How to run a win back campaign that brings customers back

What is a win back campaign?

A win back campaign is a series of emails, and sometimes texts, sent to past customers who have stopped buying, to bring them back for another order. Shopify's guide describes it as a series designed to reengage a previous customer, for example someone who has not purchased in six months.

The spelling varies and the meaning does not. Klaviyo writes winback, Shopify writes win-back, and Campaign Monitor adds two more names for it: a re-engagement or reactivation campaign. Klaviyo's winback guide calls a winback flow an essential part of customer retention.

“Win-back flows are powerful tools to re-engage lapsed customers, drive repeat purchases, and increase CLV.”

Shoshana Ritzler, VP of marketing at Magnolia Boutique, 3 tactics to improve repeat purchase rate

They are, with one condition the usual guides leave out. The emails have to reach the customers who drifted away before the flow existed, and that is where the value leaks.

Is a winback flow the same as a win back campaign?

No, and the difference decides who you reach. A winback flow is automatic: it starts at each purchase, waits, and emails a customer who has not bought again by the end of the delay. A win back campaign is a send you schedule to a segment of customers who have stopped buying.

Most stores need both, because a new flow cannot reach customers who lapsed well before it existed. If your winback flow never seems to bring anyone back, or shows as live while repeat orders stay flat, start here. Klaviyo's help center shows why with its own example: a winback flow with a 75-day delay, an email, a 10-day delay and a second email.

When you add past profiles, anyone who bought in the last 75 days is queued. Anyone who bought more than 85 days ago is not added, and Klaviyo's advice is to send them a campaign instead.

One store learned this with a different email: a weekly sequence built for 488 people used a list trigger on a list that existed before the flow did. In six weeks of showing as live, it reached 13 of them. A scheduled weekly email replaced it on September 4, 2026, and reached 484 people on its first send, September 8 (source: the store's Klaviyo account).

Klaviyo also describes a re-engagement campaign: a single email to people who may not receive a winback flow, sent about once a year.

When does a customer count as lapsed?

When they have gone longer without buying than your customers normally do. Klaviyo's winback guide says the flow should only target people who have not engaged for longer than your average buying cycle. A store selling couches has a far longer cycle than one selling shampoo.

Klaviyo's blog puts the usual range at 3 to 6 months of inactivity, and adds that your timeframe may differ. Treat that as a first guess. Your own order history is better, and Shopify already has it.

How to find your buying cycle in Shopify

1. In Shopify, go to Analytics, then Reports, and filter the category to Customers.
2. Open the Returning customers report. It lists every customer with two or more orders, with the dates of their first and most recent orders and their number of orders.
3. Export it as a CSV file and open it in a spreadsheet.
4. For each customer, divide the days between the first and most recent order by the number of orders minus one. That is their average gap between orders.
5. Take the median gap across all of them, and set your win-back timing a little longer than that.

Two cross-checks help. The Customer cohort analysis report groups customers by when they placed their first order. Shopify says it can help you decide when and how to re-engage which customers.

Klaviyo's predictive analytics can also add an expected date of next order to each customer profile. That needs at least 500 customers who have ordered and 180 days of order history, among other conditions.

Who should get a win back email?

Past buyers who can still receive your marketing email and whose last order is older than your buying cycle. Leave out people who never bought; they belong in a re-engagement or sunset send, not a win-back.

In Shopify, a customer segment can combine the filters for number of orders, last order date and email subscription status. Shopify's customer reports also sort customers into RFM groups by recency, frequency and money spent, and Shopify says the scores come only from your store's data. Three of the groups make natural win-back lists:

Two more splits pay off. Klaviyo's blog suggests keeping bigger discounts for customers who spent more, so you do not over-discount. And if a product runs out on a schedule, Klaviyo's winback guide suggests a separate replenishment flow for it instead of a win-back.

Then count the pool, as you would for an abandoned cart email, and start with the customers most likely to come back.

The pool is set by the first orders you have won. On the store in the case study, first-time buyers went from 25 in the 30 days before the work began (May 5 to June 3, 2026) to 53 in the 30 days about three months in (August 17 to September 15, 2026). That is by Shopify's own reports, for one store whose Facebook ads ran in both periods; the details are on the results page.

What should a win back email say?

Something short that reminds the customer why they bought, shows what is new, and makes the next step easy. Klaviyo's winback guide recommends three emails per recipient, in this pattern.

The same guide's advice for the content is simple. Let customers know you noticed they left, personalize the message, share the latest updates from your brand, and avoid sending too many emails. Klaviyo's re-engagement guide goes further and suggests a text-only email for a personal feel.

Win back email subject lines

Klaviyo's sunset guide suggests honest subject lines such as "Is it time to say goodbye?" and "We miss you already". Its blog adds that words like "last chance" and "final call" signal urgency. A few starting points in the same spirit:

• It has been a while, [first name]
• New since your last order
• Still using your [product]?
• Keep getting emails from [store name]?
• Last chance for [offer]

Judge them on clicks and orders, not opens, because machine opens inflate open rates.

What is a winback offer, and do you need a discount?

A winback offer is the incentive that gives an inactive customer a reason to come back now: money off, free shipping, a gift or early access. You do not always need one, and the first email rarely needs to lead with it.

Klaviyo's winback guide recommends including an incentive, and Klaviyo's blog suggests testing discount levels and free gifts to see how low you can go. Shopify's guide suggests holding the deal for later in the series, so customers who only needed a small nudge do not cost you margin.

“a discount buys the order in front of you”

Tracey Wallace, director of content strategy at Klaviyo, 10 takeaways from K:BOS 2026

It came from a loyalty session at Klaviyo's September 2026 conference. Hightouch warns that leaning on discounts risks training customers to buy only during sales. The size of the offer is a margin decision, and it stays with you.

Shopify's guide lists other ways to bring existing customers back besides a cash discount, and Klaviyo's blog adds exclusive access:

• Free shipping over a threshold.
• An exclusive product bundle.
• Early or exclusive access to a new product.
• A percentage off, saved for the second or third email and given an end date.

What if customers only buy when the win-back offer arrives?

Limit the coupon, not the reminder. A customer who learns that money off always follows a quiet spell has a reason to go quiet, which is the training risk Hightouch warns about above.

If some regulars now seem to order only when the win-back code lands, you are not imagining the pattern. A flow that hands out the same code every time a customer lapses teaches exactly that, and it is a setting you can change.

• Cap how often anyone enters. Klaviyo's flow trigger settings include re-entry criteria: a profile can enter only once, re-enter whenever it qualifies again, or re-enter only after a minimum period. For a winback flow, a long minimum, such as a year, keeps the coupon rare.
• Make the code one use per customer. Shopify's amount off discount settings can limit a code to one use per customer, tracked by email address or phone number. The reminder can keep going while the money off stays rare.
• Tag it in Shopify Flow. If your win-back runs in Shopify Flow, the Add customer tags action can mark the customer when the email goes out, and a condition can check for that tag before the next one.
• Check it against the holdout. If customers who got the code order no more often than the holdout group, the code is paying for orders you would have had anyway.

How many emails should a win back campaign send?

Three is a sound default. Klaviyo's winback guide recommends keeping a winback flow to three emails per recipient. Its blog puts the range at 2 to 5, to protect your sending reputation.

Watch revenue per recipient as the series goes on; Klaviyo's blog says a drop after the first email is a sign to send fewer. Shopify's guide also sets a stopping point. After three to four win-back attempts, or 90 to 180 days without an open or click, remove the subscriber from your marketing sends.

How do you win customers back without hurting deliverability?

Send to fewer people, keep leaving easy, and stop on time. Klaviyo's blog warns that a win-back series that runs too long can hurt deliverability, because recipients start marking the emails as spam.

Gmail's email sender guidelines ask every sender to keep spam rates reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%. Senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail must also support one-click unsubscribe and show a clearly visible unsubscribe link.

“we’ll enforce a clear spam rate threshold that senders must stay under”

Neil Kumaran, Group Product Manager, Gmail Security & Trust, New Gmail protections for a safer, less spammy inbox

Google set that rule in October 2023. It has applied since February 2024, and a win-back send to a stale list can push a store toward the line. Build these into the campaign:

• A prominent unsubscribe link. Klaviyo's winback guide says it is always better for someone to unsubscribe than to ignore your emails or mark them as spam.
• Batch sending for a big segment. Klaviyo's re-engagement guide says spreading deliveries over time can be safer when you send to many unengaged people.
• The legal basics. The FTC's CAN-SPAM guide requires a clear way to opt out, your physical postal address, and opt-outs honored within 10 business days. This is general information, not legal advice.
• A sunset at the end. Move people who still do not respond into a sunset flow and suppress them. Klaviyo bills by billable profiles, so suppressed profiles also stop adding to your bill; see what Klaviyo costs as your list grows.

Making leaving easy feels backwards in a campaign meant to keep people. It is what keeps the rest of your list reaching the inbox.

How do you set up a winback flow?

In Klaviyo the setup is short; the judgment is in the delay. Klaviyo's winback guide sets it up like this. The last two steps close the gap a new flow leaves:

1. Go to Flows, click Create Flow, then Create From Scratch, and name the flow.
2. For the trigger, choose Metric, then Placed Order.
3. Add the profile filter Placed Order zero times since starting this flow, so anyone who buys again drops out.
4. Add the first time delay, a little longer than your average buying cycle.
5. Add three emails with time delays between them, following the pattern above.
6. Set the emails live, then add past profiles to queue recent buyers who are still inside the flow's timeline.
7. Build a segment of customers who lapsed before that, and send them a one-time win back campaign.

Stores on Shopify's own email have an option too. As of September 2026, Shopify Messaging has a Win back customers automation that sends after a set time has passed since a customer's last order. It uses the Customer joined segment trigger and, like Shopify's other marketing automations, sends only to customers subscribed to email marketing by default.

Set the delay with care, because changing it later is messy. Klaviyo's guide to managing flow messages says a new delay only affects people who have not reached that step, so anyone waiting keeps the old timing. In Shopify Flow, the Wait action tops out at 90 days per workflow, and Shopify warns that editing an active workflow with a Wait step might have unexpected results.

Either way, compare the flow's recipients with the number of customers who should have entered it after a month. The guide to Klaviyo flows covers the settings that keep a live flow from sending, and post purchase emails cover the step before a customer drifts away.

How do you know if a win back campaign worked?

Count the orders it added, not the orders it was credited with. Some lapsed customers would have come back anyway. The honest test holds back a random slice of the segment, sends nothing to them, and compares the two groups.

Klaviyo credits an order to an email when the customer opened or clicked it within the attribution window, five days by default for newer accounts. Its help center says automatic Apple Mail opens count too. Shopify's Total sales by referrer report credits the site the customer arrived from instead.

On one store, for August 17 to September 15, 2026, Klaviyo credited email with 23 orders, while Shopify traced 10 orders that came through an email click. Report both, and label which is which.

Opens are the weakest signal of all, even though Klaviyo's re-engagement guide calls an open rate above 10% a success. In the 30 days to August 20, 2026, one store's screen showed a 92 percent open rate, while the click rate on the same account was 5.31 percent. Machines make opens; clicks need a person.

For the monthly routine behind those numbers, see the five-check email audit and which Shopify reports show where sales come from.

What are some win back campaign examples?

Here are five plays that fit most Shopify stores. They follow the four parts Shopify's guide lists for a win-back campaign: reengagement, feedback, incentives and a last-chance farewell.

Use them as win back campaign ideas and as a template: swap in your products, your buying cycle and an offer your margin can carry. Send the backlog campaign a few weeks before your busiest season, so it does not compete with your Black Friday emails. The strategies that hold up are the plain ones, sent to the right customers at the right time.

What does a win back campaign look like when it works?

A working win back campaign is quiet and specific. Customers who drifted away get a short, honest note timed to your real buying cycle, and some come back without a discount they did not need. The rest stop costing you money, because they unsubscribe or are suppressed.

Your report shows the orders the campaign added against a holdout, and Klaviyo's credit beside Shopify's count. It sits in the Get Orders stage of The Traffic to Sales Method, after Get Names has collected the email addresses and consent that make it possible.

Not sure how many customers have lapsed, or whether your winback flow sends at all? The free Traffic to Sales Check reads Shopify and Klaviyo side by side, and the fix is part of Klaviyo email, done for you. Leaving quiet customers unasked costs the repeat orders you already paid to earn.

The proof, from one store

Straight from the case study, with the source and what it does not prove. See all five results.

Does this sound like your store?

If it does, the service that fixes it is Klaviyo email, done for you. You can see the before and after on one store in the case study.