How to activate dormant customers this BFCM

Imagine the holiday season, the magical time when friends and family gather around, rekindling connections and warm memories. In the business world, a similar opportunity emerges with BFCM, acting as the Christmas reunion for brands and their lost customers. Just as the festive season prompts reunions, BFCM provides an extraordinary chance to bring back those customers who've drifted away.  

Start with a Survey campaign

It is important to know why your customers are becoming dormant so that you can address the issue and prevent them from leaving for good. Send them feedback or a survey campaign, asking them about their experience, reasons for inactivity, and suggestions for improvement. Offer an incentive, like a discount code, for completing the survey.

Pro-tip: Don't use open-ended questions in your survey, rather give them multiple options to choose. This can improve your survey completion rate by at least 20%.

Based on your survey results, develop strategies to re-engage them and bring them back into the fold.

For example, a few shoppers would have experienced delayed delivery times, a few of them might have felt the customer support was not helpful.

Bucket your customers

Review the survey responses you collected from the survey. Identify common reasons that made them dormant. Segment these shoppers into different groups based on the reasons.

For example,

Say the number of dormant customers for ABC  is 2500. You send a campaign and say about 20% of them fill in the survey. So you have a chance to activate 500 inactive shoppers.

Bucketing them into why they became dormant:

• Delayed delivery times: 220 shoppers
• Felt pricing was high: 80
• Support issues: 100
• Found best price elsewhere: 90
• Average Product quality:  10

Personalize your BFCM Sale Announcement

Personalize your BFCM sale announcement emails based on segments above. You can just change the hero-banner, email subject lines, and make rest of the emails same to make things easier.

Let's take shoppers who faced delayed delivery times, the hero-banner can contains details related to that. For example, you can make free shipping within 24-48 hours more prominent.

Tailor your emails to suite each segment.

• If price was a concern: Mention the significant discounts they can enjoy during the sale.
• If lack of relevant products was an issue: Showcase the new products or improved offerings available during BFCM.
• If poor customer service was their pressing point: Highlight enhanced customer support during the sales period.

Nudge them with Testimonials giving them assurance

Nudge them with testimonials highlighting the positive experiences others have had with your brand. Add trust elements such as

• Money back Guarantee
• Secured payments
• Any certifications that you might have
• Trust by X number of customers and so on.

Set up laddered discounts

Start with a modest discount, it can be as low as 5% to welcome the dormant customers. Increase discount percentages gradually based on the responses you get. If they're still cold about the offer, increase your discount to 10%. These are some simple ways you can resurrect your in-active customers. If you're yet to plan for this holiday season, here's a handy BFCM checklist you can refer to.