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Beginner Retail and ecommerce

How to set up low recency purchase winback campaigns

Implement a campaign using Segment to increase repeat purchases with personalized discounts based on intent signals to win back customers with low recency purchase patterns.

 

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What do you need?

  • Segment Connections

  • An email tool like SendGrid

Easily personalize customer experiences with first-party data

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The desired outcome for setting up low recency purchase winback campaigns is to re-engage customers who have not made recent purchases, encouraging them to return and buy again. By personalizing content, recommendations, and messages based on users' past purchases, behaviors, and preferences, businesses can increase customer lifetime value, reduce churn by reigniting interest among inactive customers, and maximize ROI from existing customer relationships.

Step 1: Add the required Sources 

In your workspace, add a new prod or dev source for your website and another for your order processing system. This should be your website where checkout events will be tracked and the system that captures completed orders. These sources will be responsible for collecting the required Track Events and sending them to Segment.

  •     Sign Up or Log In to Segment

First, access the Segment platform by signing up or logging into your existing account.

  •     Create a Source for Your Website

A source in Segment acts as the origin of data you collect, such as user interactions on your website. 

  1. In your Segment workspace, navigate to the Sources section.

  2. Click the Add Source button.

  3. From the catalog of sources, select JavaScript (for websites).

  4. Provide a name for your source, e.g., "i.e. Company Website - Dev or Prod".

  5. Optionally, add labels for organization.

  6. Enter your website URL.

  7. Click Create Source button.

  • Install the Segment Snippet

After creating your source, Segment will provide you with a JavaScript snippet.

  1. Copy the JavaScript snippet provided by Segment.

  2. Paste the snippet into the <head> tag of your site to install Segment.

If you need to connect your website, mobile app, or server as a source please refer to our documentation on these touchpoints. 
 

Step 2: Track your events 

In order to build the funnels needed to personalize this winback campaign, you'll need to track two key events: 'Page Viewed' from your website and 'Order Completed' from your server source. 

  • Page Viewed: This event will start sending to Segment once Analytics.js is added to the site.

Table showing event tracking metadata for web analytics, including events, props, and traits to identify.
Detailed table outlining required event tracking metadata for page views and order completions in web analytics.

In this example, we're not only tracking the event 'Page Viewed,' but also sending additional properties like 'page_category' and 'page_name'. These properties provide important context about the event and can be extremely valuable in your analysis. Learn more about properties.

It should be noted that 'Order Completed' should trigger an Identify call because this event allows you to tie a user to their actions and record traits about them, i.e., first_name, last_name, email. This can further be used for personalized messaging in your winback campaign. 

Only Identify calls can add and update user traits to a profile. For connections-only customers, the Identify event can still be mapped to downstream destinations to create/update user profiles.

 

Step 3: Add Destinations

Now, you'll need to decide where you want to send this data. This could be an email marketing platform like SendGrid. In your Segment workspace, add a new destination and select your tool of choice from the catalog. This destination will receive the data collected by your source and use it according to your needs. We recommend starting with an analytics tool to see the events flowing and build out the funnels you need to measure.
 

Step 4: Test your setup

Finally, test your setup to ensure data is being collected and sent correctly. You can do this by performing the actions you're tracking on your dev website and checking if the corresponding events appear in your Segment debugger and analytics tool.

 


The Source Debugger is a tool that helps you confirm that API calls made from your website, mobile app, or servers arrive to your Segment Source, so you can troubleshoot your Segment setup even quicker. 

Your data may not show up instantaneously and there may be a delay, but once the data is flowing you are ready to move to the next step. 
 

Step 5: Analyze and activate

Once your setup is looking accurate and data is flowing into your destinations, you can start analyzing it. For instance, you can identify users who  haven’t visited your website within the past 90 days. You can then use a platform like SendGrid to send a message like the one pictured below of a low recency winback campaign tailored to a user based on previous behavior. In this case, it can be sent to a user who hasn’t resumed language lessons. Based on the events and properties you’re tracking, you can use a similar approach to deliver messages to lapsed customers to increase engagement.

Note: it's important to first collect an email address, so consider using a lightbox popup or another tool to capture the user's email before tracking 'page_scroll' and/or 'page_viewed' events.

 

Duolingo owl mascot with a tear, encouraging user to resume language lessons.
The Duolingo owl reminds users to get back on track with their language learning with a quick 5-minute lesson.


Final Thoughts 

By addressing the needs of inactive customers with personalized strategies that leverage intent signals, you can strengthen relationships, foster long-term loyalty, and boost sales. Identifying and addressing the reasons behind decreased purchase frequency using behavioral and contextual data helps mitigate churn and retain valuable customers, enhancing overall business performance.

 

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