Win-Back Email Template — A Two-Word Question at Display Scale

A win-back email that asks one two-word question at 96px over a grayscale leaf-masked photograph bleeding off the right edge, then one line of copy and a single button.

Re-engagement saaswin-backminimal

The prompt

Two ways to build this email in plain language. The fastest is Temway's in-editor assistant — open the chat drawer in the email editor and paste the recipe below. Or connect Claude or ChatGPT via Temway's MCP and paste it there; the agent builds the email step by step. Either way, adapt the copy and colors to your brand.

  • An email is a top-to-bottom stack of blocks — the recipe follows that order.
  • A [layout] step becomes a single image (great for heroes); everything else stays live text and links.
  • Theme the footer to match — the recipe's last step does exactly that.

Want this exact email? Click Use this template below to clone it into your workspace, then ask the in-editor assistant to rebrand it. Over MCP, tell your agent to clone the Temway share 9HrKhWSmMoZe7EHYqNvS- and rebrand. For the full model, point an MCP agent at get_conceptemail-structure, layouts-vs-emails, design-recipes.

The last email before someone gets removed from the list, and the one that should be hardest to argue with. A two-word question at display scale, a grayscale photograph masked to a leaf and cut by the right edge, one honest sentence about how long it has been, one button. Six elements and nothing to push back against.

Snapshot

  • Goal: get a lapsed user to either re-engage or opt down, and treat both outcomes as a win.
  • Audience & tone: users who have not opened anything in months. Direct, unembarrassed, genuinely willing to stop — no guilt, no discount.
  • Palette: page #ecedee · container #ffffff · text #111827 / #6c7079 (muted) · accent #065f46
  • Font: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif
  • Artwork: none — fully native blocks.

Build recipe

Each step is one block in the flat stack, top to bottom. [native] = a real email block. [layout] = a free-form layout embedded as a single image.

  1. [native] Logo — logo. Brand mark, left-aligned.
  2. [native] Headline — text. “Still useful, or should we stop?”, fontSize: 36, color #111827, left.
  3. [native] Body copy 1 — text. “You haven’t opened anything from us since March. We’ll stop if you’d rather we did.”, fontSize: 16, color #111827, left.
  4. [native] Primary CTA — button. Label “Keep me on the list”, fill #065f46, color #ffffff, shapeStyle: ‘0_1’, left.
  5. [native] Body copy 2 — text. “Prefer less? Get one email a month instead, or unsubscribe and we will stop today.”, fontSize: 16, color #111827, left.
  6. [native] Rule — divider. full-measure rule, 1px, color #e9e9e9.
  7. [native] Story title — text. “What changed while you were away”, fontSize: 20, color #111827, left.
  8. [native] Body copy 3 — text. “Layouts can now be masked, bled and taped — the artwork stopped looking generated.”, fontSize: 16, color #111827, left.
  9. [native] Body copy 4 — text. “Countdown boards render transparent against any background.”, fontSize: 16, color #111827, left.
  10. [native] Body copy 5 — text. “Every email now ships a web version too, with no extra build step.”, fontSize: 16, color #111827, left.
  11. [native] Body copy 6 — text. “If none of that is useful, the unsubscribe link above is the right button. No hard feelings.”, fontSize: 14, color #6c7079, left.
  12. [native] Footer rule — divider. short (96px) rule, 1px, color #e9e9e9.
  13. [native] Footer social — social. Icon row, social.color #065f46, style circle-outline, center.
  14. [native] Footer address — address. Postal address + unsubscribe, address.color #6c7079, address.fontFamily Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, center.

Make it yours

  1. State the real elapsed time. “Since March” is far more persuasive than “in a while”, and it is the sentence that makes the offer to stop believable.
  2. Keep the opt-down link. It converts people who would otherwise mark you as spam, which costs you every future send.
  3. Keep the question to two short words. The layout’s whole argument is that there is nothing to disagree with, and a longer question gives the reader something to argue with.
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About re-engagement email templates

A re-engagement email targets one specific, identifiable moment: someone stopped opening. The job is to re-earn attention with a real incentive or a clean exit — not to guilt-trip a subscriber back with vague "we miss you" copy that never says why it's being sent now.

See all re-engagement templates →

How long should someone be inactive before sending a re-engagement email?

Most teams trigger a win-back after 30-90 days of no opens or logins — long enough to be a genuine lapse, not so long that the incentive has to be unreasonably large to work.

What makes a re-engagement email different from a regular promotional send?

It has to acknowledge the gap directly — "it's been a while" — rather than pretending nothing changed. The templates below open with that acknowledgment before the offer.

Should a win-back email always include a discount?

Not necessarily — the templates below pair an incentive for commerce win-backs, but the nonprofit volunteer and donor comeback template leans on reconnection and impact instead of a discount.

What should happen if someone doesn't respond to a re-engagement email?

Plan a follow-up suppression or list-cleanup step outside the email itself — a re-engagement template's job is the ask, not the list hygiene that follows it.