Winback Emails: When to Send, What to Say, and When to Give Up

Every store has customers who bought once or twice and drifted away. A winback flow brings some of them back automatically, and tells you when to stop trying.

When to send: use your reorder interval

Don't guess "90 days." Look at your own data: the median number of days between a customer's orders. Start winback at about 1.5–2 times that interval. For a coffee brand that might be 45 days; for furniture it might be a year.

The sequence

1. Day 0: what's new. New products, improvements, restocks. Give them a reason to look, not a discount.
2. About 5 days later: best sellers and proof. What other customers are buying, with real reviews.
3. About 5 days later: an incentive, if your margins allow it. A clear offer with a real expiry date.
4. About 7 days later: last call. A short email, or an SMS to consented subscribers.

Everyone exits the moment they buy.

Incentive ladders

Not everyone needs the same offer. A common approach is no incentive for recently lapsed customers, a modest one for longer-lapsed ones, and your best offer only for high-value past customers.

When to give up

If someone doesn't open, click or buy through the winback flow and stays inactive, move them into your sunset flow: re-permission, then suppress. Mailing people who never engage hurts deliverability for everyone else.

Find out whether you have a winback flow (and a sunset flow behind it) with the free audit.