The re-engagement campaign: one honest question for the people who went quiet
A send to the subscribers who stopped responding, asking whether they still want to hear from you. Done properly, it shrinks the list on purpose and helps everything else land.
- 109Re-engagement Campaign
- Emails sent to inactive subscribers to encourage them to engage again or update their preferences.
- Sent to
- Subscribers with no clicks, visits or orders inside your engagement window
- Asks
- Whether they still want your emails, and how often
- Ends in
- Back on the normal programme, or suppressed and no longer mailed
- Not the same as
- A winback flow, which chases lapsed buyers for an order
Re-engagement campaign, winback flow, sunset flow: three different jobs
Three things get called re-engagement, and they aren't the same. One sells, one cleans up on its own, and one asks a question once.
| Send | Who it's for | What it wants |
|---|---|---|
| Re-engagement campaign | Subscribers who've gone quiet, bought or not | A click, a preference, or a clear goodbye |
| Winback flow | Customers past their usual gap between orders | Another order |
| Sunset flow | Anybody inactive, picked up automatically | To stop sending to people who've left |
The campaign is the one-off. You pick a quiet segment, ask it one thing, and act on the answer. The winback flow and the sunset flow run on their own once they're built.
When to run a re-engagement campaign, and who gets it
Run one when you've got a list that's been mailed for years without anybody checking who still reads it. That's when a one-off send earns its place. Once a sunset flow's running, it does the same job every day and you won't need the campaign again.
Define quiet by clicks, site visits and orders, not opens. Apple Mail can load your images whether anybody reads the email or not, so a dead address can still look like an opener. That's the whole story behind inflated open rates.
- Start with the most recently quiet, not the oldest
- Send in batches, so a block of dead addresses doesn't land at once
- Leave out anybody who joined inside your engagement window
- Check bounces and complaints after each batch before the next goes
What a re-engagement email should actually say
Ask a question. Do you still want to hear from us? Make yes one click, offer a less often option for people who'd otherwise leave, and make leaving just as easy. Nobody should have to hunt for the way out.
Leave the discount out. A code here rewards exactly the behaviour you're trying to stop. Then do what you said you'd do: anybody who didn't respond comes off the send list. Suppress them, don't delete them, so their history stays in the account.
Related terms
FAQs
Should a re-engagement email include a discount?
Usually not. A discount buys an open from somebody who'd already decided you weren't for them, and teaches the readers you've still got that going quiet pays. Ask whether they want to stay, offer to send less, and let the ones who don't answer go. If you want to test an offer, test it on lapsed customers in a winback flow.
How long should a subscriber be inactive before a re-engagement campaign?
Longer than the usual gap between a first and second order on your shop. Anything bought as a treat or a seasonal present can go quiet for months and still come back. Start from your own reorder data, then put the window comfortably beyond it. A platform default is somebody else's buying cycle.
Will removing inactive subscribers hurt my revenue?
Less than it feels like it will. These are people who haven't clicked or bought in months, so there's little revenue to lose. What changes is everything else: mailbox providers judge you on how your whole list responds, so cutting the addresses that never do helps the rest reach the inbox. Klaviyo also bills by active profiles, so you stop paying for silence.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
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