How I won back 214 lapsed customers without discounting my whole list

The problem

My skincare brand sells repeat purchases. A cleanser lasts about eight weeks, a moisturiser about ten. If someone buys once and disappears, something went wrong — the product did not suit them, the reminder did not arrive, or they found a cheaper option.

For two years my answer was the same: a 15% off code to the full list, four times a year. It worked in the sense that revenue went up in the week of the email. It also trained my best customers to wait for a sale and gave the same discount to people who would have ordered anyway.

I wanted to know who had actually lapsed, not just who had not opened an email. And I wanted to spend the discount on the people who were worth winning back.

The old way

I would export customers, filter by last order date in a spreadsheet and guess a spend threshold. Then I would create a coupon in WooCommerce and email everyone.

The segment was always fuzzy. Did “last order” mean the order date or the completion date? Did guest orders count? Did a refund cancel the purchase? Most of the time I gave up and sent the offer to everyone.

The question I typed

I wanted value and recency in the same list:

“Show me customers who have spent over $150 lifetime, ordered at least twice and haven’t placed an order in the last 90 days. Include lifetime value, order count and last order date.”

What came back

214 customers. Combined lifetime value: $61,420. Average order value: $78. Average orders: 3.7. Median time since last order: 94 days.

That was 5% of my customer base and a much larger share of my repeat revenue.

The follow-ups

I asked:

“Which products did they buy most?”

Two products accounted for 61% of their purchases. That told me the win-back offer should be a refill bundle, not a generic 15% off.

“How does their average order value compare with customers who ordered in the last 30 days?”

Lapsed high spenders had a higher average order value ($78 vs $64). That made the campaign worth doing properly.

What I did

1. 1. Created a 12% coupon limited to the 214 customers in the segment — not a public code.
2. 2. Attached it to those customer accounts in WooCommerce.
3. 3. Exported the segment to my email platform and sent a three-email sequence: a “we saved your refill” note, a product education email and a final reminder with the coupon.
4. 4. Excluded anyone who ordered during the sequence.
5. 5. Did not discount the rest of the list.

The coupon was the easy part. The work was deciding who should get it.

The result

Thirty-nine customers came back in 30 days — 18.2% of the segment. They placed 52 orders between them. Most took the refill bundle, which lifted the campaign average order to $151.

The 12% coupon was smaller than my usual 15% offer, and it still brought people back because it arrived with the right product in it.

What I’d do differently

I’d set the recency window by product. A cleanser runs out in eight weeks; a candle might last six months. A single 90-day rule is a blunt instrument. Next time I would run separate segments by product category and test 60 days for consumables.

I would also build the exclusion into the segment before creating the coupon. I did it manually this time, and I caught two customers who had ordered the day before the email went out.