Client and business letters
Client reactivation letter examples
The hardest part of a reactivation letter is the gap. The client knows how long it has been, you know, and a letter that pretends otherwise is the one thing guaranteed to fail. Name it in the first line, do not apologise at length for it, and give them a reason to come back that is not a discount.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
Naming the gap directly
[FIRST NAME],
It has been [NUMBER] years since we last did anything for [BUSINESS NAME], which is long enough that I had to look it up.
No pitch attached to this. We have changed a fair bit since [YEAR] and if the reason you stopped was something we were not good at then, it may genuinely be worth another look.
If not, that is a completely reasonable answer and this is the last you will hear from me about it.
[NAME], [DIRECT LINE]
Where something concrete has changed
The strongest version, and only usable if the change is real.
[FIRST NAME],
When [BUSINESS NAME] was with us, [LIMITATION] was a real constraint and I suspect it is part of why you moved on.
That changed in [YEAR]. I am not asking for anything on the strength of it, but it seemed worth telling you directly rather than hoping you noticed.
[NAME], [DIRECT LINE]
Where you simply lost touch
[FIRST NAME],
No particular reason for this letter beyond the obvious one: we worked well together, and then we both got busy and that was [NUMBER] years ago.
If there is anything on at [BUSINESS NAME] where another pair of hands would help, you know where we are. If not, it was good to think about you.
[NAME]
Getting it right
- What to mention. The gap, stated plainly. What has changed at your end since. One easy way back in that does not require them to commit to anything.
- What to leave out. "We miss you", which is a retail email. A discount as the only reason, which teaches people that leaving is how you get a better price. Any suggestion that the gap was their fault.
- How long. 60 to 110 words.
- How personal. Unembarrassed. A letter that is awkward about the silence makes the reader awkward too.
- When not to send one. Where the client left over an unresolved complaint. Resolve that first, by phone, or the letter reads as an attempt to paper over it.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [BUSINESS NAME], [NUMBER], [YEAR], [LIMITATION].
Get the gap right or leave it out. Telling a client it has been four years when they bought from you last winter is the clearest possible signal that nobody looked at the record before writing, which is the exact impression the letter exists to correct.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
A dormant list is usually hundreds of names long, each one worth a genuine letter and none of them worth an email that will be deleted unread.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap and hand-addresses the envelopes.
Sitting on a list of clients who went quiet? How a reactivation run works
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