Current clients and new prospects keep a sales team so busy, it’s difficult to carve out time to reach out to former customers and learn what went wrong. It’s an unfortunate reality that win-back campaigns repeatedly fall to the bottom of the to-do list.
But your company’s reputation matters. Even if you can’t win every former client back, you can learn from their feedback how to improve for your current and future customers. And chances are, some of them will come back with a little personal attention and encouragement.
Win-back campaigns are a great opportunity to reap the many benefits of an artificial intelligence program. With just a little upfront investment, AI can complete this oft-forgotten task for you.
1. Organize and sort former clients into target groups
Before you involve an AI program, decide what data you wish to put into it. Not all lost customers are the same, and they may benefit from being approached in different ways.
Consider sorting into groups by date of loss, either by month, year, or a span of several years. Then, you can let the AI program know to start with the most recent losses and work backward from there, adjusting the messaging along the way.
Alternatively, you could sort lost clients into demographic groups. This would allow the AI program to cater to generation-specific language preferences or to tweak its approach for customers in roles such as parent or teacher.
2. Let AI start with email campaigns
Once you’ve sorted your lost clients into target groups, the AI program you’ve selected can begin to reach out to them.
A good place to start is often with an email query. However, it is crucial that you remain within the bounds of federal and trade regulations governing marketing messages. The TCPA, CAN-SPAM, and the CTIA are all involved in protecting consumer rights when it comes to marketing.
Rather than stress about each of these laws yourself, make sure that the AI program you select is fully compliant with industry standards right out of the box.
3. Move on to AI SMS campaigns
While email is a good first strategy, customers are more likely to open and interact with an SMS text message. In fact, 80.5% of consumers reportedly read a text message within five minutes of receiving it, and 53% desire two-way messaging with companies.
This trend of two-way messaging is why selecting an AI program with human-guided software is crucial to long-term success. Consumers can easily detect which messages are pre-formatted and get frustrated when an automatic response doesn’t answer the question they asked. The best AI programs have 24/7 human customer service teams overseeing all messages with customers to avoid these problems.
The warning about marketing regulations applies again here. An AI program that is fully compliant with all regulations is worth any extra cost you might incur upfront to avoid devastating legal fines and a ruined reputation down the road.
4. Finish with live calls for those who show interest
Finally, once the AI program has interacted with your lost customer base, they can create a list of clients who would like follow-up by phone. Depending on the program, a human-guided AI team may have the capacity to call your clients for you and report back their findings.
Alternatively, your own sales team can reach out to the list of customers that has been narrowed down by AI. Some programs can even separate past clients into multiple groups, such as those who wish only to provide feedback on why they left and those who are interested in returning.
Either way, your innovative use of AI just turned an insurmountable task into an opportunity for client growth and company improvement. One AI program up to the job of a win-back campaign is Pipes.ai.
Tweaked and improved since its launch in 2018, Pipes.ai is a great solution to many common issues experienced by sales teams today: lead management and generation, billing reminders, after-hours leads, and SMS marketing. Human-guided and compliant with all industry regulations, Pipes.ai can be installed alongside most APIs and CRMs in just one to two business days.
To see if Pipes.ai could be the win-back campaign solution you need, try our AI for free today.
