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Retain more customers with Klaviyo winback flows (2022)

Retaining customers is thirsty work. It’s estimated that 7 out of 10 customers will never buy from you again. But with soaring acquisition costs becoming the new normal, it’s better to work with the customer base you’ve got than chase the new and shiny. Klaviyo winback flows are a quick win way to achieve this. They’re relatively simple to introduce, low cost to implement and aside from some optimisation you can set them and leave them.

An example of a winback flow email

In this piece we’re going to help you retain more customers with customer winback flows featuring advice from Klaviyo, Swanky Agency and PAASE. We’ll cover

  • Winback flow strategy
  • Winback flow examples
  • Measuring the effectiveness of your winback flows

What are Klaviyo winback flows?

The clue is in the name, but winback flows are essentially automated email flows designed to ‘win back’ customers that have lapsed. A lapsed customer is someone who hasn’t made a purchase or interacted with your brand in a set time period. This could be a one-time customer who hasn’t returned, or a lapsed subscriber. The time period of what defines a lapsed customer varies, but usually 3-6 months of inactivity is a good indicator.

You might assume that there’s no point in trying to win back a customer who has lapsed, but retaining an extra 2% of your existing customer base can generate thousands of pounds of additional revenue and considerably increase lifetime value. Klaviyo’s in-house expert, Jordan tells us that “winback email flows typically have an open rate of 29% and as many as 45% of customers who open winback emails will continue to open emails from your brand afterwards.” 

It's also worth noting that winback flows are different to abandoned cart flows, which usually take place before a customer has ever placed an order. If that's what you're looking for, you can read more on abandoned carts in a relevant blog post below.

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Winback flow strategy

We asked Sarah Hanney, Email Specialist at Swanky Agency to share her ingredients of a successful customer winback flow in Klaviyo.

Make it personal

Rather than bulk-sending a generic email to all lapsed customers, use segmentation and data feeds (e.g. purchase history/browsing history) to target recipients with relevant messages. 

Incentivise 

Introducing a small discount may encourage some shoppers to re-engage with your brand. This doesn’t have to be huge - 10% off or a free gift is a good place to start and work out from here based on the results.

Gather feedback

People like to offer their opinion even if they're not planning to buy. So asking for feedback in your winback flow is a great opportunity to collect valuable information that can help with future marketing strategies.

Winback flow examples

To showcase best practice customer winback examples, we’ve called on Josh Lewis, Growth Marketing Manager at DTC brand, MOJU Drinks.

MOJU winback flow email 1

Josh says,

“Our customer winback flow is a 3 email flow that’s triggered if a customer hasn’t bought from us within 45 days of placing a one-off order. We leave 10 days between each email and introduce a 10% discount code in emails 2 and 3.”

Josh Lewis, Growth Marketing Manager

MOJU Drinks
MOJU winback flow email 2

Since introducing the flow, the average email open rate is 35% and average CTR is 4%. For customers who have placed orders with MOJU multiple times, they have separate flows for upsell to subscription – once they subscribe they receive all sorts of benefits to keep them interested and engaged!

MOJU winback flow email 3

Measuring the effectiveness of winback flows 

We asked Ashley Scorpio, Senior Vice President at Hawke Media to share advice on measuring the effectiveness of winback flows. Ashley says,

“The most effective way to measure the efficacy of your email winback flows is to first hone the purpose of the emails and align that to the CTA in your subject line. In ecommerce and DTC, emails are clear-cut in their purpose. Your audience and customers need these emails. To see if they work, measure the metrics that track efficacy from the top of the funnel to the bottom.”

Ashley Scorpio, Senior Vice President

Hawke Media

These include: 

  • Email delivery rate
  • Bounce rate
  • Open rates 
  • Clickthrough rates 
  • Conversion rates  
  • Customer lifetime value 
  • Average order value 

Make sure to use proper link tracking embedded into every link and CTA so you have full visibility into the entirety of your lead flow, from the email landing in the subscriber's inbox, all the way to the order confirmation email and beyond.

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