---
title: What is Win-back?
url: https://markin.ai/glossary/win-back
category: Retention and churn
---

# Win-back

> Win-back is the practice of returning a lapsed or cancelled customer to paying status. It depends on choosing the right waiting period, the right reason to return and the smallest sufficient incentive, because most lapsed customers will never respond at any price.

## Why it matters for ARPU

The lapsed base is often the largest untouched population a growth team owns, and win-back decisions are easy to evaluate causally because the holdout is clean.

## Related terms

- [Revenue per available customer](https://markin.ai/glossary/revenue-per-available-customer), Revenue per available customer spreads revenue across everyone reachable, including dormant and non-paying users, rather than only the active base.
- [Save offer](https://markin.ai/glossary/save-offer), A save offer is an incentive presented to a customer who is about to leave: a discount, a pause, a plan downgrade or a service remedy.
- [Next best offer](https://markin.ai/glossary/next-best-offer), Next best offer selects the most valuable commercial proposition for a customer: which product, plan, bundle or price to present.
- [Uplift model](https://markin.ai/glossary/uplift-model), An uplift model estimates the change in outcome caused by treating a customer, rather than the outcome itself.

## Go deeper

- [Retention decisioning](https://markin.ai/solutions/retention-decisioning), Win-back as a decision, not a blast.
- [Next best action marketing](https://markin.ai/blog/what-is-next-best-action), The pillar guide to per-customer, per-moment decisioning.

Source: https://markin.ai/glossary/win-back