Winning “Lapsed” Customers back

Win-back campaigns can be a great source of extra revenue if launched well, and here’s why!

Restaurants spend a lot of marketing efforts on chasing potential customers, while repeat customers have a 60-70% chance of making a new purchase (statistics published in Paul Farris’ “Marketing Metrics” book). And even if they don’t visit or order for months, they just need a little motivation to interact with your brand again.

?But how do you re-engage lapsed customers, especially when they are bombarded with discounts from competitors and aggregators?

What we’ve discovered works best is simply giving away a free item with the next order. It can be an appetiser that costs almost nothing to you, or something more “heavy” - it doesn’t really matter as long as it is personalized. Yes, personalization is key here as well - it is not something new in modern marketing, it’s already a consumer expectation from your brand.

? So, a customer used to order a specific pizza but stopped ordering? - Offer them this pizza for free if they order again and bring them back!?

?? Customer is a vegan? - Don’t try to bring them back with a meat-based freebie!

Re-engaged customers are more likely to continue ordering, and even form an ordering habit if you further motivate them.

Of course, you need to find the right channels to re-engage them, and it often requires manual work to segment customers based on purchase history. The effort is always worth it though.

As for us at LoyaltyPlant - we think that the restaurant’s mobile app is the best channel for customer engagement, and our goal is to make such campaigns as effortless and automated as possible.

Curious to know what customer re-engagement lifehacks have worked well for group members - have you ever launched this type of campaigns? What channel did you use? What has worked and what has not?

Author: Victoria Zurmann