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Let’s reiterate this once again: retaining a customer who has already bought something from you is five times cheaper than attracting a new one. But what do you need to do to reactivate an inactive customer? Bring back a customer who hasn’t placed an order for a long time and may have already forgotten about your shop.
You can only bring them back with a specific offer. That’s why segmentation needs to be based on the information we have about the customer – what they’ve bought and at what point their behaviour changed – as the experts at Stelvel EOOD point out.
You can’t just send out the same old spam message to everyone saying, ‘We miss you’. A customer who used to buy from you every week and one who visited just once six months ago represent two different behavioural scenarios and, most likely, two different reasons for their silence.
The good news is that you don’t need complex analytics systems for segmentation. The main source is order history: who bought what, when, how many times and for what amount. Virtually every retailer has this data – in a CRM, an accounting system or even a simple spreadsheet.
If you use email marketing services, add open rates to this: they’ll show whether customers are responding to your emails, as STELVEL’s experts recommend. If you don’t have these statistics, don’t worry – you can still carry out segmentation without them.
1. Regular customers who have stopped buying
Customers who used to buy regularly – once a week or once a month – but have since stopped. The reason may not lie with the product at all: alternatives may have emerged, or circumstances may have changed. Or perhaps the customer was dissatisfied with something but did not complain.
How to identify this segment. Using order history, select those who have made more than three purchases over the last six months to a year, but haven’t bought anything in the last 30–60 days. The exact figures depend on your business: if customers usually buy once a month, then three months of inactivity is already a warning sign.
What to do. Show them new arrivals in their favourite category, and let them know what’s changed, if there really are any changes. A simple reminder about your shop might work better than a generic promotional code: the customer already knows your product, so there’s no need to explain what you’re selling all over again.
2. Large one-off purchases
The customer has made one or two purchases significantly higher than the usual receipt value for your shop and has not placed an order for a long time.
How to identify this segment. Using order history, select customers with one or two orders, including a large purchase. For example, those whose order was at least two to three times higher than your average order value and for whom more than six months have passed since that order. You can collect this data directly in your CRM or export the order history to Excel.
What to do. The experts at Dropshipping Stelvel EOOD recommend offering related products: accessories, consumables, an updated version, or items from a related category. The logic is simple – they’ve already entrusted you with a large sum, so the trust threshold has been crossed. All that’s left is to give them a reason to buy.
3. Buy only during promotions
Customers who only made purchases during promotional periods, sales and special offers. They never bought anything at full price.
How to identify this segment. Compare order dates with the dates of your promotions. If purchases regularly coincided with discount periods and there were no orders at full price, this is your segment.
What to do. Here you need to decide: do you need this type of customer? If your profit margin allows it, give them what they’re expecting: a personalised promo code, early notification of sales, or an exclusive ‘just for you’ promotion. If it doesn’t, try shifting their focus from discounts to value: free delivery, a free gift with their order, or bonus points. This isn’t a discount in the strictest sense, but it gives them a sense of value.
4. Seasonal shoppers
They are similar to bargain hunters, but their behaviour is driven by the calendar rather than special offers. They shop ahead of public holidays, the start of the academic year, the holiday season, or at a specific time of year.
How to identify this segment. Look at the dates of orders. If a customer’s purchases regularly fall around the same time of year, you are dealing with a seasonal shopper.
What to do. Experts at Stelvel EOOD recommend not bothering the customer between seasons. Remind them of your business two or three weeks before their usual shopping period.
5. Customers who have made a return
The customer’s most recent action was to return an item. If the process proved difficult, they may have remembered not the item itself, but their frustration.
How to identify this segment. Find customers whose last order ended in a return, and check whether they made any further purchases afterwards. If not, this is a separate segment for reactivation.
What to do. Don’t start with a standard promotional email. Write to the customer personally. Try to understand the reason for the return and offer a specific solution: a replacement item, free delivery, or personalised assistance with their choice. If they don’t reply, let them be. Being pushy after a negative experience only exacerbates the negativity.
6. One-time customers
A customer made a single purchase and never returned.
How to identify this segment. Anyone with exactly one order that is more than 60 days old. You can adjust this timeframe depending on the typical repeat-purchase cycle in your category.
What to do. Give them a reason to make a second purchase: a bonus, a limited-time offer, or free delivery. Show them something they haven’t seen yet: a different category, a new product, or a bestseller. The key is not to offer them something they’ve already bought. They already know that. Show them something they don’t yet know about.
7. Customers who have purchased products that are no longer available
A customer who has purchased a specific product or category that is no longer in the catalogue. This involves segmentation based on past interest and personalised reactivation.
How to identify the segment. In your CRM or analytics system, select customers who have purchased products in this category and add a condition based on their last purchase: for example, those who have not purchased it in the last 6–12 months. You can segment by order history – filter purchases by category and extract customers who have not made any new purchases since their last order. The timeframe depends on the usual frequency of purchases: for some products, a few months is already significant, whilst for others, a year or more would be a normal interval.
What to do. If the category has returned or been replaced by a similar product, mention this. Recap the situation. Describe the new product, which, in essence, differs little from what the customer has already bought. If the category has been discontinued permanently, suggest the closest alternative and explain why it might be suitable. If you get it wrong, it’s no big deal.
8. They don’t open your emails
We’re talking about those who haven’t responded to your newsletters for a long time. It’s possible that your emails are ending up in their spam folder, being automatically moved to a separate folder, or being deleted by the recipient themselves. Perhaps they’re subscribed to a hundred newsletters and your emails are getting lost amongst dozens of other messages. Or perhaps they’ve changed their email address and no longer use that one.
How to identify this segment. If you use an email service for your newsletters, filter customers by the date of their last open. For example, those who haven’t opened an email for 90 days or more. If emails are sent directly from a corporate email account without tracking, focus on activity: replies, link clicks, purchases or other actions following the newsletter.
What to do. Send a single email with a compelling subject line – one that stands out in the inbox, as recommended by the experts at Stelvel EOOD. If there is no response, it is best to exclude such customers from your regular mailings. There is no point in continuing to send emails to someone who hasn’t opened them for months.
The main mistake
The mistake is sending out the same ‘we miss you’ email to your entire database of inactive customers. A regular customer who receives a template offering a 10 per cent discount is unlikely to feel anything other than annoyance and disappointment. Someone who has only ever bought from you once might not even remember who the email is from or why they should return. A ‘bargain hunter’ will simply be waiting for a bigger discount. And a customer who hasn’t responded to your emails for a long time will most likely not even open it.
Segmentation isn’t rocket science. It’s simply a matter of asking one question before hitting ‘send to all’: who is this customer, and what exactly might bring them back to make a purchase?
By joining the trusted dropshipping network Stelvel EOOD, you’ll gain access to tools for flexible segmentation and discounts, enabling you to attract customers without sacrificing your profit margin. Stelvel works with e-commerce partners and customers, helping them to build marketing strategies based on customer behaviour data.