A win-back journey writes to a customer who has stopped buying, while there’s still a good chance they’ll come back. The Win-back template sends a note 90 days after a customer’s last purchase, and a second one two weeks later if they still haven’t returned.
Who it’s for
Any business with repeat purchases: a shop, a salon, a subscription box or a charity with regular donors. For example, Saffron Spa, a fictional day spa in Dubai, writes to clients who haven’t booked for three months.
What you need first
- Your purchase event arrives on each customer, such as Order Completed from a connected payment provider or Booking Completed from your booking system. Set which event counts as a purchase in Key events; the template uses it. Tracking your own events is on every plan, within its monthly allowance; connecting Stripe is available on Starter and above.
- A verified sending domain. See Set up a sending domain.
- A rough idea of how often your customers usually buy.
1 Start from the template
Go to Journeys, choose New journey, then under Start from a template and Existing customers, choose Win-back.
2 Check what the template creates
| Part | As the template sets it |
|---|---|
| Trigger | An event happens: your purchase event |
| Re-entry | Each time, with 0 days, so every purchase starts a run |
| Step 1 | Wait 90 days |
| Step 2 | Contact filter, Once at this step: lets through only customers with no purchase in the last 90 days |
| Step 3 | Send message: We miss you, a short personal note asking what you could do better |
| Step 4 | Wait 14 days |
| Step 5 | Contact filter, Once at this step: lets through only customers with no purchase in the last 14 days |
| Step 6 | Send message: Still thinking of you, a second note |
| Exit rules | None: the filters do this job |
How the filters work
Every purchase starts its own run, and each run waits 90 days. When a run reaches the first filter, it checks for a purchase in the last 90 days. Only the run from the customer’s latest purchase finds none, so each customer gets one email, timed from their last purchase. Every earlier run ends at the filter.
The second filter does the same for the two weeks after the first email: a customer who buys in that time gets no second email.
3 Change it for your business
- The wait. Set it a little longer than your customers’ usual time between purchases. A coffee subscription might use 45 days, a furniture shop a year. Change both the Wait step and the first filter’s number of days, so they match.
- The emails. Add your sender and rewrite the notes. Keep the first one personal and ask a question; reply-based notes suit this journey. See Design an email.
- An offer. If you make one, put it in the second email, so customers who come back after the first don’t learn to wait for a discount.
- Who’s included. To leave out one-off buyers or wholesale accounts, add a Contact filter at the start, or an entry condition on the purchase event.
4 Measure it
- Clicks on each note, on the Performance tab under Email outcomes by step. Replies to the notes reach your inbox, not the report, so count those too.
- Returning customers and revenue: add a conversion goal on your purchase event, with Counts within set to 14 days, a Revenue property such as
totaland a Currency such asUSD. Available on Starter and above. See Conversion goals. - Lift: some customers come back on their own. Add a Random split just after the first filter with one empty path as a holdout, then compare conversion rates. See Random split and holdout.
Expect large Exited early numbers: every run except the one from each customer’s latest purchase ends at the first filter.
Common pitfalls
- Customers who lapsed before you started. Past events start nothing, so imported order history starts no runs, and customers who last bought before the journey went live never enter. To reach them, build a segment of lapsed customers, such as the segment template Lapsed customers, and start a separate journey on Enters a segment, enrolling the people already in it. Kiro AI’s Win back lapsed customers task drafts that segment and journey for you.
- Changing the wait later. Everyone already waiting keeps the 90 days they started with, because path changes apply only to people who enter afterwards. Decide the timing before you turn it on.
- Mismatched filter. If you change the wait to 60 days but leave the filter at 90, the purchase that started each run is always inside the filter’s 90 days, so every run ends there and nobody gets the email. Change both.