Shopify Win-Back Email: Bring Back Customers Who Stopped

A Shopify win-back email goes to customers who haven’t ordered for a while, and Shopify Messaging has a template for it: Win back customers, which sends a marketing message once a set amount of time has passed since a customer’s last order. It runs on the Customer joined segment trigger, so the segment behind it decides who counts as lapsed. Set that window to match how often your customers normally reorder, then write the email around a reason to come back.

The template and steps come from Shopify’s Help Center pages on creating marketing automations and creating customer segments, read on October 23, 2026. The lapse windows and the sequence are our suggestions.

Set up the Win back customers template

Shopify lists Win back customers with the post-purchase automations, as an email automation. You create it on a desktop; the mobile app builds only the abandoned checkout, cart and browse automations.

1. In the admin, go to Apps > Messaging and click Automations.
2. Click Create automation and select Win back customers.
3. Click Edit email and rewrite the subject, text and products.
4. Optional: click Send test, enter your addresses and click Send.
5. Click Turn on, then Turn on in the dialog, or Save without turning on to finish later.

To change when it sends, open the automation, click Edit workflow, make the change and click Apply changes. Marketing automations send only to customers subscribed to email marketing by default, so a lapsed customer who never opted in won’t get it.

Pick the lapse window

“Lapsed” depends on what you sell. Before you accept the template’s timing, look at how long your repeat customers usually wait between orders. In Customers, you can sort by Last order date, and Sidekick can build the segment from a plain description; Shopify’s own example prompt is “Create a segment of customers who last ordered more than 90 days ago and are subscribed to marketing emails.”

The windows we would start from:

If you don’t know your rhythm yet, start at 90 days, the figure in Shopify’s prompt, and adjust after a few months of reports. A window that’s too short emails people who were about to reorder anyway and hands them a discount they didn’t need.

If you would rather write the segment yourself than ask Sidekick, Shopify’s segment query language reference (read October 31, 2026) gives the filters: last_order_date takes relative dates such as -90d, and number_of_orders takes whole numbers. A segment of repeat customers who have gone quiet for 90 days reads:

number_of_orders >= 2 AND last_order_date < -90d

Change -90d to the window from the table; leave out the number_of_orders condition to include one-time buyers.

A three-email sequence

The template is built around one email. For a sequence, build it in Shopify Flow with the Messaging Send Marketing Email action and wait steps between the emails. Our suggested sequence, a few days apart:

1. A reminder. No discount. Show what’s new since their last order, or the product they bought with a line on restocking it. We’d use a subject such as “New since your last order” over “We miss you”, which says nothing about the store.
2. A reason to return. Something they can’t get by waiting: a new collection, a bestseller back in stock, a change you made because customers asked, such as faster shipping or a new size.
3. The last chance. Now the offer, with an end date. In our view the discount belongs only in the last email, so the customers who come back after the first two pay full price. If your margin can’t carry a discount, offer free shipping instead.

Keep each email to one idea and one button, and stop the sequence for anyone who orders, for example with a Flow condition before each email that checks for a newer order. Shopify’s writing best practices suggest under 200 words per email and subject lines of 3 to 6 words.

After the sequence

Customers who open nothing in the whole sequence add to the low engagement that, per Shopify, can pause delivery. Shopify’s deliverability advice is to send to subscribers who engage and to use segments to keep the others out; our guide to Shopify email deliverability covers why. We’d move them into a segment that gets only your biggest campaigns, such as a yearly sale, or suppress them.

Win-back is one of several retention emails; the others, such as VIP and birthday automations, are in Shopify retention emails. How to build the segments behind them is in Shopify customer segments, and the email and popups hub has the rest.

FAQ

Does Shopify have a win-back email template? Shopify Messaging has a Win back customers template that sends a marketing message after a set time since a customer’s last order. It uses the Customer joined segment trigger and is created on a desktop.

How long should I wait before sending a win-back email? Base it on how often your customers reorder. For a monthly consumable we’d start around 60 days, for apparel 120 to 180 days, and 90 days when you don’t know your rhythm yet.

Should a win-back email include a discount? We’d keep the discount for the last email of the sequence, so customers who return after the reminder pay full price. Free shipping is an alternative when the margin is tight.

Who receives the win-back automation? By default, it goes only to customers who are subscribed to email marketing and join the segment behind it. Customers who never opted in to marketing emails don’t receive it.