Your list of web push subscribers are a mixed bunch. You’ll have loyal repeat customers, shoppers who last bought from you months ago, and subscribers who’ve never shopped from your store at all. It’s important that you have tactics to engage with these different types of subscribers and reconvert shoppers effectively. One such tactic you can use with web push marketing is winback campaigns.
In this blog, we’re talking about how you can use shopper segmentation to run winback campaigns— an effective method of converting a specific type of subscriber on your Shopify store.
What are Winback Campaigns?
A winback campaign is a targeted and personalized message that is sent to your existing subscribers in attempt to bring them back to shop from you. Winning back your shoppers is easier than acquiring new ones and with segmentation, you can slice your audience list based on how they’ve interacted with your store, their purchases, subscription behaviour, etc.
If you’re still not sure about how winback campaigns are different from your regular old promotions, here are 2 examples to help you:
1. Discount promotion
In the web push campaign sent to all subscribers, you can see that the messaging is not personalized. Instead, the promotion is done because the store has a sale. On the other hand, the winback campaign is providing a discount to dormant customers. This discount is personalized to the customers in an attempt to get them to repurchase.
2. Product promotion
The generic campaign is promoting a new product to all the shoppers, regardless if they showed interest in the product. On the other hand, the winback campaign is promoting the same new product to shoppers who previously bought an item from the store that would pair well with the new product.
The campaigns you send to all your subscribers are promotions based on your needs— wanting to promote your sale, introducing your new products to your subscribers.
Winback campaigns are personalized, based on the subscriber’s preferences and details. The promotional message caters to converting a specific type of shopper rather than getting sales in general.
When Should I Start Running Winback Campaigns!?
Winback campaigns aren’t suited for every kind of store. Before, you start running winback campaigns, ensure that you fulfill the following requirements:
1. You have enough subscribers (10,000 or more) to effectively segment them. Having a high number of subscribers means that you have a better audience list when you segment them based on different criterias.
2. You’ve been sending at least 2 campaigns a week to all your subscribers. Before you start engaging your subscribers based on their purchase or click behaviour, you need to be able to engage them with generic store promotions.
3. You’ve set up automated abandoned cart reminders. With this, you can tackle the biggest sales hurdle your store deals with— cart abandonment.
4. You are on the PushOwl Enterprise plan that allows you to use the Segmentation feature to run winback campaigns.
7 Subscriber Segments To Use for Your Winback Campaigns
Now that we’ve established the importance of winback campaigns to help you scale your Shopify store, it’s important to recognize the kinds of winback campaigns you can set up through PushOwl.
Before you even start setting up your winback messages, it’s important that you remember to write copy that fits. The messaging and the goal of your winback campaigns need to be optimized to successfully get your subscriber back to your store.
We’ve listed 7 subscriber segments that are great for winback campaigns and illustrated a few promotional ideas you can use to convert your shoppers.
1. Welcome a new subscriber
Segment(s) to use: Subscribed in the last 40 days or Subscribed between 10 and 50 days ago.
When a shopper subscribes to promotional messages from you, it shows that they are interested in your products but potentially not interested enough to purchase just yet. You need to be able to turn this maybe into a successful sale.
Target this segment with web push notifications that entice your new subscribers to want to engage with your brand. This message may be about your brand story or why you create the products you do. To successfully engage this segment, ask yourself one question about the brands that you engage with —
What is the thing that you need to know about a brand in the first 30 days of finding them that’ll make you want to buy from them? Is it a unique fact about them or a video they made about their product?
Here’s an example of a winback campaign sent to a new subscriber to get them to engage with the brand better:
2. Target messages to customers who recently purchased
Segment(s) to use: Subscribers who last bought 30 days ago (this segment also includes people who purchase in the last few hours)
Ensuring a great shopping experience on your Shopify store doesn’t just end at the purchase. You need to be able to engage these recent buyers in meaningful ways. Using this segment, you can send winback campaigns in 3 ways:
1. Notify them about their loyalty points
Get your recent shoppers to come back to your store and instill a gamification experience by promoting your loyalty program. You can ask these shoppers to check out the points they earned from their last purchase to get them to log in. Once logged in, your loyalty program should show them their point balance as well as what other activities they can do to earn more points.
2. Promote referral program
Your recent buyers are great advocates for your brand. You can use this segment as an opportunity to attract new audiences who are likely to shop from you. Promote your referral program by asking your shoppers to refer friends so that can earn rewards like “$20 off on their next order”
3. Provide product usage hacks
Delight your recent buyers by giving them useful advice to pair with their purchase. Send a web push campaign, giving them a hack they can use and then let them know they can read more about it on the blog. Such messages work specifically well if you solve a single problem, like teeth hygiene or skincare.
3. Target buying cycles for repeat purchases
Segment(s) to use: Subscribers who purchased between 60 and 90 days ago.
If you sell products that require repurchase like skincare, fitness nutrition, makeup, food, or even books, you can set up this segment to send winback promotions that bring back the customer just as soon as the product is getting over.
For instance, if you sell toners, anti-acne serums, sunscreens, and other skincare products, our customers will surely need to restock your product after a period of 1 or 2 months and a timely message will remind them to repurchase.
By recognizing the buying pattern in your past customers, you can set up timely web push campaigns that remind your existing shoppers to stock up on their favourite skincare product before it gets over.
Here’s an example of a winback campaign targeted to a shopper who bought tea from this brand 30 days ago:
4. Bring back a dormant customer
Segment(s) to use: Subscriber hasn’t purchased for 80 days
Getting your past customers to make repeat purchases is easier than acquiring a new customer. So, it’s crucial you are targeting dormant customers to nudge them to shop from you again. Use this segment to send web push notifications that will make your dormant shoppers repurchase from you.
Here are 3 promotional messages you can sent to dormant customers to convert them:
1. Notify them about existing offers on the store
Knowing that they have bought your products before, your dormant shoppers may just need a reason to come back and buy from you. Highlight your existing offers on your store to get them back to your Shopify store. Your web push message can look as simple as this:
2. Create a large discount offer
If you want to create a little more exclusivity and urgency among your dormant shoppers, create a large discount solely for them. Use this discount to get them to shop from your store instantly. Don’t forget to include urgency words and phrases like “Ends in 24 hours” and add an expiring to the discount code.
3. Entice them with your loyalty program
Customer loyalty is a powerful way to increase repeat purchases. The same tactic also works when you have dormant customers you want to successfully reconvert. Remind this audience segment about their loyalty points, letting them know they can redeem the rewards for a discount or an exclusive offer.
5. Convert non-purchasers
Segment(s) to use: Subscribers who are unidentified (not bought from you at all)
Every store has a large number of subscribers who have not bought from them at all. This segment of subscribers is already interested in your brand but haven’t found the hook to convert them into customers.
A well-crafted winback campaign should do the trick! Here are 3 web push ideas to convert your non-purchasers successfully:
1. First-order discount
Send your non-purchasers a discount that they can only avail for their first order. You can make this discount even more special by letting your audience know that they can avail the discount even on ‘New Arrivals’.
2. Free shipping coupon
Often times, most shoppers avoid buying from a store because of the high shipping costs. Since they would be buying from your store for the first time, they may only be interested in purchasing one time but might be put off by the high shipping cost. By offering free shipping to non-purchasers, you can give them the much-needed push to make their first purchase on your Shopify store.
3. Nudge them to contact your customer support
Sometimes, your subscribers are just confused about the product or need help with the size guide. If you want to be more subtle about trying to convert them, use the web push notification to inform non-purchasers that they can reach your support team for help with your products.
Use the buttons within the web push to take them to the store and prompt the chat to open. This nudge will help them start talking to your store’s support. Do ensure that the campaign is live during the time that your customer support is online.
6. Cross-sell to increase repeat purchases
Segment(s) to use: Subscribers who bought from a specific collection.
For brands who sell high-ticket items, asking for repurchase just doesn’t make sense. This is where cross-selling helps. Cross-sell is a tactic where you sell related or complementary items to your shoppers. You can set up a collection-specific segment to target shoppers with a cross-selling message.
You can approach cross-selling promotions in 4 ways:
1. Sell products with a higher price tag to shoppers who bought entry-level products
If shoppers have bought something small from your store, use it as an opportunity to get them to commit to a product with a higher price tag.
Shoppers who have bought from the socks collection, for instance, may be interested in getting new shoes from your store. A well-crafted cross-sell promotion will get these shoppers to consider a larger purchase instantly.
2. Sell small and complimentary items to shoppers who bought high-ticket items.
You can send messages about accessories or smaller items to shoppers who already bought your larger products.
For instance, if you sell furniture and your shoppers have bought from your sofa collection, send them a notification asking them if they want to add color and life to the sofa with accessories like throws, pillows, and a coffee table.
3. Promote a new product to shoppers who bought from a collection
Market your new product launch smartly by sending promotions about it to shoppers who already bought from the same collection. You can even make the web push seem like a special access to these shoppers, allowing them to pre-order the item.
It’s important that you gauge which kind of industries this promotion type will work with. Such a promotion won’t suit furniture and headphone stores since they are usually one-time purchases. However, Shopify stores selling shoes, vape items, skincare, and clothes will be able to promote their new product and see high engagement.
Here’s a notification of a new shoe launch to people who bought from the same collection:
4. Introduce a new product that compliments products from a specific collection
Run targeted winback campaigns when you launch new products that specifically complement other product ranges. By using a segment that would benefit from purchasing the product, you can get more purchases for your new launch.
For instance, a vape store could run a campaign about their new flavoured liquid to people who bought vapes or a headphone store could send a promotion about a headphone stand to people who bought headphones.
7. Give engaged subscribers something to talk about
Segment(s) to use: Subscribers who clicked more than 3 times in the last 30 days
This segment consists of subscribers who have already shown interest in your promotions. Due to this, these subscribers will be highly receptive to your promotions. There are 2 kinds of promotions you can sent to this segment of subscribers to make use of their engagement:
1. Send discount codes and thank them for being a fan
This audience is already super engaged in your promotional messages. Why not send a web push notification to seal the deal and get them to successfully buy from you?
You can send them a web push campaign that provides them a discount code, increasing their incentive to shop from your Shopify store.
2. Learn their motives and what they expect from you
If you’re looking to survey a bunch of shoppers to optimize your store design, marketing, products, etc, your engaged shoppers are the ideal audience set to learn from.
Send them a web push campaign that asks them to provide feedback. You can create a survey that helps you understand why they click on your marketing messages, what they’d like to buy from your store, and provide other insights to improve your store performance.
Note: For this segment to make a difference, you need to be sending frequent notifications.
Analyze and Optimize your Winback Campaigns
The only way to know if your winback campaigns are yielding results is by looking at how they perform in comparison to other winback campaigns. By testing different winback campaigns, you can understand which one grabs shopper attention better.
Note: Keep a period of 1 week between each winback campaign. You don’t want to overwhelm your subscribers with multiple winback messages at once and ruin your chances of engaging them altogether.
When analyzing different campaigns, look at both clickthrough rates (clicks over impression) as well as total revenue generated by the notification. This is important because, for some segments, the number of subscribers who clicked through to your store may be small but the revenue that is generated may be large.
For instance, your dormant customer segment might bring more purchases and revenue, even though their clickthrough rate is low when compared to a highly engaged segment such as your recent buyers or repeatedly engaged store visitors.
You can even try out different promotion ideas to understand which offers work best for that specific segment of subscribers. You may find that dormant shoppers respond better to loyalty program notifications than to a general discount.
Recognizing these patterns can help you run winback campaigns that will increase your Shopify sales and help you send smarter and personalized campaigns.
Ready to send winback campaigns with web push notifications?
We hope this helped you understand how to set up winback campaigns with web push. If you have any questions about using segmentation on PushOwl, you can reach out to our support team through the chat within the PushOwl app for assistance.
This article was originally published by our friends at PushOwl.
