What is a SaaS Customer Winback Strategy? 

A SaaS customer winback strategy is a different marketing strategy designed to reach out to customers who have left or have become inactive and convert them into paying customers again. 

It is a distinct approach from other retention strategies that focus on churn prevention. Winback strategies take specific actions to help SaaS companies recover lost customers more efficiently instead of spending more on user acquisition. 

Here is the step-by-step process to follow in SaaS customer winback strategies:

1. Understand the customer’s reason for leaving through exit interviews or other forms of feedback. 
2. Send an email with a personalized approach to restore their interest in your product and convince them to stay. 
3. Offer discounts or feature up-sells to entice them to return. For instance, send an email with sweet nothings about the previous benefit they derived from your service and then explain why things have changed based on user feedback. 

Bottom line: create a compelling re-engagement strategy that addresses the main churn reasons.

In SaaS winback strategies, there are specific customer groups that should be regarded as a business priority. These include:

• high lifetime value 
• high engagement level
• high AOV 

The reason for this classification is that these user groups have shown readiness to spend revenue with your brand, engaged with your products, and have the highest chances to return to your business if offered the right incentive. 

The main reasons for customer turnover include:

• poor customer service
• lack of product value and company engagement
• unmet expectations
• Concurrentie
• prijs
• product complexity
• technical issues

In addition, payment-related issues like expired credit cards can also cause involuntary churn, so it’s essential to address all these factors to improve customer retention.

The key to creating targeted SaaS winback strategies to address churn is to understand the reason they are leaving. 

Based on the specific explanation, you can send dedicated messages and offers that refer to the churn reason. 

For example, if people leave because of high prices, offering discounts can be very effective. If people leave because of technical issues, highlighting improved performance could be a good way to win them over.

A SaaS winback strategy involves reaching out to customers who have left in an effort to bring them back. These customers have typically been classified as ‘churned,’ which simply means they are no longer active or engaged with the brand. 

SaaS loyalty rewards have a vital part to play in a SaaS winback strategy because they provide a reason for the churned customer to return. 

Here are a few ways in  which you can use loyalty rewards in SaaS winback strategies: 

• by offering bonus points to customers who have reached a spending threshold.
• to create aanbiedingen met een beperkte tijd that incentivize customers to make a purchase quickly.
• to activate loyalty program triggers whenever a customer reaches a point where they can redeem their rewards.

An exclusive discount is very useful in a SaaS winback strategy, but it should be combined with other strategies. 

Special SaaS discounts aimed at re-engaging customers can be successful, but too much reliance on them might reduce the value of the product. 

To evaluate the success of your SaaS winback strategy, you need to consider the following metrics:

• afhaakpercentage
• customer renewal rate
• Net Promoter Score (NPS). 

It is necessary to monitor active users daily or weekly (DAU/WAU) to determine whether engagement levels stabilize after the winback process.