Winback campaigns in Journey Hub allow you to automate communication with contacts who have not recently purchased from your brand.
Need some inspiration? Check out the example Winback Campaign or learn more about setting up a campaign below.
Initial Setup
Accessing Journey Hub
Navigate to Automation > Journey Hub Journeys.
Select the New Journey button.
In the event select popup, select Winback.
Give your journey a name.
Adjusting the Entry Criteria
Click on the Winback Scheduled Event in the builder and select the merchant associated with a purchase.
Select the number of days that have passed since a customer's last purchase before they become eligible for the Winback Journey. The number of days must be at 30 days since last purchase.
Set the re-entry frequency to No Limit or Once.
💡 Setting the frequency to No Limit allows a contact to enter the journey multiple times over their relationship with your brand.
If desired, set entry prevention rules to stop contacts from entering the Winback if they are in another journey or their email address or phone number contains certain information.
💡 Use the email option to stop internal contacts in your organization from receiving an email
How Customers Flow Through a Winback Journey
Customers are entered into the Winback Journey once a day in the early hours after midnight. If you would like to wait until a specific time of day to send the messages, you can learn more about message delivery settings below.
When the journey is first activated, customers are entered within 60 minutes. The specific customers who enter the journey will be determined by the number of days since a customer purchased. Customers who purchased that number of days ago will be entered into the journey the day it is activated. However, in order for a customer to receive a message sent from within your journey, they must be subscribed to a list in your Listrak account with their email address regardless of messaging channel. The data management action step needs to be used to subscribe a contact to the list associated with your Winback (Post Purchase) journey.
Configuring Exit Events
An exit event determines what must happen in order for a customer to exit a journey. If no exit events are configured or customers do not take the specified action they will naturally exit the journey at the end of their path.
1. Select the exit at the bottom of the journey.
2. Select Purchased and then the merchant from the entry event.
💡 Customers should stop receiving Winback messages if they purchase because they have take the desired action.
3. If desired, select Journey to exit a customer out of the Winback Journey if they enter another journey.
Customizing Your Winback Journey
Configure the Flow
Now that you have determined how a customer becomes eligible to enter or exit the journey you can determine the experience they will have in the journey by customizing paths based on past purchase history, messaging channel, and more.
Below are a few of the strategic considerations you may make when configuring your Winback Journey.
Actions
Coupons: Include coupons in the message to incentivize a customer to make a repeat purchase.
Exit: Use the exit action to stop contacts in a specific path from continuing through the journey.
Webhook: A webhook can be configured to send information to a third-party system such as sending information to a system that manages your catalogs. Learn more about setting up a webhook.
Data Management: This action is used to subscribe or unsubscribe a contact from a list or lists when they reach the action.
⚠️ For a Winback Entry this is required to ensure your purchasers are subscribed to the Post Purchase List so they can receive your configured messages.
Wait Step
Use wait steps to pause a contact before they receive additional messages.
Messages
To add an Email message, add the Email element onto the canvas. When creating messages be sure to select the list associated with the campaign, such as a Post Purchase list, in the properties panel.
To add an SMS message, drag the SMS element onto the canvas. In the properties panel, select the shortcode.
Message Delivery Settings
When configuring an email or SMS message you can set adjust message delivery settings in the Properties Panel. Enabling this setting allows you to limit the time range for when a message is sent.
You can also enable Time Zone Optimization to adjust the time to a customer's location based on their IP address, if sending an email message, or the area code, for an SMS message.
Decision Splits
Most decision splits can be placed anywhere in the journey to customize a customer's experience as they progress through the journey. Below are a few of the strategic ways decision splits can be used in a Winback Journey. Once you have determined the strategy you would like to customize, learn more about configuring your decision splits.
✉️ Engagement Split: This split can change a customer's path if they have engaged with a previous email or SMS message. Escalate the coupon value for customer's who have not engaged or send additional messages to those who have shown interest.
📦 Purchase History Split: This split can customize a customer's path based on their past order history. Send different messages to lapsed one-time vs. lapsed repeat purchasers, or customize the content based on the brands, categories, SKUs and more in their last purchase.
📱 Channel Affinity Split: This split can be used to prioritize the messaging channel used to communicate with a customer. A phone number opted-in to SMS or provided in billing details can be used to prioritize messaging in the SMS channel.
🔀 Random Split: The random split can be used to test different components of a campaign by sending a percentage of customers one experience and the rest another experience. Use the random split to test how many messages to include, which subject lines have impact on open rates, or test how long to wait between messages.
Activating a Journey
Once all messages have been created and the paths established, you are ready to activate the journey so that contacts can start receiving the new path and messages.
To activate, select the Activate button in the top right corner.
💡 Helpful Tips
If replacing an existing Conductor conversation with Journey Hub, be sure to terminate the existing conversation so that lapsed purchasers only receive one winback series.
Contacts sitting in a Winback queue waiting to enter into the automated campaign WILL get entered into the transitioned Winback journey because Journey hub looks to find contacts that have not purchased in the last X days.
Example Journey
📷 Click Image to Enlarge
In this example Winback Journey, customers who have not purchased in the last 90 days will be entered into the journey. Next, the data management action step will subscribe all contacts to the list associated with the email messages for the journey. Customers who have purchased more than once from your brand will be directed down the multipurchase path.
In the one-time path customers are assigned a 15% off coupon to incentivize a return purchase and then sent an email and SMS message. Only customers with a phone number included will be sent the SMS message. These messages includes a delivery time restriction so that it can only be sent between 9 AM ET and 7 PM ET. After two days customers will receive a second email message.
In the multipurchase path, a customer will be assigned a 10% off coupon to incentivize them to return and then receive both an SMS and email message. Only customers with a phone number included will be sent the SMS message. These messages includes a delivery time restriction so that it can only be sent between 9 AM ET and 7 PM ET. If a customer opened the email message during the two days they will receive a second message with the same 10% off coupon. If they did not open the initial message the offer, the coupon is increased to 15%. Calling out this last chance increase in the subject line could lead to increased engagement.
Any customer who purchases while in the journey will be removed via the exit event properties.
These elements can be added to or adjusted based on your specific strategy.