The Win-Back Email to Send Before You Offer a Discount Klaviyo Steps + Templates

Matt Bertulli, the CEO of Pela and Lomi, wrote about this in the Operators newsletter. He calls the standard win-back email "pretty lazy", and lists reasons a customer of his sleep supplement brand might leave: they hated the flavor, they had too much product, their favorite was out of stock, the dosage was off. A discount doesn't touch any of those.

He also says it's something they've "only started to play with". He's doing it for canceled subscriptions, and using it for one-off buyers who've gone quiet is my extension of his idea.

It's also the opposite of what most bigger brands say they'd do. In DTC Newsletter's Beyond the Discount survey of brands doing $1M+ a year, only 6.1% said they don't discount to returning or lapsed customers, and 34.1% said they'd go to 21 to 30% off to win one back.

Send it to people who've bought before and are now a little overdue. Klaviyo's own advice is to wait a little longer than your average buying cycle, so start from how long your product lasts.

In Klaviyo, go to Lists & Segments > Create segment and build it with two conditions:

• What someone has done (or not done) > Placed Order > at least once > over all time
• AND What someone has done (or not done) > Placed Order > zero times > in the last 90 days (swap in your window)

Then build a flow that starts when someone is added to that segment, and add the profile filter Placed Order zero times since starting this flow so anyone who buys drops out.

It's short and there's no offer in it. Every template in this guide is written plain on purpose, so please put your own brand voice spin on it before you send. If your brand is cheeky, make it cheeky!

Those three buttons are examples. Yours should come from what customers have already told you, so spend 20 minutes with:

• Your reviews, especially the 1 to 3 star ones
• Your returns notes, wherever customers give a reason for sending something back
• Customer emails and DMs from the last six months (search "cancel", "refund", "too much", "expensive", "didn't")

Tally what comes up, then keep the three most common reasons that would each need a DIFFERENT follow-up. If two reasons would get the same email from you, merge them. Write the buttons in the words your customers used, and stop at three.

1. Make a thank-you page first. In Shopify, go to Online Store > Pages > Add page. Something like: "Thank you! That's SO helpful. We read every answer." No code on this page, or everyone who clicks anything gets the discount.

2. Add three buttons to the email. In Klaviyo's email editor, drag in a Button block for each answer. In each button's URL field, paste the matching line below, with your own thank-you page link in place of mine:

{% update_property_link 'winback_reason' 'still_have' 'https://yourstore.com/pages/thank-you' %}

{% update_property_link 'winback_reason' 'not_right' 'https://yourstore.com/pages/thank-you' %}

{% update_property_link 'winback_reason' 'price' 'https://yourstore.com/pages/thank-you' %}

When someone clicks, Klaviyo saves their answer on their profile under winback_reason and sends them to your thank-you page. A few rules from Klaviyo's help page, because this is where it breaks:

• Use straight quotes ('), never curly ones. If you paste from a doc that curls them, retype the quotes in Klaviyo.
• The link has to be a full, standard URL starting with https://
• Keep the property name and values plain: letters, numbers and underscores, no emoji or accents.
• Don't add UTM tracking to these links. Klaviyo doesn't support it on them.
• It works in email only, not SMS.
• A new click overwrites the old answer.

3. Test it with a real send. Klaviyo's preview sends you to a placeholder page and saves nothing, so it will look broken when it isn't. Save the email as a template, send it to yourself as an actual email, click a button, then find your own profile and look under Custom properties for winback_reason.

4. Add the split. After the email, add a time delay (example: 3 days), then drag in a split. Set the condition to Properties about someone > winback_reason > equals > still_have. Add a path for not_right and one for price. Whoever didn't click lands in Everyone else.

Same as before: give these your own brand voice before they go out.

If they've still got plenty: a reminder later, with no offer

Wait until they'd be running low (example: half your product's life again), then send:

If it wasn't quite right: help them choose, or offer a swap

Send straight after the split:

If it's the price: ONE offer, with an end date

Only this group gets it, and it arrives after the question, never in place of it. Run the margin check first (made-up numbers, use your own):

Pick the offer that brings them back and still leaves you a profit you're happy with. I'd look at free shipping, a gift or a bundle before a percentage. 💸

Give the code an end date and a limit of one use per customer in Shopify before this goes live.

Plenty of people won't click. They carry on down the Everyone else path into whatever win-back emails you already have: your bestsellers, what's new, your reviews. If there's an offer in that sequence, keep it for the LAST email. I wouldn't re-ask the question more than once.

So there's no need to rebuild your whole win-back flow (I wouldn't in the weeks before Black Friday anyway). Swap the first email, add the split, and leave the rest alone until you've seen a month of answers.

Once a month, go to Lists & Segments, create a segment for each answer (Properties about someone > winback_reason > equals > still_have) and write down the counts.

In that example, more than half the people who answered still have product. That says the email went out too early (or the pack is bigger than people get through), so the fix is timing. A discount would have been wasted on them.

Treat the numbers as a guide. Some email security tools click links automatically, so the odd answer won't be a real person.