Most businesses looking for growth start with acquisition. Before doing that, there is a cheaper source sitting in the existing database.
Pull the list
Everyone who has bought and has not been back in longer than your normal interval. Not everyone who ever appeared: customers, with a completed transaction, who have gone quiet.
The size of that list is usually the first surprise.
Segment it
Treating them identically wastes the good ones. At minimum:
- Recently lapsed: just past their normal interval. Highest conversion, lowest effort. Frequently they simply forgot.
- Long lapsed: well past it. Lower conversion but a large list.
- High value: worth a personal call rather than a message, regardless of how long it has been.
- Ended badly: a complaint or a problem. Handle separately or leave alone. A generic reactivation message to somebody with an unresolved complaint makes things worse.
What to send
Specific beats generic every time. Reference what they had, when, and why now is a sensible time. "You last had X in March, which is usually due about now" converts far better than "we miss you".
For high-value lapsed customers, a call from a person outperforms anything automated by a wide margin. There are usually few enough of them to make that practical.
Do not lead with a discount
It trains people to lapse, and it devalues the thing for everybody who did not. If you need an incentive, make it something other than money off the core service: priority scheduling, an added check, a convenience.
Then stop it happening again
A one-off reactivation campaign recovers revenue once and the list rebuilds behind you. The permanent fix is interval-based follow-up running continuously, so nobody reaches the lapsed list without having been contacted first.
Do the campaign for the backlog. Build the system so there is no backlog next year.
Measure it properly
Track contacted, responded, and booked, by segment. The segment differences are large and they tell you where to put effort next time. Most businesses find that the recently-lapsed group returns nearly all of the value for a fraction of the volume.