Let’s be honest: most “customer reengagement” campaigns aren’t worth the pixels they’re printed on. You know it, your customers know it. But if you do it right—targeting the right people, with the right message, at the right time—automation can actually win back real business. This guide is for anyone who’s tired of blasting tired emails into the void and wants a practical, grounded walkthrough for using Champify to automate reengagement without the usual mess.
Why Bother With Automated Reengagement?
If you’re reading this, you’ve got a pile of old customers or users who’ve gone MIA. Ignoring them means leaving money on the table, but manual follow-ups are a time sink. Automating this process means you can keep your pipeline warm without annoying your team or spamming your contacts.
But here’s the hard truth: automation only works if you set it up thoughtfully. If you just dump everyone into the same “Hey, come back!” email, you’ll burn trust fast. The goal here is to set up something that’s targeted, non-annoying, and actually useful.
Step 1: Get Your Data House in Order
Before you touch any automation settings, make sure you’re not working with garbage data. Champify pulls from your CRM, so if your records are a mess, so will be your campaigns.
Checklist: - Update contact statuses: Make sure you know who’s actually inactive, who left their company, and who’s just gone quiet. - Segment by value: Not all churned customers are equal. Focus on high-value or strategic accounts first. - Dedupe and clean: Remove bounces, unsubscribes, and obvious junk.
Pro tip: Don’t try to reengage people who opted out or marked you as spam. It’s a fast way to get blacklisted.
Step 2: Define What “Reengagement” Actually Means
What are you trying to get people to do? “Reengagement” is vague. Be specific. Are you looking for: - A demo booking? - A renewal or upsell? - Feedback on why they left? - Just a sign of life?
Pick one or two clear goals. Your automation will be way more effective if you know exactly what action you want.
Step 3: Set Up Targeted Segments in Champify
Here’s where Champify starts to shine. Instead of one-size-fits-all, use its segmentation tools to create focused lists.
Ways to segment: - By activity: Last login, last purchase, last response—however you define “inactive.” - By persona: Are they an end user or a decision-maker? Tailor your outreach accordingly. - By deal history: Former champions, lost opportunities, churned customers, etc. - By trigger event: For example, someone who changed jobs or moved companies (Champify is good at picking this up).
What matters: Don’t over-segment to the point of analysis paralysis. A handful of clear, actionable segments is enough.
Step 4: Build Your Automated Campaign in Champify
Now for the meat and potatoes: the actual automation. Champify lets you set up workflows that trigger when someone matches your segment criteria.
How to set up a campaign: 1. Choose your trigger: E.g., “Customer inactive for 90 days” or “Contact left previous company.” 2. Pick your channel: Email is the default, but you can also push to Slack, CRM tasks, or even LinkedIn (if you want to get fancy). 3. Draft your message: Keep it short, relevant, and human. No “We miss you!” nonsense. 4. Decide on follow-up: One nudge is usually enough. Anything more and you’re on the fast track to the spam folder. 5. Set timing and throttling: Don’t blast everyone at once. Space out sends to avoid deliverability issues.
Sample workflow:
- Contact is inactive for 90 days →
- Automated email sent with a personalized subject →
- If no reply in 7 days, create a CRM follow-up task for the account owner
What to ignore:
Don’t bother with “drip” campaigns for reengagement. If they didn’t respond to one email, three more won’t save you. Focus on quality over quantity.
Step 5: Personalize, But Don’t Overthink It
Personalization is the difference between an email that gets ignored and one that gets a reply. But you don’t need to write a novel.
Do: - Use their name, company, and any relevant history (Champify can pull these from your CRM fields) - Reference something specific—“I noticed you changed roles,” or “You were a power user last year”
Don’t: - Use fake personalization (“I see you’re a valued customer at [Company]!”) - Overdo dynamic fields—robots writing to robots is obvious
Reality check: Most people can spot automated emails a mile away. That’s fine, as long as it’s clear you put some real thought into the outreach.
Step 6: Test Before You Blast
Don’t trust any tool—Champify included—to get it right the first time. Run a small batch to yourself and your team.
Checklist: - Are names, companies, and links populating correctly? - Is the timing what you expected? - Are there any cringe typos or weird formatting?
Catch mistakes early. There’s nothing more embarrassing than “Hi {FirstName}!”
Step 7: Measure What Matters
Open and click rates are nice to know, but they don’t pay the bills. Track actual replies, booked meetings, or whatever action you defined in Step 2.
What to watch: - Response rate: Actual replies, not just opens - Conversion: Did they do the thing you wanted? - Spam complaints: High complaints mean your copy or targeting is off
Pro tip: If you’re not getting any bites, don’t double down. Adjust your message, audience, or timing. There’s no shame in tweaking until it works.
Step 8: Keep It Simple & Iterate
The biggest mistake is overengineering. You don’t need branching logic, 20 steps, or a different email for every persona. Start with a basic, targeted workflow. Watch what happens. Improve as you go.
If you’re not seeing results after a couple of tweaks, step back and ask: are you targeting the right people? Is your message actually useful to them? Sometimes the answer is to kill the campaign and try something new.
What Works, What Doesn’t, and What’s Hype
What Works
- Targeted, simple campaigns
- Honest, relevant messages
- One or two thoughtful nudges, max
What Doesn’t
- Generic mass emails
- Endless follow-up sequences
- Overly clever personalization tokens
What’s Mostly Hype
- AI-generated messaging (still pretty rough around the edges)
- “Drip” reengagement sequences
- Multi-channel “orchestration” unless you’ve nailed the basics
Wrapping Up
You can automate reengagement campaigns in Champify and actually get results—but only if you keep things focused and honest. Start small, use real data, and don’t get sucked into the fancy features until you’ve nailed the basics. Iterate, improve, and remember: one good, timely message beats a dozen automated nags any day.
Now go turn a few cold leads warm again. And if it doesn’t work at first? Change it up, keep it simple, and try again.