2 September 2025
Ranking dormant cohorts before you spend on win-back
A practical order for deciding which quiet users deserve the first message — and which should wait.
Many teams start win-back with the largest dormant list. Size alone rarely predicts who will open the app again.
We rank cohorts by three practical signals: prior session depth, reason for last exit if known, and cost to reach them. A small group of formerly frequent users often returns more often than a huge list of one-session accounts.
Session depth is simple: how many meaningful actions happened before silence. Exit reason may come from interview notes, support tickets, or store comments. Reach cost covers channel fees and offer discounts you plan to extend.
Put low-reach-cost, high-depth cohorts first. Save heavy discounts for groups that once spent well and left after a specific friction — payment failure, delivery delay, or a missing feature.
If your export cannot support those three signals yet, begin with session depth alone. Even a rough ranking beats blasting every quiet account on the same Tuesday.