Latest / The Retention Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Email, SMS, and Loyalty for Repeat Customers / How a Supplement Brand Uses Email Reactivation After Product Reformulation
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this supplement brand — I won't name them because the story is more useful than the logo — but they had a bestselling protein powder, one of those products that accounted for maybe 40 percent of their revenue. And then they reformulated it. Luna: Oh, that's a dangerous move. Customers notice. Lucas: They sure do. And this brand learned it the hard way. Within a month of launching the new formula, their repeat purchase rate dropped by about 25 percent. Customer service tickets tripled. People were writing in saying 'this tastes different', 'this doesn't mix the same', 'what did you do to my powder?'. Luna: Right, and the classic mistake is to just say 'new and improved' and hope nobody asks questions. Lucas: Exactly. And they initially did that — just shipped the new formula with a label that said 'now with better absorption' or something. No advance notice. No explanation. And the backlash was immediate. So after about six weeks of bleeding repeat customers, they pulled together a reactivation email campaign specifically aimed at the people who had lapsed since the reformulation. Luna: What was their segmentation approach? Because not all lapsed customers are the same. Lucas: They split them into three buckets. Bucket one: customers who had bought the old formula at least three times, then stopped within 30 days of the new formula launch — these were the loyalists who noticed the change. Bucket two: customers who had bought once or twice, then lapsed sometime in the six months before the reformulation — price-sensitive or just not hooked. Bucket three: customers who had bought regularly but stopped more than six months before — the drifters. Luna: And the messaging was different for each? Lucas: Completely different. For bucket one, the loyalists, they sent an email from the founder — no branding, just a person — explaining why they changed the formula. The real reason: their previous supplier couldn't scale, so they had to switch to a new protein isolate source. They admitted that the taste changed slightly, but they also shared a side-by-side comparison of the amino acid profile to show it was actually higher quality. Luna: I love that. Owning the change instead of pretending it didn't happen. Lucas: It's the only move that works, honestly. And they included a 20 percent off code — not as a bribe, but as a 'we messed up the communication, here's an apology' gesture. Bucket two, the price-sensitive ones, got a different message: a straightforward comparison of the new formula against competitor products at similar price points, showing that theirs had more protein per gram. No apology, just value. Luna: And bucket three? Lucas: Bucket three got a generic 'we've improved our recipe' email with a standard 15 percent off. No deep explanation. The thinking was, these customers had already drifted away before the change, so they probably didn't even know a reformulation happened. The goal was just to remind them the brand existed. Luna: That makes sense. But I'm curious — did they also use SMS? Because email open rates for lapsed customers are usually pretty low. Lucas: They did, but only for bucket one. They pulled the phone numbers of customers who had opted in for SMS and had been repeat buyers — about 8 percent of the lapsed list. They sent a single text: 'We changed our formula and we owe you an explanation. Check your email.' That SMS drove a 45 percent open rate on the email, which is enormous for a reactivation campaign. Luna: So the SMS acted as a bridge, not the main message. That's smart — because SMS is high-stakes. If you send a full pitch to someone who's already annoyed, you might push them away for good. Lucas: Exactly. And the results overall? After 60 days, the brand recovered about 18 percent of the lapsed customers across all three buckets. But here's the interesting part: bucket one — the loyalists who left because of the reformulation — had a 32 percent reactivation rate. That's huge. It tells you that the biggest gap wasn't the product change itself, but the failure to communicate it. Luna: That's the core lesson, isn't it? Customers can handle change if you tell them why. It's the surprise that breaks trust. Lucas: Absolutely. And they didn't stop at the reactivation email. Once a customer from bucket one made a new purchase, they received a post-purchase survey three days later asking specifically: 'How does the new formula compare to the old one?' That gave the brand a feedback loop to catch ongoing dissatisfaction before it turned into another lapse. Luna: And I'll bet that survey data also fed into future product decisions — maybe even a third iteration of the formula down the line. Lucas: You're right. The brand actually told me that they're now considering a 'classic' version for customers who preferred the original taste. That's the kind of thing you only learn if you ask. Luna: You know, this kind of transparent, customer-first thinking is exactly what we try to model on this show. If these conversations have sparked something you've actually used in your own marketing, that's the best outcome we could hope for. And if you want to help us keep the podcast ad-free, listener support is what makes that possible. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, that's genuinely appreciated. No pressure, ever. It's just a way for people who find value here to help us keep doing it. Luna: Exactly. Okay, back to the supplement brand — one more thing I wanted to ask about: the timing of the emails. Did they send them all at once, or was there a sequence? Lucas: It was a three-email sequence over 14 days. Day one: the founder email for bucket one, the value comparison for bucket two, and the generic 'we've improved' for bucket three. Day seven: a follow-up with a customer testimonial from someone who liked the new formula — social proof to counter the negative buzz. Day 14: a 'last chance' email with the same offer, but with an expiration date. Luna: And the SMS went out on day one, before the first email, right? Lucas: Correct. They sent the SMS about an hour before the first email dropped. The idea was to warm up the inbox, so the email wasn't a cold surprise. And the open rate on the SMS was 92 percent, so it worked. Luna: That's brilliant sequencing. The SMS as a pre-header, basically. Lucas: Exactly. And here's a detail I love: in the day-seven email for bucket one, they included a short video of the founder talking about the supplier change. No script, just him sitting at his kitchen table explaining it. That email had a click-through rate of 11 percent, which is wild for a reactivation campaign. Luna: The personal touch matters. When someone feels like you're talking to them as a human, not a number, they're more likely to give you another chance. Lucas: That's the whole thesis of this episode, really. The brand could have just sent a coupon and hoped for the best. But by segmenting, explaining, and using the right channel at the right moment, they turned a product crisis into a relationship rebuild. Luna: And the 18 percent overall reactivation rate — what was that worth in dollar terms? Lucas: They calculated that the reactivated customers from bucket one alone generated about $47,000 in incremental revenue over the next 90 days. The entire campaign cost maybe $2,000 in email and SMS sends, plus the discounts. So the return on investment was substantial. Luna: That's a powerful case study. And it's a reminder that retention marketing isn't just about the happy path — it's also about handling the moments when trust gets broken. Lucas: Exactly. And the brands that do that well are the ones that earn long-term loyalty. Luna: So if you're a marketer dealing with a product change — formula, packaging, pricing — the playbook is clear: segment, explain, apologize if needed, and follow up with a survey. Lucas: And don't forget the SMS bridge for your highest-value customers. That one channel made the whole campaign work. Luna: Great stuff. That's all we have for today. Thanks for listening.