will be cleaner if you remove subscribers who do not wish to receive your emails.
Employ a Professional
Winback initiatives are a common strategy used by many businesses nowadays but not all businesses can set up this campaign properly without outside help. Contact email marketing experts like Flowium who have a ton of knowledge and know exactly how to frame a winback email if you need assistance creating the ideal one.
Winback Email Subject Lines
Whether you write the best emails will always depend on your winback subject line. You must write a subject line that entices them to click through. Keep in mind that 47% of receivers decide whether to read emails based on the subject line to avoid underestimating their significance. Furthermore, 69% of receivers determine whether a letter is spam based on the subject line.
Here are some interesting ideas for winback email subject lines:
- We Miss You! Here’s a Special Treat Just for You 💝
- It’s Been a While—Let’s Catch Up!
- Come Back and Save Big—Your Exclusive Discount Awaits!
- We Noticed You’ve Been Away… Let’s Fix That!
- Still Thinking About Us? Here’s 20% Off to Return!
- Your Favorites Are Waiting—Don’t Miss Out!
- It’s Not Goodbye, Is It? Let’s Reconnect!
- A Little Something to Bring You Back 🎁
- We’ve Got Something New We Think You’ll Love!
- Let’s Make Things Right—Your Next Order’s on Us!
Final Thoughts
Winback emails are crucial for boosting open and click-through rates and attracting clients to your business or product by providing them with special advantages.
Winback email campaigns are an excellent method of reminding customers about your brand and ensuring that customers return. Many well-known firms employ this tried-and-true technique as part of their marketing plan. You can turn your one-time customers into repeat customers, and so on. You’re on the right road if you’re considering implementing a winback email campaign for your brand to win back clients who have lapsed or are about to do so. It takes a lot of effort to get past this concept, but with professional assistance from our email marketing team you can do it easily. Contact us now to start winning over the hearts of your customers again.