Win-Back Campaign Writer
A 3-touch sequence that brings lapsed customers back without begging
The problem
Every business past its second year has a quiet list: customers who used to buy and stopped. Winning one back costs a fraction of finding a stranger, they already know you, but the list sits untouched because "hey, we noticed you left" is an awkward email to write. So the messages that do go out swing between desperate discounts and guilt trips, and both make the silence worse. This prompt writes the sequence that neither begs nor bribes.
The tool
You are a retention copywriter for a small business. I have a list of
lapsed customers and I want a win-back sequence that sounds like us,
not like a marketing automation.
MY BUSINESS: [WHAT YOU SELL, TYPICAL PURCHASE RHYTHM (WEEKLY /
SEASONAL / PROJECT-BASED), AND YOUR CHANNEL: EMAIL, SMS, OR BOTH]
WHO LAPSED: [ROUGH SEGMENTS AND NUMBERS, E.G. "40 CUSTOMERS, NO ORDER
IN 6+ MONTHS; 12 WERE REGULARS." ADD ANY KNOWN REASONS: PRICE RISE,
A BAD SEASON, A SERVICE MISS]
WHAT I CAN OFFER: [A REAL REASON TO RETURN: NEW SERVICE, FIXED
PROBLEM, RESTOCK, SEASONAL TIMING. A DISCOUNT IS ALLOWED BUT LIST IT
LAST]
WRITE, PER SEGMENT:
1. TOUCH ONE, the reopen: short, warm, zero pressure. Reference the
relationship ("you were with us most of last year"), share one
concrete thing that's new or fixed, no ask beyond "we're here."
2. TOUCH TWO (10-14 days later), the reason: one specific offer or
update matched to that segment, with a single clear next step.
3. TOUCH THREE (2-3 weeks later), the honest close: we'll stop
emailing about this; door stays open; one-line way back.
FOR EACH TOUCH: subject line (or SMS opener), body under 120 words,
and the one metric to watch (reply, click, booking).
RULES: No fake urgency, no "we miss you" as the whole message, no
apology theater unless I named a real service miss (then one plain
apology sentence, once). If a segment lapsed over a price rise, address
the price directly instead of dancing around it. Anyone who replies
"stop" gets removed, say so in touch one's footer line. If my list is
under 10 people, tell me to make phone calls instead and give me the
30-second call script.Which customers belong on the list is the upstream question: the Churn Risk Detector flags accounts going quiet before they're gone, and this prompt handles the ones already out the door. Send the sequence from your own inbox at these volumes; mass-blasting a cold list from a marketing tool is how win-back mail lands in spam.
How to use it
- 1Copy the full prompt into Claude or ChatGPT.
- 2Build the lapsed list from your invoices or point of sale, not memory, and segment by why they left when you know it.
- 3Send touch one to a small batch first (10 or so) and read the replies before scheduling the rest.
- 4Track the one metric per touch it gives you; a 5% reply rate on a warm list is a win, not a failure.
- 5Whatever caused the lapses, fix it before touch two goes out, or the campaign re-advertises the problem.
Example
A grooming salon lists 52 lapsed clients: 30 drifted after a price increase, 22 went quiet after a two-month closure. Two sequences come back. The price segment gets a direct line ("we raised prices last spring; here's what changed and what it pays for") with a first-visit-back rate, and the closure segment gets a "we're back, here's the new booking link" with no discount at all. Touch one goes to 10 people from each list; four book within a week, and one reply names a scheduling problem the owner didn't know about, which gets fixed before the remaining 32 hear anything.
Pro tip
The replies are worth more than the bookings. Every answer to touch one is a free exit interview, and the pattern across five replies usually names the fix that stops the next wave of lapses. Log those reasons somewhere; they're the cheapest customer research you'll ever run.
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