60% of Your Customers Bought Once and Disappeared — The Winback Campaign That Brings Dead Customers Back for $0 Ad Spend (While Your Competitors Pay $318 to Find New Ones)

EasySell
2026-04-05T15:37:38+01:00

Pull up your Shopify customer list right now. Filter by "number of orders = 1." That percentage — probably somewhere between 55% and 65% of your entire customer base — represents people who trusted you enough to buy once, then never came back. A winback campaign targeting these lapsed customers is the single cheapest way to recover that lost revenue.

Meanwhile, average ecommerce customer acquisition cost hit $318 in 2026, up 40% from $223 in 2023. You're spending more than ever to bring in new buyers while ignoring the cheapest source of revenue you already own: people who already gave you their money, their email, and their shipping address.

Every month you don't have a winback campaign running, that one-time buyer list grows longer and colder. After 120 days of silence, the probability of reactivation drops below 5%. After 180 days, most of those customers won't even recognize your brand name in their inbox. The window is smaller than you think.

Why Don't One-Time Buyers Come Back?

72% of one-time buyers rated their experience 4 or 5 stars in a 2025 Klaviyo benchmark. They liked the product. They just forgot about you. Most merchants assume the product was the problem — the data says it's almost always a follow-up problem.

The real reasons are boring but fixable:

No follow-up after the first purchase. Most Shopify stores send a shipping confirmation and then go silent. No check-in at day 14. No replenishment reminder. Nothing.

No reason to return. If your store sells the same products at the same prices, there's no trigger to revisit. The customer isn't angry — they're indifferent.

COD friction compounds the problem. In COD markets, the buyer already went through the hassle of waiting for delivery, having cash ready, and coordinating with the courier. Without a strong reason, they won't repeat that process.

Indifference is harder to overcome than dissatisfaction. A dissatisfied customer at least remembers you. An indifferent one needs a nudge — and that's exactly what a repeat purchase strategy built on timed winback sequences delivers.

The 60/90/120-Day Winback Sequence That Actually Converts

A winback campaign isn't one email. It's a timed sequence that escalates urgency as the customer gets colder. Here's the framework that consistently reactivates 12-15% of lapsed buyers across Shopify stores:

Day 60 — The Soft Reminder

Subject line: "Still loving your [product name]?" This isn't a sales email. It's a check-in. Ask if they're happy with their purchase. Include a link to complementary products, not a discount. The goal is to re-establish the relationship before asking for anything.

Day 90 — The Incentive

Subject line: "Here's 15% off because we'd love to see you again." This is where you introduce the offer. A 10-15% discount or free shipping on their next order. Be specific about what's new since their last purchase — new arrivals, restocked items, seasonal products. Give them a reason beyond the discount.

Day 120 — The Final Ask

Subject line: "Last chance: your 20% expires Friday." Increase the discount slightly and add a deadline. This is the urgency email. If they don't convert here, they move to your sunset segment. Omnisend data shows this third email in the sequence converts at 3.2% — lower than email two, but these are customers you'd otherwise lose entirely.

How to Segment Your Lapsed Customer List for Winback Campaigns

Sending the same winback email to every lapsed customer is lazy and it shows. A customer who spent $150 on their first order needs different treatment than someone who bought a $12 accessory. RFM segmentation gives you the framework to sort them.

Split your one-time buyer list into three segments:

1. High-value lapsed (original order above your AOV). These customers get the VIP treatment: early access to new products, a personalized discount, or a handwritten-style email from the founder. They're worth the extra effort.

2. Average-value lapsed (original order near your AOV). Standard winback sequence with a moderate incentive. This is your largest segment and where most of your recovered revenue comes from.

3. Low-value lapsed (original order well below your AOV). A smaller incentive — or no incentive at all. Sometimes a simple "here's what's new" email is enough. Don't train $12 buyers to expect discounts on every purchase.

You can also segment by product category. Someone who bought running shoes gets a winback featuring new running gear. Someone who bought a phone case sees the latest cases for their phone model. Relevance beats generosity every time.

For COD Markets: WhatsApp and SMS Are Your Winback Channels

If you're selling COD in South Asia, MENA, or Southeast Asia, email winback campaigns hit a wall fast. Open rates for marketing emails in these regions average 8-12%, compared to 25-30% in North America. Your customers check WhatsApp 85 times a day. They check email when they have to.

The WhatsApp winback flow follows the same timing (60/90/120 days) but with shorter messages:

Day 60: "Hi [name], hope you're enjoying your [product]. We just restocked [related item] — thought you'd want to know." Include a direct link to the product or order form.

Day 90: "We haven't seen you in a while! Here's free shipping on your next order. Tap to shop: [link]." Keep it conversational, not promotional.

Day 120: "Last chance for your returning customer discount — 20% off until [date]. [link]." Direct and time-bound.

WhatsApp winback messages convert at 2-3x the rate of email in COD markets. The channel feels personal, the message lands instantly, and the customer can reply with questions before ordering. SMS works similarly where WhatsApp penetration is lower — Kenya and parts of Latin America, for instance.

Turn Winback Clicks Into Instant Reorders

Getting a lapsed customer to click your winback link is half the battle. The other half is making sure they don't bounce when they land on your store and face the same generic shopping experience as a first-time visitor.

Tag your winback segment in Shopify (use a customer tag like "winback-target" or "returning-60d"). Then customize what they see when they arrive:

Pre-apply their discount code so they don't have to hunt for it

Show products related to their original purchase, not your homepage bestsellers

Display a returning-customer message: "Welcome back — we saved your free shipping offer"

If you're using EasySell, you can trigger returning-customer offers directly on the order form based on customer tags — a welcome-back discount or free shipping that appears automatically when a tagged customer lands on the page. That removes one more friction point between the winback click and the completed order.

The Sunset Decision: When to Stop Trying

Not every lapsed customer is worth chasing. After your 120-day sequence, customers who haven't opened a single email (not just haven't purchased — haven't opened) should move to a sunset flow.

Send one final email: "Should we stop emailing you?" with a clear re-opt-in button. This sounds counterintuitive, but it does two important things:

1. It protects your sender reputation. Email providers like Gmail penalize senders with low engagement rates. A list full of people who never open your emails drags down deliverability for everyone else — including your active customers.

2. It sometimes works. The "we're about to remove you" email has a 8-12% open rate on its own. Some of those opens convert into re-engagement. The rest? Remove them. A clean list of 5,000 engaged subscribers outperforms a bloated list of 20,000 that nobody reads.

For COD merchants using WhatsApp, the sunset is simpler. If a customer hasn't responded to or clicked any of your three WhatsApp messages, stop messaging. WhatsApp's business API charges per conversation, and you're paying to message people who aren't listening.

Measure What Actually Matters

The only winback campaign metric that matters is recovered revenue — not open rates, not click rates. Set up a Shopify report that tracks orders from customers tagged in your winback segment. Compare that revenue against what it would have cost to acquire the same number of new customers at your current CAC.

If your winback campaign reactivates 50 customers per month at an average order value of $45, that's $2,250 in revenue. Acquiring 50 new customers at $318 each would cost $15,900. The math isn't close.

Track reactivation rate by segment (high/average/low value), by channel (email vs. WhatsApp vs. SMS), and by timing (which email in the sequence drove the conversion). After 90 days of data, you'll know exactly which segments and channels justify your time — and which ones you can cut.

Your next step takes 15 minutes: export your one-time buyers from Shopify, filter by last order date older than 60 days, and send the first email in your sequence today. Every day you wait, that list gets colder. The customers are already in your database. The revenue is already there. You just need to ask for it.