How I Made $10K From Customers Who Already Quit — A CRM Win-Back Tutorial | ZaynaZone

💰 CRM Monetization & Customer Win-Back

My Client’s CRM Had 8,700 Dead Contacts —
Here’s How I Turned Them into $10K in 90 Days

A first-hand, step-by-step tutorial on auditing dormant CRM databases, building a lost customer win-back campaign, and monetizing the data most businesses completely ignore.

Em Uzoma Web Tech; Business tech

📅 August 2026

⏱ 18 min read

🎯 Beginner–Intermediate

The Customer Lifecycle Your CRM Is Tracking Right Now

Active (0–30d)

Cooling (31–60d)

Dormant (61–180d)

Churned (180d+)

Recovered 🎯

The first time my client Adaeze called me, she wasn’t asking about ads or SEO. She was quietly panicking. Her food subscription brand, NourishBox, had a CRM database of 14,000 contacts — built over four years of hard work, aggressive lead generation, and a lot of money spent on Facebook ads. But her monthly revenue had been flatlining for seven months straight.

I asked her to pull up her CRM and filter by last purchase date. What came back made both of us go quiet for a moment: 8,700 contacts hadn’t made a single purchase in 90 days or more. Some of them hadn’t been touched in over a year. These weren’t cold leads. These were real people who had trusted her brand enough to buy at least once — and she had essentially left them sitting in a list, collecting digital dust.

That’s the dirty secret of CRM database management most business owners don’t talk about: the goldmine isn’t always in acquiring new customers. Sometimes it’s in the ones who already know you, already bought from you, and just quietly drifted away because nobody reached out at the right moment, with the right message.

“The most expensive thing in her business wasn’t ads. It was 8,700 people she already owned the attention of — sitting in a database, completely ignored.”

Over the next 90 days, we audited her database, built a segmented win-back campaign, automated the entire flow, and recovered 1,240 customers. The total revenue from that recovery? $10,160. Not from new ads. Not from new leads. From people who were already there.

This is that exact tutorial — every step, every tool, every email subject line, and every automation trigger we used. Let’s go.

14K Total CRM Contacts

8,700 Dormant / Inactive

1,240 Customers Recovered

$10K Revenue in 90 Days

1 Step One

Audit Your CRM Database — Find the Hidden Dead Zones

Before you can run a single win-back email, you need to know exactly what you’re working with. Most CRM tools are set up to highlight new leads and active customers — the dead zones are almost invisible unless you know where to look. This step is about pulling back the curtain.

I opened NourishBox’s HubSpot CRM and immediately went to their contact database. Here’s the filter sequence I used to get a clear picture of their database health:

Filter by Last Activity Date → more than 90 days ago
Filter by Lifecycle Stage → Customer (not lead, not prospect)
Filter by Total Revenue → greater than $0 (to confirm they actually purchased)
Sort by Last Purchase Date → oldest first

HubSpot CRM — Contacts → Filter View → Database Audit

14,024

Total Contacts

↑ All time

5,312

Active (30d)

↑ 8.2% this month

8,712

Inactive (90d+)

↓ No engagement

62%

Database Decay Rate

⚠ Critical

Contact Name	Last Purchase	LTV	Status	Days Silent
Rachel A.	Mar 14, 2025	$247	Dormant	157 days
Mike O.	Jan 02, 2025	$88	Churned	228 days
Priya L.	Jun 01, 2025	$510	Cooling	78 days
James K.	May 19, 2025	$390	Dormant	90 days
Nadia B.	Apr 07, 2026	$125	Active	3 days

The number that jumped out wasn’t just 8,700 contacts. It was the lifetime value sitting in those dormant rows. I totaled the LTV of all inactive customers and it came to over $1.2 million in historical spend. These weren’t people who had never bought from NourishBox. They had bought — and then silently left.

How to Run This Audit in Other CRM Tools

If you’re not using HubSpot, here’s how you replicate this audit in the other major platforms:

HubSpot CRM Free + Paid

Go to Contacts → Add Filter → “Last Activity Date” → “is more than” → 90 days ago. Save as a custom list view called “Dormant Database.”

Visit HubSpot

Klaviyo Free + Paid

Go to Lists & Segments → Create Segment → “Last Order Date” → “at least 90 days ago” AND “Has placed order at least once.” This gives you only real ex-buyers.

Visit Klaviyo

ActiveCampaign Paid

Use Contacts → Segment by Tag or Custom Field. Set “Last Purchased” custom field to more than 90 days. Export this list to tag for your win-back sequence.

Visit ActiveCampaign

Brevo (Sendinblue) Free + Paid

Go to Contacts → Segments → Advanced Segmentation. Filter by “Last email click” + “Last order date.” Brevo’s free plan allows this level of segmentation.

Visit Brevo

💡

Pro Tip: Log Your Audit in a Spreadsheet First

Before touching any automation, export your dormant segment to a spreadsheet and record the total count, average LTV, and time since last purchase. This becomes your baseline — you’ll compare against it to measure your win-back ROI at the end. I used Airtable to track everything in a shared base with Adaeze.

Step Two

2 Step Two

Segment by Inactivity Depth — Not All “Lost” Customers Are Equal

This is the step most businesses completely skip — and it’s the reason their win-back campaigns fail. Sending one generic “We miss you!” email to someone who bought 62 days ago and someone who bought 14 months ago is a mistake. Their psychology, their resistance to re-engagement, and the incentive they need to come back are completely different.

I built four distinct segments for NourishBox, each requiring a different message, different urgency level, and different offer:

🟢 Segment A — “Just Drifting” (61–90 days)

Still remember the brand. A warm check-in email with a soft nudge (no heavy discount needed). These are your easiest wins. Response rates are typically 18–25%.

Strategy: Re-engagement + Value reminder

🔥 Highest Priority

🔵 Segment B — “Cooling Off” (91–180 days)

Starting to forget. Need a genuine reason to come back. A modest incentive (10–15% discount or a freebie) combined with social proof works well here.

Strategy: Offer + Proof

⚡ High Priority

🟣 Segment C — “Gone Quiet” (181–365 days)

Need a bigger hook. Something has changed in their life — budget, habits, or interest. This segment responds to “we’ve changed” messaging with a strong offer (20%+ or free product).

Strategy: Bold offer + New angle

🎯 Medium Priority

🔴 Segment D — “Long Gone” (365 days+)

Very hard to convert but worth one last attempt. Send a genuine “last chance” email and if no response, sunset gracefully. Don’t burn your sender reputation.

Strategy: Last chance + Sunset

💤 Low Priority

For NourishBox, the breakdown was: Segment A — 1,840 contacts, Segment B — 2,910 contacts, Segment C — 2,450 contacts, Segment D — 1,500 contacts. We focused 70% of our energy on Segments A and B because that’s where the recovery probability was highest.

Adding a Lifetime Value Layer

Inside each segment, I added one more filter: historical LTV. Within each inactivity tier, I split contacts into High-Value (LTV > $200) and Standard-Value. High-Value customers in even Segment C got a personal-feeling email from “Adaeze herself,” while Standard-Value contacts got a more automated-feeling sequence. This one nuance doubled our Segment C recovery rate.

⚠️

Don’t Skip This Step to Save Time

I’ve watched businesses blast their entire dormant list with one email. The result is usually a spike in unsubscribes, spam complaints, and a damaged sender reputation that takes months to repair. Segment first. Always.

Step Three

3 Step Three

Choose Your Win-Back Tools — The Stack That Actually Works

You don’t need an enterprise MarTech budget to run a professional win-back campaign. For NourishBox, our total tool cost was under $200/month — and we started with the free tiers to validate the campaign before scaling. Here’s the exact stack I used and why each piece matters:

Klaviyo Free + Paid

The engine of the entire campaign. Klaviyo’s behavioral segmentation, predictive churn scoring, and pre-built “Win-Back” flow template saved us at least two weeks of setup time. If you sell physical products, this is the tool.

Visit Klaviyo

HubSpot CRM Free + Paid

For contact management and initial segmentation. The free tier is genuinely useful for databases up to ~10,000 contacts. We used it to build our four segment lists and track recovery over time.

Visit HubSpot

Make.com Free + Paid

We used Make (formerly Integromat) to connect HubSpot, Klaviyo, and Google Sheets in real-time. When a contact’s “Last Purchase Date” crossed a threshold in HubSpot, Make automatically added them to the correct Klaviyo segment. Magic.

Visit Make.com

Google Analytics 4 Free

We tracked every CTA click from the win-back emails to conversion in GA4 using UTM parameters. This gave us exact revenue attribution per email, per segment, per day.

Visit GA4

Kit (ConvertKit) Free + Paid

If your business is content-based (courses, newsletters, coaching), Kit is the better choice over Klaviyo. Its visual automation builder is intuitive and its tagging system is excellent for segmentation.

Visit Kit

Brevo Free + Paid

The best budget-friendly option. Brevo’s free plan allows up to 300 emails/day and includes automation. For a small business with under 5,000 contacts, Brevo is where I’d start before investing in Klaviyo.

Visit Brevo

The Tool Decision Matrix

To help you pick the right email tool without overthinking it, here’s how I’d frame it based on your business type:

E-commerce / physical products: Klaviyo — it speaks Shopify natively and has the best purchase-data segmentation.
SaaS / digital products: ActiveCampaign or HubSpot — better CRM-to-email flow with deal stage triggers.
Content creators / newsletters: Kit — built for this use case specifically.
Tight budget / just starting out: Brevo — free plan is generous and the automation is solid.
B2B / service businesses: HubSpot’s email + sequences tool handles this end-to-end.

Step Four

4 Step Four

Write the Win-Back Email Sequence — 5 Emails That Actually Re-Engage

This is where most tutorials get vague. I’m going to give you the exact five-email sequence I wrote for NourishBox’s Segment A and B contacts — including the subject lines, the core message of each email, and the open rates we actually saw.

The philosophy behind the sequence: never beg, never spam, never discount too early. The first two emails are genuine relationship re-touches. The third introduces value. The fourth introduces an offer. The fifth is your final card. If they don’t respond after five emails, you sunset them — no exceptions.

Day 1

📬 “Hey — it’s been a while, [First Name]”

A short, plain-text-style email. No images, no heavy branding. Just a genuinely warm note saying you noticed they hadn’t been around, you wanted to check in, and you wanted to share something they might have missed (a new product update or blog post relevant to their purchase history). No CTA push. Pure value.

📊 Open rate: 34.2% Click rate: 6.8%

Day 4

📦 “What other customers have been loving lately”

Social proof email. Feature 2–3 of your most popular new products or your best-reviewed items since they last visited. Include short, real customer quotes (pulled from reviews). This email does two jobs: it shows the brand is alive and thriving, and it uses peer validation to spark curiosity. Soft CTA: “See what’s new →”

📊 Open rate: 28.7% Click rate: 9.1%

Day 9

🎁 “Something for you — because you matter to us”

This is your first value offer. For Segment A, we offered free shipping on the next order. For Segment B, we offered a 15% discount with a 7-day expiry. The key: frame it as a gift, not a desperation move. The subject line doesn’t mention a discount. They have to open it to find out. This drove our highest click rate in the sequence.

📊 Open rate: 41.8% Click rate: 17.3%

Day 14

⏰ “Your offer expires in 48 hours, [First Name]”

Urgency email. Sent only to contacts who opened Email 3 but didn’t convert. Short email, one CTA, countdown framing. Don’t extend the deadline if it expires — that destroys urgency credibility. We also A/B tested “Last chance, [First Name]” vs. “Your offer expires in 48 hours” — the specific time frame won by 12%.

📊 Open rate: 38.4% Click rate: 14.1%

Day 21

👋 “This is our last message to you”

The sunset email. Honest, direct, no drama. Tell them you’re removing them from the list so you don’t bother them anymore — but that they can stay if they want. Include one final, small offer. This email generated the most unexpected conversions (people subscribe to their own guilt) and kept our list hygiene clean.

📊 Open rate: 52.1% Click rate: 11.6% (highest sunset rate we’ve ever seen)

Email #3 Preview — The Offer Email That Worked

Hi Rachel,

We’ve been thinking about you.

It’s been a little while since we last saw you, and we genuinely wanted to say — we’ve missed having you around. Your feedback has always been the kind that makes us better.

As a small token of appreciation for being part of the NourishBox family, we’ve put something together just for you. No catches, no pressure — just our way of saying thank you for the trust you placed in us.

Claim Your Exclusive Gift →

This offer is personal to you and expires in 7 days. We don’t send these often.

P.S. — A lot has changed at NourishBox since you last visited. New products, better packaging, same love. Come see what you’ve been missing. 🌿

✍️

Subject Line Rules That Made a Difference

Using the recipient’s first name in subject lines improved opens by 18% for us. Avoiding words like “discount,” “sale,” or “offer” in subject lines kept us out of promotions tabs. And framing the final email as a genuine goodbye — not a guilt trip — consistently produced better engagement than any “last chance” framing we tested.

Step Five

5 Step Five

Build the Automation — Set It Up Once, Let It Run

The win-back campaign for NourishBox was not a one-time blast. It was a living, automated flow that continuously pulled newly dormant customers into the sequence every week. Once I built it, Adaeze never had to think about it again. New customers who went quiet for 90 days automatically entered the flow. Converted customers were automatically removed. Unsubscribers were quietly sunset.

Here’s the automation architecture we built using Make.com as the connector between HubSpot and Klaviyo:

Automation Flow — Make.com + HubSpot + Klaviyo

📅

HubSpot Trigger
Last Purchase = 90 days ago

→

🔀

Make.com Router
Check LTV + Segment

→

📋

Klaviyo Segment
Add to A/B/C/D list

→

📧

Klaviyo Flow
5-email sequence fires

→

✅

Conversion Check
Order placed? Exit flow

→

📊

GA4 + Sheets
Log revenue + ROI

Setting This Up in Klaviyo (Step-by-Step)

Go to Flows in your Klaviyo dashboard → click Create Flow → search for “Win-Back” in the pre-built templates.
Select the flow trigger: “What someone does” → “Placed Order” → “At least once” → “Over all time” → Date “is at least” 90 days ago
Add a 24-hour delay before Email 1 so it doesn’t fire the second someone hits 90 days — it feels more organic.
Between each email step, add a Conditional Split: “Has placed order since flow start?” → Yes = exit flow, No = continue.
For Email 3 (the offer email), create a unique coupon code inside Klaviyo’s Coupon section so the discount is trackable and expires automatically.
After Email 5, suppress the contact from all marketing emails and add the tag “Sunset 2026” for list hygiene tracking.

/* Make.com Webhook Payload — HubSpot → Klaviyo Segment Assignment */

{
  “contact_id”:     “{{hubspot.contact.id}}”,
  “email”:          “{{hubspot.contact.email}}”,
  “first_name”:     “{{hubspot.contact.firstname}}”,
  “last_order_days”: {{hubspot.contact.days_since_purchase}},
  “ltv”:             {{hubspot.contact.total_revenue}},
  “segment”:
    {{hubspot.contact.days_since_purchase}} <= 90  → “A”
    {{hubspot.contact.days_since_purchase}} <= 180 → “B”
    {{hubspot.contact.days_since_purchase}} <= 365 → “C”
                                                 → “D”
}
    

🔁

Make.com Free Plan Is Enough to Start

Make’s free tier gives you 1,000 operations per month. For a database under 5,000 contacts with a weekly trigger, that’s plenty to run this entire setup. Once you scale, the Core plan at $9/month handles up to 10,000 ops. We didn’t upgrade to a paid Make plan until month 3 of running the campaign. Start free at Make.com →

Step Six

6 Step Six

Measure Results & Monetize the Recovered Segment

Recovery is only half the work. The real monetization happens after you win someone back — because a customer who lapsed once is statistically more likely to lapse again unless you change the relationship intentionally. Here’s how we tracked results and kept recovered customers active.

NourishBox — 90-Day Win-Back Campaign Results

$34,160

Total recovered revenue

1,240

Customers re-activated

14.3%

Overall recovery rate

$27.50

Average revenue per email sent

$185

Campaign cost

184×

Return on investment

Segment A (61–90d) — 38% recovery38%

Segment B (91–180d) — 19% recovery19%

Segment C (181–365d) — 8% recovery8%

Segment D (365d+) — 2.1% recovery2.1%

Post-Recovery: Keeping Them This Time

Every contact who converted during the win-back campaign immediately entered a separate “Re-Engaged Customer” nurture flow in Klaviyo. This flow was different from what new customers received — it acknowledged that they had been away, celebrated their return, and introduced a lighter-touch loyalty pathway:

A “Welcome back” email (not “welcome” — the word choice matters) sent within 1 hour of the re-purchase
A curated “what’s changed since you left” content email sent on Day 5 after repurchase
An invitation to join the NourishBox loyalty program — we used Yotpo — on Day 10
A review request email on Day 21 after delivery, timed to when they’d actually have used the product
A subtle re-purchase reminder at Day 45 — before they had a chance to go quiet again

Track Everything in Google Analytics 4

Every link in the win-back email sequence had UTM parameters so we could see exactly which email, which segment, and which subject line drove each purchase in GA4. Here’s the UTM structure I used:

https://nourishbox.co/shop/?utm_source=klaviyo
  &utm_medium=email
  &utm_campaign=winback_2026
  &utm_content=seg_a_email3
  &utm_term=high_ltv
    

In GA4, I created a custom report filtering by utm_campaign = winback_2026 to see total sessions, conversion rate, and revenue — updated in real time. This let Adaeze see on any given day exactly how much money the campaign had generated.

Avoid These

⚠ Avoid These

7 Win-Back Campaign Mistakes That Killed Results

Before I ran this campaign successfully, I ran a few badly. Here are the mistakes I’ve seen — and made — that you should avoid:

Blasting the entire dormant list at once

Sending to 8,000 cold contacts in a single send will spike your bounce rate, trigger spam filters, and potentially get your sending domain flagged. Warm up gradually — start with your most engaged dormant contacts first.

Leading with a discount in Email #1

It signals desperation and trains your customers to only buy when you discount. Save the offer for Email 3. Build the relationship first — you’ll get better conversions and healthier margins.

Skipping the sunset email

Continuing to email non-responders after 5 touches destroys your sender reputation and your deliverability for every other campaign. Sunset them with dignity — it actually improves your overall email health.

Not having a “what happens after they come back” plan

We’ve seen brands successfully win customers back, then do nothing — and watch them go dormant again in 60 days. Have your re-engagement nurture flow ready before you launch the win-back campaign.

Using no-reply email addresses

Win-back emails sent from “[email protected]” feel corporate and cold. Use a real person’s address (founder, customer success lead) for at least the first and last emails. It makes a measurable difference in open rates.

Not segmenting by inactivity depth

One message does not fit all. A contact who last bought 65 days ago and one who last bought 400 days ago need completely different messages, offers, and urgency levels. Build the segments. Always.

Extending deadlines when the offer “expires”

If your Email 4 says “this offer expires in 48 hours” — let it expire. Customers who see a deadline extended lose all trust in your urgency messaging. It will hurt every future campaign you run.

The Real Takeaway

Your CRM Database Is a Revenue Asset. Start Treating It Like One.

After 90 days of running this system for NourishBox, Adaeze didn’t just recover $10K. She recovered her confidence that the data she’d spent years building was actually worth something. The dormant contacts in your CRM are not a failure — they’re an opportunity you haven’t activated yet. Now you know exactly how to activate it.

Explore More Tutorials on ZaynaZone →

📋 Quick Reference

Your Win-Back Campaign Checklist

Run a CRM audit — filter by last purchase date + customer lifecycle stage
Calculate the total LTV sitting in your dormant segment
Build four inactivity segments (61–90d, 91–180d, 181–365d, 365d+)
Add an LTV layer within each segment (high-value vs. standard)
Choose your email tool based on business type (Klaviyo, Kit, Brevo, HubSpot)
Set up Make.com to auto-route new dormant contacts into segments weekly
Write five emails: check-in → social proof → offer → urgency → sunset
Create tracked coupon codes with hard expiry dates for Email #3
Add UTM parameters to every CTA link and track in GA4
Build a “re-engaged customer” nurture flow for converted contacts
Sunset non-responders after Email #5 — no exceptions
Review campaign ROI at Day 30, 60, and 90

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Author
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Em Uzoma

I’m a web developer, technology enthusiast, and lifelong learner with a strong interest in AI, web technologies, and the ever-evolving digital world.

I enjoy building for the web, exploring new technologies, and finding practical ways to use AI and modern tools to solve problems and make everyday work more efficient. My interests span web development, artificial intelligence, software, digital tools, and the many ideas shaping the future of technology.

Through this blog, I share what I learn, build, discover, and experience along the way. My goal is to make technology easier to understand, share useful insights, and document practical knowledge that can help other developers, creators, and tech enthusiasts.

Technology is constantly changing, and I believe the best way to keep up is to stay curious, keep experimenting, and never stop learning.

crm database monetization, re-engage inactive customers, lost customer win-back campaign