Winning new clients is fun and rewarding; however, it can also be a challenging, time-consuming, and unpredictable process. Fortunately, new clients aren't the only audience that drive revenue for your web design business. By re-engaging past clients, you can create multiple revenue streams while dedicating less time and resources to sourcing new leads. In this article, we’ll offer tips on how to communicate with past clients and best practices for working with this important client base.

What we’ll cover

Benefits of re-engaging past clients
Ways to identify clients with revenue-producing potential
Effective communication techniques
Example re-engagement emails
Opportunities to leverage Squarespace's service add-ons

Why should I re-engage past clients?

1. Build client retention and loyalty

Being proactive about client re-engagement is a great way to build on the momentum you've created by fostering an ongoing relationship. You put a lot of effort into building strong rapport and trust with your clients, so leverage your relationship with a client and continue building their business while generating more revenue for yours (a win-win).

Clients remember when you do a good job. If they had a pleasant experience, then you've already started building foundational trust, which will make reconnection attempts more welcome.

2. Achieve long-term business goals

Re-engaging with clients benefits your business as much as it does theirs. From a dollars and cents perspective, research shows that:

Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.
Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25 to 95%.
The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while selling to a new customer is 5-20%. (Source)

By building a re-engagement strategy into your client journey, you’ll create a reliable workflow to continue producing revenue well after your initial project has ended.

3. Gain a consistent revenue stream

While finding new clients is vital to growing your business, it certainly isn't the only revenue stream you can rely on. Clients that have gone silent or inactive make up an often overlooked audience segment with revenue-producing potential. Refining your business strategy to re-engage past clients provides more value from your marketing budget. It also saves you from continuously pursuing new leads that may not be a good fit for your business.

How to re-establish contact with past clients (with examples)

When you gain new clients, create a plan to periodically connect with them down the line. Keep detailed notes on your clients and identify future opportunities to contact them based on their individual business goals and challenges.

To make your re-engagement efforts more successful and time-saving, maintain a clean, up-to-date client database. Once you've mined your (organized!) client database and identified opportunities to reconnect with past clients, the art is in the approach.

Best practices for re-establishing contact with past clients

Identify the right customers. Make sure the customer’s needs are still relevant to your business. Just because someone worked with you in the past doesn't mean they're worth pursuing again.
See if the customer is a good candidate for re-engagement. Look at your client’s activity and interaction with your messaging. For example, if they have opened your recent emails, they may be a better target than an account that has gone entirely unresponsive. Also look at how they've interacted with your business — did they buy multiple services or a larger package from you? These clients may be more receptive to doing more business in the future.
Look at the last time you interacted with the client. The way you re-engage with churned customers will look different than a client whose previous interaction was more recent. Investigate if there was a reason for a drop-off in communication. Was there a missed email or any miscommunication? If there is a reason, a re-engagement email offers an excellent opportunity to amend and go above and beyond.

Best practices for drafting re-engagement emails:

Personalization goes a long way. Use your client’s name, company's name, and other details about their business.
Show that you did your research on their business by congratulating them on any recent wins or commenting on any new products.
Offer a suggestion for an opportunity that they can benefit from. Share customized recommendations on how you can help them grow or save time.

A good re-engagement email shows you put time and effort into the reconnection attempt and aren't blasting out generic communication. The time spent here will yield greater response rates and return of investment for you.

Examples of re-engagement emails and why they're successful:

Subject: Congrats on your product launch!

Hi Leo,

It's been a while since we spoke, and I wanted to check on you and your business! The last time we met, you were gearing up to launch your new fall collection. I took a peek at it, and the line is gorgeous.

To help you manage your growing customer base, I wanted to share some exciting new tools that incorporate seamlessly into your Squarespace site. Let's book a call and touch base on your business goals and how we can get you there.

Looking forward to reconnecting!

Why this works:

The email is personalized with the customer's information, showing that you researched their company.
You're letting them know you want to recommend the right product to support their goals rather than prematurely pitching them a specific product they might not need.

Subject: Take 15% off our VIP client services because we miss you

Hi there, Elisa!

We haven't seen you in a while and wanted to check in on you and Company X.

I have some new services that can help you save time while growing your business.

Feel free to book a time on my calendar to chat.

Happy to reconnect!

Why this works:

You're giving the client an incentive to come back to you, and the subject immediately indicates what's in it for them.
This is a good email to re-engage churned customers by grabbing their attention and making them feel valued and exclusive.
The email uses a no-pressure approach to let the client come to you at their convenience.

We have worked with every type of business, building platforms for solo entrepreneurs through to multi-million dollar corporations. If you want to discuss a potential project, you can email on services@ahdconsultingsolution.com or get in touch with us here. Alternatively, you can book in a free 15-minute consultation call here.