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How to win back inactive customers

Email marketing and SMS are the first go-to to reactivate inactive customers. Here are some tips to make your reactivation campaigns more effective.

According to Invesp (the conversion rate experts) it costs up to 5x more to acquire new business than it does to reactivate unresponsive customers. Understanding this and taking action can have a huge impact on the way iGaming operators run their businesses as well as their P&L.

Within the regular CRM process for Casinos and other verticals, it is typical to have a CRM process that attempts to reactivate inactive players to some degree. 

But the statistics are clear. 

The ones that win are the companies that invest at least as much in customer retention as they do in acquisition.

On average you have a 60-70% chance of selling to an existing customer but only a 5-20% chance of selling to a new one.  (Invesp)

Existing customers are not only more likely to buy, but they also spend on average 31% more than new ones. In iGaming this advantage is compounded by the fact that operators already have quite a lot of behavioural data about that customer. This means that we can predict spend and also are more likely to reactivate.

Are you guilty of considering inactive customers gone forever?

Here are 3 things you can do to (Re)activate customers that have joined the lapsed database:

1. Get back inactive customers with email

Email marketing is almost synonymous with CRM processes for many. It is the first go-to to reactivate a dormant database. Once clients have churned and are not playing and depositing anymore, you can try to reactivate them using email.

These are the 3 most likely emails to convert in such a scenario…

Personalised Email

The great thing about many player-CRMs is that you have some degree of information about how this client joined your site, what they played and how they churned. This information comes in very useful when attempting to reactivate a customer. Sending personalised emails is key. When preparing to re-engage your customer database it is therefore really important to gather information about their behaviour.

We Miss You Emails

“We miss you” messages need to be done right. Coupled with an incentive to return to your website, it can be a winner. In entertainment being playful always works. As does using interesting relevant titles such as… Are you playing hard to get?

Tell lapsed players what’s new

If you know which game a player was acquired through, you likely know what they love to play. So all you need to do is find out which are the latest features in the game they used to play, perhaps a recent addition or maybe a new game which is similar and very relevant to the customer’s location and cultural background. Think of yourself more as a match-maker than a salesperson. The smaller and more specific your email segments, the more personalised your email will be. And the more personalised your email the better your conversion rates.

 

2.Lure inactive customers in with Mobile App notifications

Statistically an average of 64% of your audience will opt-in to receive notifications through your app, especially if you give them a good reason to when they join. So when they’re active for the first time make sure you remind them to opt-in for App notifications. Once they’ve opted-in you can use notifications to re-activate churning players.

According to Accengage you’re more likely to get engagement if you send your notification on Tuesdays. This is also the busiest day of the week for notifications but statistically it converts better.

Just like email you can segment your push notification audience and add personalisation. Any information you have about the players you’re trying to bring back can be used to your advantage. According to Accengage using a degree of personalisation can boost your success rate by as much as 4x.

Other simple, yet easy ways to boost your conversion is to add Emojis. Yes, you might dislike them, but they add humanity and expression to digital messaging, so use them!

If your email tool has this feature, you can also make sure that you send campaigns based on your player’s timezone. Run some A/B testing to find out which times work better for your audience based on their location and use that information to your advantage. Statistics show that this can boost your click-through rate by up to 40%.

 

3. (Re)Activate your inactive database

After using the strategies above for email and sms, it is likely you will still be left with a large percentage of your database that hasn’t reacted to your smart antics. Statistically less than 2% of players will return to a brand once they have become inactive. 

Unless, you reactivate them with a call, which has been proven to be really effective. 

Not only can it re-engage 15% of your dormant database, but it also puts you in a better position to predict player revenue, because these players have history with you. The tricky part is that a regular support agent tends to have disappointing results. Re-engaging customers that have been dormant for 9 months or more requires a totally different skill set than the ones support agents are recruited and trained for.

This is where working with Enteractive’s risk-free reactivation service could make all the difference. Reactivation services can be used to effectively re-engage players that haven’t been active for 9 or even 12 months.

It’s a risk free service because those contacts are not converting for you. You can also enter into an agreement that works on revenue sharing so you technically don’t pay unless you make money.

“At Enteractive we convert up to 15% of a client’s inactive player base into active depositing customers. Resulting in 300% ROI (Return on Investment) on average.” says Enteractive CEO Mikael Hansson.

To find out more, contact our Head of Business Development, Andrew Foster, at andrew.foster@enteractive.se.