Reengaging Past Customers

I bought a hot tub from a local com­pa­ny a while back, and every few years, I also pur­chase a new cov­er from them. Over­all, I’ve felt it’s been a good rela­tion­ship. A few months ago, they sent me an email pro­mot­ing swim­ming pool cov­ers. Great, but I don’t own a pool.

I thought I had prob­a­bly been dropped into the wrong list, or it was just a broad cam­paign. But here’s what’s inter­est­ing — I didn’t delete it. I didn’t unsub­scribe. It actu­al­ly remind­ed me that they still exist. A few months went by and so did a few more emails, but I didn’t real­ly need any­thing, so I wasn’t pay­ing much attention. 

Then one day, I was out ser­vic­ing my hot tub — bal­anc­ing chem­i­cals, doing the nor­mal rou­tine — and I noticed the cov­er was get­ting old. It’s prob­a­bly push­ing five years, so I start­ed think­ing about a replacement.

I imme­di­ate­ly start­ed try­ing to recall a point of con­tact for the hot tub com­pa­ny — a rep or a famil­iar name. Despite hav­ing been a loy­al cus­tomer over the years, in that moment when I could not recall a name or con­tact info, it was just as easy, if not eas­i­er, to find some­one else.

Luck­i­ly, I did remem­ber that I had received some emails from them, so I didn’t start look­ing for a new sup­pli­er. I found one of the emails and replied.

​“I don’t need what this email is about, but I do need a new hot tub cov­er. Can you give me a ball­park on price, install, and removal of the old one?”

I felt it was quite clear that I was ready to buy some­thing!

But then, noth­ing. No con­fir­ma­tion. No time­line. No answer to my questions.

I thought, Did it go through? Is any­one going to respond? Do I need to fol­low up?

As of now, I still haven’t heard back. I don’t know if that rep even got my email. I don’t know where it went. At this point, it feels too cor­po­rate, too sys­tem-dri­ven, and it’s tak­ing too long. I’ve decid­ed to find some­one else.

But this expe­ri­ence offers an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to think about the crit­i­cal junc­tures that need to be iden­ti­fied and orches­trat­ed for a cus­tomer reac­ti­va­tion cam­paign to be successful.

#1: Email

First and fore­most, this sto­ry proves that email is not dead. The email this com­pa­ny sent was a mar­ket­ing win because even when I couldn’t recall their infor­ma­tion on my own, the emails they sent remind­ed me of where to find them.

Les­son: If some­one has giv­en you per­mis­sion to email them (espe­cial­ly if they’re a past cus­tomer), you should absolute­ly stay in touch. Keep it sim­ple, keep it rel­e­vant, and keep it human.

A gen­er­al rule of thumb is that a month­ly email is a strong, con­sis­tent cadence for most ser­vice busi­ness­es. You can always increase fre­quen­cy around sea­son­al­i­ty or pro­mo­tions, but if you’re doing noth­ing right now, start month­ly and do it well.

Before You Start Cre­at­ing Emails: Sit down and think through the cus­tomer jour­ney. Ask your­self where email can help and where it could poten­tial­ly hurt your reputation.

This sit­u­a­tion proves that email is an effec­tive re-engage­ment strat­e­gy, but that it can’t stand on its own.

#2: Seg­ment

The email they sent me was for a prod­uct I would nev­er buy (who buys a pool cov­er if they have no pool). This wasn’t a ter­ri­ble mis­take, but it wasn’t ter­ri­bly effec­tive. If they had sim­ply tagged my account with the prod­ucts I reg­u­lar­ly bought, they could have tai­lored the mes­sag­ing to my needs.

Les­son: The more you know about your cus­tomers, the bet­ter you can com­mu­ni­cate with them. Seg­ment­ing the list takes extra effort, but it’s worth it because keep­ing the mes­sage rel­e­vant is how you stay top of mind with­out becom­ing noise.

For exam­ple, if some­one hired you for inte­ri­or paint­ing, cre­ate fol­low-up mes­sag­ing about touch-ups, main­te­nance, and relat­ed ser­vices. You can remind them about oth­er things you offer (exte­ri­ors, cab­i­nets, even com­mer­cial work if it applies), but your cen­tral mes­sage calls atten­tion to an expe­ri­ence they’ve already had with your com­pa­ny and high­lights a ser­vice that makes sense now. 

#3 Build Real Connections

In an ide­al world, I would have remem­bered who my point of con­tact was right away. I admit that this sounds like I have pret­ty high expec­ta­tions. Most peo­ple for­get some­one who sold them a hot tub cov­er five years ago.

But indulge me anyway.

Imag­ine a sce­nario where I received such great ser­vice from my rep that it made an impres­sion on me. Then, a year lat­er, he or she gave me a quick call just to check in and make sure that every­thing was run­ning smooth­ly with the hot tub and that the cov­er was hold­ing up.

Each year, I get a card from the rep around the hol­i­days wish­ing my fam­i­ly and me the very best. Month­ly, I get a newslet­ter from the com­pa­ny high­light­ing local hap­pen­ings, giv­ing advice on hot tub main­te­nance, and maybe even high­light­ing spe­cial employ­ees — includ­ing my rep.

Around year four, I get a call or email remind­ing me about the pro­tec­tion a good cov­er pro­vides and how often they should be replaced. 

Those touch points don’t take long (espe­cial­ly if you are uti­liz­ing the tech tools offered today), but they do offer the type of rep­e­ti­tion and con­nec­tion that can cre­ate a last­ing impression.

In this sce­nario, I would have very like­ly thought Oh, it’s time for a new cov­er, I should call Bob!

That is the pow­er of human connection.

#4 Don’t Leave Peo­ple Hang­ing

This was the biggest whiff in this sce­nario. The busi­ness­es that win aren’t just the ones that mar­ket well; they’re the ones that respond well. Notice I said well, not just fast.

Tech­nol­o­gy today can help us respond faster than ever with few­er peo­ple, but the com­pa­nies that gain ground use automa­tion and AI not to replace peo­ple, but to make sure the cus­tomer feels heard and acknowl­edged imme­di­ate­ly and always. Tech makes you fast; humans make you thought­ful.

In this case, some­thing as sim­ple as: ​“Got your mes­sage. We’ll get back to you with­in X hours,” would have imme­di­ate­ly assured me that I would be tak­en care of — that’s the tech. But then that human who had giv­en me so many years of great ser­vice would have fol­lowed up, answered my ques­tions, and giv­en me just one more expe­ri­ence to remember.

The key to a suc­cess­ful reen­gage­ment strat­e­gy is putting the prop­er pieces in place and keep­ing them in place. To be fair, we all let these things slip some­times. I’ve seen mar­ket­ing sce­nar­ios inside my own com­pa­nies that just missed the mark or left some­thing out. But with some effort, strong sys­tems, and great peo­ple, you can stay on top of it.

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