A welcome-back email can turn churned customers into loyal ones by picking up where their last experience left off.
A good welcome email program can quickly introduce customers to your brand and start the relationship off right. But what about customers who come back after churning? Do they need to go through the same onboarding process, or would something that reflects their experience with your brand encourage them to stay longer?
I started thinking about this while listening to Stef Work with Paramount+, the streaming TV service, as she described her “Welcome Back” program for returning customers – those who had canceled their service but then resubscribed again.
I’m one of those people. After cutting the cable cord a decade ago, I will subscribe to a streaming service to catch a show or a series and then cancel. Recently, my mom asked me to help her sign up for Starz! so she could watch “Outlander.” I assured her we could cancel the subscription after she finishes watching all eight seasons in 2026.
And then I heard Stef describe Paramount+’s welcome-back email, and something exploded in my brain. I thought, “Of course you have that! It makes total sense!”
When you already know each other
If I resubscribe to a streaming service, do I need to undergo the same onboarding process? Stef says no, that Paramount+ understands these returning customers already know the brand, they might be returning for a specific show or series, and they likely subscribe, cancel, return and start the process all over again.
In other words, they know me, and their welcome-back program shows that.
This also describes retail customers, who shop at some brands only once a year at the holidays, or SaaS users who sign up for a free program, cancel it and then return to upgrade to a paid version. And that’s why I had that “ah ha!” moment during the Paramount+ presentation.
Dig deeper: How to make email automations work as hard as you do
We can create a welcome-back program for just about every retail or SaaS vertical. But it can’t be a retread of your standard welcome or onboarding program. Let’s explore three things to consider as you build a welcome-back program.
Three things you need for a welcome-back program
1. The correct data
With a subscription service, you have concrete data points for subscribing, payment history, account cancellation and resubscribing. In retail, while you can use email opt-ins and unsubscribe data to identify returning customers, it’s often more a question of emerging from dormancy. Do you have the data to pinpoint which customers are new or returning?
Specifically for email, can your ESP process that additional subscription after an unsubscribe? At some ESPs, once you’ve unsubscribed with one address, you can’t reuse it to start a new subscription. You will need to check that with your ESP representative. Make sure you have access to that data so you can put it to work.
Your new welcome-back program will be another automated email or series. You will need to know not just whom you’re including but also whom you’re excluding based on the data to be sure you’re sending the right welcome program.
That’s why you should start investigating a welcome-back email program by evaluating your data, which will define your strategy.
This is your pre-work. It’s all about developing your strategy before launching the tactical work of designing and testing the emails. Part of your strategy exercise is discovering what data you have, whether it’s formulated correctly, and whether you can distinguish between new and returning customers.
2. What you need to say
This is the strategic part of designing your welcome-back message. What would be most effective in your relationship with that customer?
With a subscription service like streaming TV, viewership data will inform your message content to recognize the shows they watched previously and the categories they browsed and streamed from most often.
Your message would highlight that show, and include similar shows in the same genres or on complementary topics, with similar casts and narratives. If that sounds suspiciously like cross-selling or upselling in email marketing, bingo!
A retail welcome-back email would have similar content, showcasing familiar merchandise categories and new merchandise lines or services the company just added.
Your welcome-back program’s goal is not just to say “Welcome back!” and show them the same content they viewed before, but also to use your data to retain them, whether they’re streaming customers or retail shoppers, after they’ve done what they came back to the brand to do.
This is where the strategic work comes into play. Think about the consumer at that level and the behavior that you learned during the data exploration. Your email content will be different for different cohorts of your customers.
Figure out how to speak to streaming customers who watched two shows that ended simultaneously. Figure out how to talk to a customer who shops with your brand once a year at the holidays. It’s not a simple message saying, “Here’s what you bought last year. Do you want to buy it again?”
It’s all about the connective tissue between their experience at the peak of their intent and what else you have that matches that in this next phase of your relationship. Your message must be highly relevant to retain that customer long after they achieve their original goal with your brand.
3. A way to keep them from churning
A welcome-back email is not just one message in a series. You’re essentially merging a welcome, an onboarding and a win-back into a single new journey focused exclusively on churned customers who have signed up again. This includes a new message schedule.
As an example, for a series on a streaming service, you would set up a journey to send a message at the start of the season, another in the middle and another near the end, aside from other promotional emails you might send. There’s a lot of complexity there.
Throughout the journey, the message goals transition from welcome back to retention. You say, “We hope you’re enjoying Outlander. Now here’s something else we have that you might like.”
And yes, you’re sending a similar message to other customers, but you know these returning subscribers have a track record for canceling when the show season is over. So, your messaging must be even more on target.
The same is true for retailers. You would set up a journey to send emails reaching out at different times of the year with content that cross-sells and upsells, with products similar to what they’ve bought or the next logical purchase in the product cycle.
You also stress your brand value, services, expertise and other benefits to persuade once-a-year shoppers to stick with your brand instead of unsubscribing after they get what they want.
Retention and extension are difficult to achieve. That’s why developing a strong strategy is the most important thing you can do to persuade customers to stay longer.
Accurate measurement is key here. Can you track the flow of people in and out of active customer status? What KPIs can show you accomplished your retention goal?
The tactical aspect of creating a new welcome-back program is the easy part. Developing a strategy to guide your messaging and then proving it works is the hard part.
Bottom line
Stef’s presentation was an eye-opener for me. Her comments made sense to me immediately.
I should have been embarrassed at not doing this myself during my 27-year career, but I’m not. We must be open to new concepts, no matter where we are in our careers or how much we’ve already accomplished with our email programs.
I’m particularly enthusiastic about the welcome-back concept because it can be applied to so many industry verticals, from subscription services to retail, travel and hospitality and even financial services.
It doesn’t matter that the idea originated with a streaming TV service. Everyone can use it. This will also help us email marketers continue to grow as an industry and as individuals to ensure we’re doing it correctly to serve our consumers better.
Please consider whether a welcome-back program could help your company be more welcoming to returning customers and encourage them to stay with you longer. If you develop a program or already do something similar, shoot me a note on LinkedIn. I would love to talk to you about it.
The post Time for a ‘Welcome Back’ program for returning customers? appeared first on MarTech.
About the author
In 2023, Ryan received the industry’s top honor of Thought Leader of the Year Award and is the Chairman Emeritus of the Email Experience Council Advisory Board. He is also an in-demand keynote speaker and thought leader on email marketing.
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