Winning Back Customers: A Re-engagement Success Story

Winning a new customer is hard; keeping one is harder. Acquiring a new customer often costs several times more than retaining an existing one. So when subscribers stop opening your emails, don't let them slip away quietly — wake them up. UK brand Crabtree & Evelyn did exactly that with one short "We Miss You!" email and won back 1,054 dormant contacts. Here's the real story.

The case: how did Crabtree & Evelyn re-engage dormant subscribers?

Skincare and beauty brand Crabtree & Evelyn noticed a group of customers who hadn't engaged with its emails for two straight months, April and May. Saying goodbye to hard-won subscribers is never easy, but if they don't want to hear from you, sending to them only costs money. So the brand set two goals:

1. Re-activate dormant subscribers
2. Clean out unresponsive contacts to protect its sender reputation

Using an automation program in the email marketing platform Adestra, it filtered for contacts who hadn't opened a single email in the previous two months and automatically sent them a re-engagement email — one last chance.

How was the "We Miss You!" email written?

• Subject line: "We Miss You!"
• Hero visual: "IS THIS GOODBYE?" over a soft lavender background — gentle, but it lands
• Copy: warm in tone, apologizing for the emails they hadn't been able to open; short, and clear about why the email was sent, what the reader should do, and what happens if they don't
• No hard sell: no pressure, just handing the choice back to the customer, with a prominent call-to-action that's easy to tap on a phone

The email offered three simple choices:

1. Stay subscribed
2. Visit the site to update their details
3. Shop now, with free shipping

The result: 1,054 contacts won back

Sending to an inactive audience is always a challenge, but this email performed remarkably well: of the 2.7% of dormant subscribers who opened it, 30% clicked through.

This single email won back 1,054 contacts.

Cleaning the dormant list didn't just recover customers — it kept sender reputation healthy. Sending only to people who still engage makes your reports more accurate and helps future emails land in the inbox.

Why should you actively wake up a dormant list?

Email marketing isn't just a promotion tool; it can open, build, maintain and restore customer relationships. Retention is harder than acquisition — but with the right message at the right moment, sleeping customers will come back.

To try this in your own business, follow the same thinking:

1. Define "dormant" — for example, no opens or no purchases for a set period — and tag those contacts.
2. Write a short, sincere re-engagement email that says why you're writing, what you'd like them to do, and offers a small incentive.
3. Split by response: people who respond go back on your regular list; people who stay silent stop receiving emails.

X Lead Funnel's customer journey and tagging segments customers by source and behavior, and multichannel messaging automation schedules the win-back messages. For growing the list in the first place, see The Best Starting Point for Re-marketing — Build Your Customer List; for follow-up after win-back, see 5 drip follow-up sequence templates.