Recipe: Identify and Baseline Your Lapsed Bookers for Targeted Re-Engagement

# Marketing

# Emails

Makes: An automated system to dynamically identify your lapsed bookers, alongside a static baseline to measure the future success of your re-engagement campaigns

Lapsed bookers represent a massive opportunity for your organisation. According to the Tomorrow’s Audience report , over 50% of regular mailing lists may contain customers who have not booked or opened an email in two years. Before embarking on re-engaging these past attendees, you first need to know exactly who they are and establish a baseline to measure your success. This recipe provides the tools to automatically identify your lapsed bookers and benchmark your current data for future analysis.

What you need

Access to the Admin and Insights & Mailings interfaces.

A clear understanding of your organisation’s definition of a lapsed booker. For example, if a customer has not purchased a ticket in the last two years.

A synced address book and tag group (if you plan to target lapsed bookers via Dotdigital email campaigns).

Time Required

Prep time: 15 mins

Cooking time: 30 mins

What will this help me achieve?

Save time and resources through automatic identification of lapsed customers.

Measure success by getting a clear picture of your lapsed audiences at a fixed point in time, allowing for future behavioural analysis.

Prepare your data for a fully automated Dotdigital re-engagement program.

Concepts we’ll be using

Tags : automatically identify all lapsed customers and benchmark your current lapsed bookers for future analysis.

Segmentation : refine your customer lists using specified metrics.

Dotdigital Sync Tag Group : link your Spektrix data with Dotdigital for effective segmentation and automation.

Prep

Define your criteria: Decide what a "lapsed" customer looks like for your organisation. Establish the specific timeframes and booking behaviours you will use to identify them. For example, customers with no bookings in 24 months, no future bookings, no donations in 24 months, or have never opened a mailing, etc.

Activate

Step 1: Identify lapsed bookers using an auto tag

Using an auto tag ensures your list of lapsed bookers is always dynamically updated as customers meet and fall outside of your criteria.

Create an autotag to identify lapsed bookers.

Set your criteria to identify who you consider to be a lapsed booker. For example, customers who have not booked in the past 2 years and have not booked in future.

Step 2: Benchmark Your Current Data

Taking a baseline captures a "snapshot" of your lapsed bookers today. As your auto tag updates over time, this static benchmark allows you to look back and see exactly how many of these specific customers you successfully encouraged to return.

Create a normal tag for lapsed bookers and date it. This should not be created in the Dotdigital tag group.

Create a new customer list to identify your current lapsed bookers using your auto tag.

Use the customer list to apply your normal tag to customers with the lapsed booker auto tag. This gives you a clear picture of your lapsed audiences at a fixed point in time, allowing future behavioural analysis.

TIP: give your autotag at least a day to apply to your customer records before applying your normal tag through your customer list.

Select update count to identify how many lapsed bookers you have in your database. This is your baseline figure.

Track your progress against your baseline figure by repeating point 6 on a monthly/quarterly basis and recording this data.

Try this twist Look at the segmentation used in your auto tag to get even more specific about your organisation's lapsed bookers. For example, you might want to consider excluding active donors or members so that high-value customers or regular donors who simply haven't bought a ticket recently aren't flagged as lapsed. Alternatively, you could set up multiple auto tags which represent different levels of lapsed bookers. For example, lapsed bookers with 5+ visits in the past.

If you plan to use Dotdigital for a re-engagement program, create an auto tag in your Dotdigital synced tag group. This must be fewer than 16 characters long.

More to explore:

Now that you have identified and established a baseline for your lapsed bookers, you are ready to build the email automation that will encourage their return.

Lapsed Booker Re-Engagement Program - Follow our support centre article or join our activation workshop to configure your Dotdigital program conditions and build out your email flow.

Customer Segment Stats Report - Run your baselined lapsed booker customer list through this report to measure the revenue impact of your re-engagement program over time.

Optimise your Meta Ads - Extend your re-engagement beyond email by targeting your lapsed booker audience through paid social campaigns.

Remove unengaged customers from your emails - Keep your mailing lists healthy by identifying and removing contacts who consistently don't engage with your campaigns.