Percent of lapsed subscribers who re-engaged via the Win-Back series. Low percent is normal (3-8%); 0% suggests a broken flow.
At a glance
The share of lapsed (dormant) subscribers who re-engaged after being sent through the win-back automation. A win-back series targets contacts who have gone quiet, no opens or clicks for a defined dormancy window, and tries to pull them back before they are suppressed. Recovery rates here are structurally low and that is expected: you are messaging people who have already stopped paying attention, so a 3-to-8 percent recovery is a genuinely good result, not a failure. The value of the card is twofold. First, even a single-digit recovery rate is highly profitable, re-activating a lapsed customer costs a few emails and recovers a customer you would otherwise have lost, which is far cheaper than acquiring a new one. Second, the card is a flow-health canary: a recovery rate of exactly zero almost never means “nobody came back”, it means the automation is broken, not firing, mis-rendering, or sending to an empty segment. A normal low rate is success; a zero is an alarm.
| What it counts | (lapsed subscribers who re-engaged ÷ lapsed subscribers sent through the win-back series) × 100. Re-engagement is typically an open, click, or purchase within the win-back window. |
| Why low is normal | The audience is by definition disengaged, you are messaging people who stopped opening. A 3-to-8 percent recovery on that audience is a strong result; comparing it to a normal campaign’s engagement rate is a category error. |
| Why it is still worth running | Re-activating a lapsed customer is among the cheapest revenue a store can earn. The win-back series costs a handful of emails and recovers customers who would otherwise churn; even a few percent recovery on a large dormant tier is meaningful revenue and retained lifetime value. |
| Why zero is an alarm, not a low score | A genuine win-back send to a real dormant segment almost always recovers someone. A flat zero strongly indicates a mechanical failure: the automation is not firing, a step mis-renders, or the dormancy segment matches no members. Treat zero as “broken”, not “ineffective”. |
| Currency | n/a, this is a percentage. The recovered revenue surfaces in top-automations-by-revenue. |
| Time window | 90D vsP (90-day rolling vs prior period). Win-back recovery accrues slowly, lapsed contacts re-engage over weeks, so a longer window is appropriate. |
| Alert trigger | < 5%. Below this the win-back is under-performing its normal band; a reading of zero specifically signals a likely broken flow. |
| Sentiment key | mc_win_back_recovery_rate |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Mailchimp data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A apparel brand on BigCommerce running Mailchimp Standard with a 3-email win-back series targeting subscribers dormant for 120+ days. Snapshot for the 90-day window ending Friday 12 Jun 26, with the prior period for comparison.| Measure | This period | Prior period |
|---|---|---|
| Lapsed subscribers entered into win-back | 8,400 | 7,900 |
| Re-engaged (open / click / purchase) | 470 | 580 |
| Recovery rate | 5.6% | 7.3% |
| Of which: purchased | 96 | 121 |
| Recovered revenue (illustrative) | £4,320 | £5,510 |
- 5.6 percent recovery is within the normal band (3-8 percent) but down from 7.3 percent prior. It is above the 5 percent alert line, but the decline of 1.7 points is worth a look, the win-back is recovering fewer of the same kind of dormant subscribers than it did last period.
- This is a real result, not a broken flow. Because the rate is well above zero and in the expected band, the automation is firing and rendering correctly. The question is optimisation (why did recovery soften?), not repair.
- Even at 5.6 percent, the economics are strong. 470 dormant subscribers re-engaged and 96 of them purchased, recovering roughly £4,320 for the cost of three emails to an audience that was otherwise lost. Re-activated customers are among the cheapest revenue in the programme, this is exactly why a “low” recovery rate is still worth chasing.
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Why might recovery have softened from 7.3 to 5.6 percent? Candidates: (a) the dormant cohort is genuinely harder this period (longer-lapsed, lower-quality contacts entering the segment); (b) the win-back offer weakened, a smaller incentive recovers fewer; (c) deliverability to dormant contacts dropped, lapsed subscribers are more likely to be filtered to spam, so check
inbox-placement-rate-deliverability; (d) the series content or subject lines need a refresh. - What to test. The highest-leverage win-back lever is usually the offer, a stronger incentive (free shipping, a meaningful discount, a comeback gift) recovers more dormant subscribers than a content tweak. Test the offer first, then the subject lines, then the dormancy-window definition (a shorter window catches subscribers earlier, when they are easier to recover).
- The non-recoverers should be suppressed. The ~7,900 dormant subscribers who did not re-engage are now confirmed dead weight, suppress them to protect deliverability and (on contact-tier plans) to stop paying for them. The win-back’s secondary job is to cleanly identify who to suppress.
- Check for zero first. A reading of zero is a broken-flow alarm, not a low score; jump straight to the automation-status check.
- If genuinely low but non-zero, check the cohort. A harder, longer-lapsed dormant segment recovers less; confirm the segment definition has not drifted.
- Check deliverability to dormant contacts. Lapsed subscribers are more likely to be filtered; a placement drop suppresses recovery.
- Test the offer. The incentive is the strongest win-back lever; a weak offer recovers few.
- Suppress the non-responders. The subscribers the win-back fails to recover are confirmed dead weight; clean them out.
| Time horizon | Action |
|---|---|
| First day | Confirm the rate is non-zero (firing) and within band; if zero, treat as a broken-flow incident and check automation status. |
| First week | If genuinely low, test a stronger win-back offer and refresh subject lines; verify deliverability to the dormant cohort. |
| First month | Measure recovery vs prior over the 90-day window; suppress the confirmed non-responders to protect deliverability. |
| Ongoing | Treat win-back as a profitable, low-rate automation, optimise the offer, accept that single-digit recovery is the success case. |
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why merchants reach for it |
|---|---|
automation-series-completion-rate | Win-back completion and recovery move together; a completion collapse drags recovery toward zero. |
automation-stopped-firing-24h | A zero recovery rate usually means the win-back stopped firing. Check the alert before concluding it is ineffective. |
top-automations-by-revenue | The recovered revenue the win-back earns. Confirms the economics even at a low recovery rate. |
avg-member-engagement-score-1-5 | The win-back targets the lowest-rated tier; engagement score sizes the dormant audience it serves. |
suppressed-cleaned-members | The win-back’s secondary job is to identify who to suppress; this card tracks the cleanup. |
inbox-placement-rate-deliverability | Lapsed contacts are more likely to be filtered; a placement drop suppresses recovery. |
net-audience-growth-30d | Win-back recovery offsets churn; recovered subscribers are net-growth the acquisition channels did not have to pay for. |
automations | The automation inventory; confirm the win-back exists and is configured before reading its recovery rate. |
Reconciling against Mailchimp
Where to look in Mailchimp’s own dashboard:- Mailchimp → Automations → Customer Journeys, open the win-back journey, and review the per-step engagement and the entry segment.
- Mailchimp → Reports → Automations for the win-back’s send, open, click, and revenue counts that feed the recovery calculation.
- Mailchimp → Audience → Segments to inspect the dormancy segment that feeds the win-back, confirming it is non-empty and defined as intended.
| Reason | Direction | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Recovery definition. Vortex IQ defines recovery as re-engagement (open, click, or purchase) within the window; Mailchimp reports each engagement type separately. | Either direction | Confirm which engagement events count as recovery for your programme; the definition drives the rate. |
| Window length. Win-back recovery accrues over weeks; the 90-day window captures more recovery than a shorter Mailchimp report view. | Vortex IQ may read higher over the longer window | Align the comparison window; lapsed contacts re-engage slowly. |
| Entry cohort scope. The rate is against subscribers entered into the win-back; Mailchimp’s report may show sends, which can differ if some members exited early. | Either direction | Compare against entrants, not raw sends, where possible. |
| MPP opens. Apple Mail auto-opens can register as re-engagement if opens count toward recovery, inflating the rate slightly. | Vortex IQ may read higher | Weight click and purchase recovery over open-only recovery for a truer read; see the client-distribution card. |
| Refresh lag. The rate recalculates each sync; Mailchimp updates as engagement registers. | Vortex IQ moves slowly | Wait for the next sync; check last_synced_at. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My win-back only recovers 5 percent. Is that bad? No, that is a good result. The win-back messages people who have already stopped engaging, so a 3-to-8 percent recovery is genuinely strong, not weak. Comparing it to a normal campaign’s engagement rate is a mistake; the audiences are completely different. A single-digit recovery on a dormant tier is highly profitable because re-activating a lapsed customer is far cheaper than acquiring a new one. Worry about a recovery rate of zero, not a low-but-positive one. My recovery rate is exactly zero. What does that mean? Almost certainly a broken flow, not an unrecoverable audience. A genuine win-back send to a real dormant segment recovers someone, so a flat zero points at a mechanical failure: the automation is not firing, a step mis-renders, or the dormancy segment matches no members. Checkautomation-stopped-firing-24h and confirm the entry segment is non-empty. Zero is an alarm, not a score.
How do I actually improve the recovery rate?
The strongest lever is the offer. Dormant subscribers need a real reason to come back, a meaningful discount, free shipping, or a comeback gift recovers more than a content tweak. Test the offer first. Then refresh the subject lines (each must earn an open from someone who has been ignoring you). Then consider shortening the dormancy window so the win-back catches subscribers earlier, when they are easier to recover. The longer someone has been dormant, the harder they are to win back.
Should I keep emailing the people the win-back failed to recover?
No, suppress them. The subscribers who did not re-engage after a genuine win-back attempt are confirmed dead weight. Continuing to mail them depresses your aggregate engagement, harms inbox placement, and (on contact-tier plans) costs you money. Identifying who to cleanly suppress is the win-back’s valuable secondary job; act on it via suppressed-cleaned-members.
Why is the window 90 days rather than 30?
Because win-back recovery is slow. A lapsed subscriber does not re-engage the day the win-back lands, they come back over weeks, often after the second or third win-back email or a later prompt. A 30-day window would understate recovery by cutting off the slow re-engagers. The 90-day window captures the genuine recovery curve for a dormant audience.
Can Vortex IQ run a better win-back for me?
No. Vortex IQ is read-only by design. It surfaces the recovery rate, distinguishes a broken-flow zero from a healthy low rate, and recommends offer and subject-line testing; building and tuning the win-back happens in Mailchimp by the merchant’s team. The Vortex Mind Customer Recovery Opportunity report can raise a merchant-side Action when recovery softens or zeroes, but the changes stay with the merchant.