Re-engagement (sometimes called reactivation or win-back) is marketing activity aimed at users who installed your app but stopped using it. It sits alongside acquisition and retention as the third major user-lifecycle stage: not getting new users in, not keeping current users active, but pulling lapsed users back into active use.
Recovery probability decays sharply with time
- 7-day lapsed: 20-30% recovery rate from a well-timed re-engagement campaign.
- 30-day lapsed: 5-15% recovery rate.
- 90-day lapsed: <5% recovery rate.
- 180+ days lapsed: effectively uninstalled in most cases (or might as well be).
The time decay is steep enough that re-engagement campaigns should target lapsed users early — wait too long and the effort isn't worth the cost.
Channel mix
- Push notifications: most cost-effective if the user kept push enabled. Send when relevant content / event arrives. Limitation: users who disabled push are unreachable.
- Email: slower (lower open rates than push), but reaches users who disabled push. Strong for content-driven re-engagement (new feature, content highlight).
- Retargeting ads: paid recovery via Meta / TikTok / Google. Useful for users who uninstalled but you have their identifier. Costly but works for higher-LTV users.
- Deep-linked notifications: notifications that route users to specific in-app content (deferred deep links for uninstalled-but-reinstalled users).
- In-app surface on next launch: if the user does come back organically, surface a "welcome back" experience that re-establishes value before they leave again.
Common pitfall: spam-grade re-engagement that pushes lapsed users to uninstall rather than re-engage. If a user hasn't opened your app in 30 days, sending them 5 emails / pushes in a week is more likely to trigger opt-out + uninstall than recovery. Calibrate frequency to relevance — 1-2 high-quality re-engagement touches per month for the long-lapsed cohort.
Re-engagement recovery by lapse window
| Time since lapse | Typical recovery | Recommended play |
|---|---|---|
| 1-7 days | 20-30% | Act now — push first, highest ROI |
| 8-30 days | 5-15% | Push + email; segment by past value |
| 31-90 days | under 5% | Reserve paid retargeting for high-LTV only |
| 90+ days | ~0% | Effectively churned — stop spending |
Recovery decays fast, so re-engagement budget belongs early in the lapse window — and frequency must stay low (1-2 quality touches per month) or it triggers opt-out and uninstall instead of return.