Rule: Win back At Risk

Send one strong, time-bound win-back the moment a member slips into At Risk

Needs the Smart Segmentation add-on

This playbook runs on RFM segments, which come with the Smart Segmentation add-on. If you don't see RFM: tags in your tag picker, the add-on isn't active for your business. Ask your provider to switch it on. Without the add-on, Win-back without RFM wins back lapsed members with a tag instead.

Cheat sheet — a Rule, ~5 minutes

Step 1 — Pick Rule, name it Win back At Risk.

Step 2 — Trigger: Tagged, with the tag RFM:atRisk. Leave audience as all registered members (or narrow to SMS-consented).

Step 3 — Stack two actions:

• Send asset → win-back Gift (a strong, short-expiry coupon).
• Send SMS → win-back template.

Step 4 — Save, set Active.

Fires once, the morning a member enters At Risk — not every day they stay there. Requires the Gift and the SMS template to exist already, and RFM switched on (RFM comes with the Smart Segmentation add-on).

This playbook builds a Rule that listens for the moment RFM moves a member into the At Risk segment, and fires a single, time-bound win-back — a redeemable Gift plus an SMS that tells them it's waiting. Catching an At Risk member before they slide into Lost is the single highest-return campaign a loyalty program runs, which is why this is the first RFM playbook to set up.

What you'll build

Every night, RFM re-scores your members and re-tags them. When a member who used to visit regularly has been away long enough, that nightly run tags them RFM:atRisk. This Rule reacts to that tag landing:

1. The Tagged trigger fires the moment RFM:atRisk is added to a member.
2. The Rule sends them a pre-built win-back Gift (a strong, short-expiry offer) and an SMS so they know it's there.
3. It fires once per slip — re-running the nightly scoring on someone who's still At Risk re-applies the same tag, which the Tagged trigger treats as a no-op. No daily drip.

When to use this

Use this whenever RFM is on and you want the highest-value automation it enables: a real-time safety net under members who are drifting away. The shape — Tagged on an RFM: segment, then a reward + a message — is the template for every "act on a segment the moment a member enters it" campaign. Swap the tag and the offer and you have Reward Champions; the bones are identical.

It is not the tool for re-approaching members who left long ago — that's Reactivate Lost, a periodic one-shot rather than a real-time trigger. And because a Rule only fires on the transition into At Risk, it cannot catch a member who slipped while it was paused, or who was already At Risk before you built it. For a periodic sweep that picks those up, pair this with the Win-back cadence playbook.

Before you start

3 prerequisites — RFM on, a win-back Gift, and an SMS template

• RFM is switched on for your brand. The RFM:atRisk tag only exists once segmentation is running. RFM comes with the Smart Segmentation add-on and is set up for your business when the add-on is switched on — see Tuned to your kind of venue. If you don't see RFM: tags in the tag picker, the add-on isn't active for your business.
• The win-back Gift already exists. Build it under Benefits → Gifts first — Send asset only references a Gift, it doesn't create one. Make the offer genuinely strong (this is your one shot) and give it a short expiry — a week, two at most — so the Gift itself carries the urgency. See Gifts.
• The win-back SMS template already exists. Draft it under Comm. Templates — a warm "we've missed you," a clear line on what the Gift is, and a deadline. Dynamic @ fields (member first name, business name) personalise it. See SMS template.

Walkthrough

Smart Campaigns live under Marketing → Smart campaigns in the left nav. Click Create campaign to open the four-step wizard.

Step 1 — Campaign details

Pick Rule as the campaign kind. Name it for the segment and the intent — Win back At Risk reads clearly in the list. Use the description to park the why and the timing rule you've chosen (e.g. "Fires when a member enters At Risk; one strong 14-day offer, rolled out June 2026").

Step 2 — When (trigger + audience)

This is the heart of the playbook. At the top of the step, pick the trigger:

• Trigger: Tagged. In the trigger's condition, set the tag to RFM:atRisk. That's what makes the Rule fire on segment entry rather than on a schedule.
• Audience tile — leave it as all registered members, or narrow to members with SMS consent if you want to avoid attempting un-consented sends.
• Timing tile — leave At any date and time. The nightly RFM run is what paces this; you don't need a time window.
• Rate cap tile — optional. Tagged already fires once per slip, but if you want a hard guarantee that no member is ever win-backed twice within, say, a season, cap it here.

Why this doesn't drip

The Tagged trigger fires only on the transition from untagged to tagged. The nightly RFM job re-applies RFM:atRisk to members who are still At Risk, but re-applying a tag a member already has is a silent no-op — so the Rule stays quiet until they genuinely leave and re-enter the segment. This is exactly what the Segments page means by "one strong message, not a drip."

Step 3 — Actions

Two actions, stacked — "Do … And do …". The member needs both: the offer in their wallet, and a message telling them it's there.

Action 1 — Send asset

1. Select Send asset.
2. In the Benefit picker, choose your win-back Gift.
3. Leave Quantity at 1, No delay.

Action 2 — Send SMS

1. Click + Add action to open a second block.
2. Select Send SMS and pick your win-back template (or write a Custom message inline).
3. Check the Charged messages counter — dynamic fields expand at send-time and can tip a one-segment text into two.

Leave both on No delay — the Gift is issued first, the SMS lands seconds later.

Step 4 — Preview

Read-only recap. Confirm Kind is Rule, the trigger reads Tagged → RFM:atRisk, and Actions shows two. Click Save. If you saved it as Draft, flip it to Active from the list to start firing.

Measure it the right way

Judge this campaign by segment movement, not opens

The win of an At Risk campaign isn't the open rate — it's whether members move back to Loyal. Two to four weeks after launch, look at how many of the members this Rule touched are now tagged RFM:Loyal or RFM:Champions instead of RFM:atRisk or RFM:Lost. That movement is the success metric. If they're not moving, the offer wasn't strong enough — not the messaging.

For SMS delivery numbers specifically, use Communication Analytics on the Rule (the ⋮ → Analyze menu on the campaign row) — but treat Sent/Delivered as plumbing checks, not the goal.

Variations

3 common tweaks — a "welcome back", tiered offers, an email follow-up

Fire a "welcome back" when they return. Build a companion Rule on the Untagged trigger with the tag RFM:atRisk. It fires the moment a member leaves the At Risk segment — i.e. they came back and got re-scored — letting you send a warm "great to see you again" without a discount. The pair (win-back on enter, thank-you on leave) is the complete loop.

A stronger offer for high-value members. On step 3, use Split into several cases instead of stacked actions. Put a condition on a high-value tag (or a balance threshold) in the first case with a bigger Gift; leave the default case on the standard offer. Each member gets exactly one branch — the first matching case wins.

Add an email a couple of days later. Stack a Send email action with a 2-day delay as a gentle reminder for members who didn't redeem the SMS offer. Keep it to one follow-up — the point is a single strong nudge, not a sequence.

Gotchas

3 things that commonly trip people up

• It needs RFM running. No segmentation, no RFM:atRisk tag, nothing for the trigger to catch. If the tag isn't in the picker, the Smart Segmentation add-on isn't active for your business.
• Paused means missed. Events that occur while the Rule is Paused are lost — they don't queue. A member who slips into At Risk during a pause won't be win-backed retroactively when you resume.
• Make the Gift's expiry do the work. Urgency lives on the Gift, not the Rule. A win-back coupon with a 90-day expiry isn't a win-back — it's a "whenever." Keep it to a week or two.