Prompt · Re-engagement
Win-back email for a subscriber gone quiet
Get one signal back — an open, a click or an unsubscribe. All three are better than silence.
- Email type
- Re-engagement
- Business
- Ecommerce
- Tone
- Friendly
- Length
- 100-150 words
The re-engagement email prompt
Write a plain-text re-engagement email from [BRAND] to a subscriber who has not opened anything in [HOW LONG]. Write the words only — no HTML, no layout notes. The single action this email drives: [THE ASK]. Rules: - 100 to 150 words. Short sentences. - Name the gap in the first line. Do not open with "we miss you" and do not pretend this is an ordinary send. - Give one honest reason to look again: [WHAT CHANGED]. One. A list of five reasons reads as a catalogue and gets skipped. - Make leaving easy and say so in plain words. Put the unsubscribe sentence in the body where they will see it, not only in the footer. A clean list is worth more than a name that never opens. - One ask, written as an ordinary sentence with the link inside it. No buttons, no second ask. - Do not apologise. Do not offer a discount unless I gave you one to offer. - Never invent a number, statistic or figure. Where a figure belongs and I have not given it, leave [XX]. - No exclamation marks. No emoji. Sentence case throughout. Write a subject line under 40 characters that names the situation rather than baiting the open. Return subject, preheader, body, sign-off.
What to fill in first
[BRAND]- Your shop name, as a reader would say it out loud.
[HOW LONG]- The real gap. "Since March", "about six months". Vague beats wrong.
[WHAT CHANGED]- One thing that is genuinely different since they last looked. If nothing is, say that instead.
[THE ASK]- The one action. Usually "tell us what you want to hear about" or "come see what is new".
[XX]- Leave as written. The placeholder for a figure you supply, never one the model supplies.
When to send it
At the end of a defined inactivity window, as the first of at most two win-backs, before the address gets suppressed. Sending this to a list you have never cleaned is how a shared IP earns a reputation problem: the re-engagement email is the last thing you send to a cold segment, not the first thing you send to everyone.
What to change first
[HOW LONG] and [WHAT CHANGED]. The gap has to be real and named — a subscriber who last heard
from you in March knows it, and softening it into “it has been a while” spends the one bit of candour
this email has. The change has to be singular. Most win-back emails fail by offering five reasons,
which reads as a catalogue and converts like one.
What good output looks like
Subject: You have not opened us since March
Preheader: No hard feelings either way — here is where things stand.
You have not opened anything from [BRAND] since March, so this is the honest version.
One thing changed that might matter: we finally stopped sending the weekly and went to one note a month. That was the complaint, and it was fair.
If a monthly note sounds right, do nothing and you will get the next one.
If it does not, unsubscribe here and we will stop. That is a perfectly good answer.
The prompt writes the words. Bring them here and the studio builds the campaign — branded, dark-mode safe, and ready to import.
Generate your ownIn the studio
A model writes copy. It does not write email.
Production HTML that survives Outlook, dark mode and a Gmail clip is a different job from writing the words. Describe the send once and export it to Mailchimp, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign or MailerLite.