What Are Bored Customers and How You Can Win Them Back

We’ve all got them: bored customers. 

You know, that group of customers on your email list that ‘just might come back’. 

Well, let’s tackle this head on. They won’t.

Unless you do something about it. 

I’m talking about those customers who have made one purchase and have never purchased again, but they do open your promotional emails. Or those who have purchased three times within three months and then don’t make a purchase in the following six months. 

You get the gist, right? The point is, after these type of segments have been identified, here’s what most brands do:

1. Send customers an email preference email, asking them to define what types of emails they want to receive.

2. If this doesn’t work, they send customers  a ‘break up’ email, telling them that they’ll no longer be getting emails.

3. Finally, they remove these customers from the email list.

While this is a good way to ensure your list remains clean and doesn’t impact deliverability, does it engage as many bored customers as it could? No, it doesn’t. 

So what about taking a new approach? After all, you’ve paid to acquire these customers either directly or indirectly, and they were interested in your products at some point.

My suggestion here is to use a quiz, and especially Octane AI if you’re also using Klaviyo.

I'll walk you through steps you need to follow and examples that will inspire you as you plan to identify bored, unengaged customers and win them back.

Step 1: Why Do Customers Get Bored? 

Before we start creating a quiz, we need to understand why customers are ‘bored’, or rather, why do they stop buying from you. Here are some simple ways to identify why customers get bored:

• Subscription Cancellations - If you’re a subscription brand using Recharge, it’s likely you’ll be using a cancellation questionnaire to attempt to understand the reason why customers cancelled their subscription.

• NPS Scores - At Blend, we often implement Net Promoter Score (NPS), post-purchase quizzes for clients to understand how different groups of customers view the onsite experience. This can also give great insights into what is turning customers off.

• Feedback from Customer Service Teams - If you’re using a tool like Gorgias, you’ll know the common issues that customers have, and also the reasons why they choose not to shop from you. If not, it’s likely that you’ve had comments on social posts and emails from customers who are indicating why they’re no longer happy with what you provide.

• Commonly Viewed FAQ pages - If you take a look at your FAQ pages, you’ll see a larger number of clicks on particular FAQ’s rather than others. This should give you insight into some of the common concerns and questions that customers who are thinking of leaving you have.

Step 2: Who Are Your Bored Customers?

Here’s where you’ll need to dive into your data, and if you're using Klaviyo, you can already see in-built segments to find these bored customers.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to use the Churn Risk segment. It allows you to identify customers who are likely to stop purchasing from you, and traditionally, the ones you would send into a winback flow.

You can use the image below as a reference to set this up:

Step 3: Create Your Octane AI Quiz

Now that you have an idea of why customers typically get bored, and which of your customers are unengaged, it’s time to create your quiz.

Let’s look at three examples of how this might work.

Example 1: Skin Care Brand 

What’s happening?

We see from the cancellation reason for subscriptions that over 70% of customers state that they’re not seeing the results they expected from the product. Additionally, complaints from single purchase customers on delivery cost are high.

What do we do with Octane AI?

For those ‘bored’ or ‘at risk customers’, we can create an Octane AI quiz that helps us ensure that the customer gets a tailored recommendation of which product they should use for the best results, and also clarify that the product is being used in the correct way. We can also recommend subscribe and save to those single product purchasers to help them save on delivery.

Ok, but what about specific questions?

• How would you best describe your skin right now?

• How would you like your skin to feel?

• How many times a day/week do you apply your X cream?

• How would you describe your diet?

And what would the output be?

Depending on the answers provided, the ‘results’ page of the Octane quiz could then read ‘It looks like you should be using X product, twice a week. Here’s 10% off your next order’.

Regardless of whether the bored customer buys or not at this stage, if you’re using Klaviyo, you’ll be able to capture their answers as custom profile properties, and use this to send tailored messages to that customer.

Example 2: Fashion Brand

What’s happening?

We see from our purchase data that 55% of customers purchase two pairs of jeans within the first six months of becoming a customer, and then don’t buy again for the following six months. Additionally, we also see that the NPS score comments show a large volume of customers commenting that they couldn’t find sweaters that matched with the jeans on the site.

What do we do with Octane AI?

Using Octane AI, we can get a better understanding of the style preferences of each customer to direct them to items they’re more likely to buy. This can be done through a ‘freestyle consultation’ using Octane AI to better understand their tastes.

Ok, but what about specific questions?

• Which of the pictures below best describes your personal style?

• Where do you tend to wear jeans?

• Which of these color palettes best suits you?

• How would you describe your skin tone?

And what would the output be?

Using the results of the quiz, a curated outfit (as a bundle) or a number of items could then be shown to the customer. Should the customer not buy at this stage, the preferences of the customer can be stored as custom profile properties in Klaviyo and then used to send specific campaigns based on the products, colors, looks and interests to bring them back into being a more regular customer.

Example 3: Food Subscription Brand 

What’s happening?

We see from our subscription data that over 70% of customers churn after 2 months of starting their subscription. Following calls to clients, customer service agents learned that many customers were unsure of how to keep using the products in meals and simply were wasting their products. 

What do we do with Octane AI?

Using Octane AI, we can provide proactive recommendations of how customers can use the products in a variety of meals (in the form of recipes), as well as gather more information about the customer to make better recommendations via email and SMS.

Ok, but what about specific questions?

• Which of the following best describes your diet?

• What are your favorite flavors?

• How much time do you spend each day preparing dinner?

• Which of our products have you tasted?

And what would the output be?

Using the results of the quiz, the customer is provided with a link to a recipe card and the products contained in those recipes. This can then be emailed to customers too, which should also encourage a purchase. As with the other examples, the data collected during the Octane AI quiz can then be used to tailor the email and SMS marketing campaigns to those customers.

The Final Step: Just do it

You are now ready to go from boring to luring! By identifying why customers are bored, you’ll not only be in a better position to winback your bored customers, but also prevent the boredom from happening. Just follow these steps. 

So, what are you waiting for?