ORCAMOBILE DSPORCA Ads · Re-engagement
User acquisition finds new customers; re-engagement makes the ones you already have valuable again. ORCA Ads reconnects with lapsed and dormant users at the moment they are most likely to return — and buy again — across three modes: reacquire, reactivate, and monetize.
01 · Retention starts with a reason to return
Users disengage for different reasons, and a generic nudge rarely brings them back. In most app categories more than half of newly acquired users stop returning within their first 30 days, and winning one of them back typically costs 40–70% less than acquiring someone new — if you reach the right user, at the right moment, with the right next action.
ORCA Ads turns behavioral, value, and timing signals into deliberate lifecycle campaigns, so re-engagement spend goes to the users most likely to return and create renewed value.
02 · One system, three jobs
Reconnect with high-value users who have already churned — typically those inactive for 30 days or more. Because their value is proven, reaching them again usually costs 40–70% less than acquiring a new customer. Campaigns typically recover 8–15% of a lapsed cohort within 30 days of launch. Optimize toward return plus a first repeat action.
Wake dormant users before they are gone for good, using inactivity windows you set — commonly 7, 14, or 30 days — alongside behavioral signals. Optimize toward restored activity and the key next action, and act while the user is still recoverable rather than after the cohort has hardened.
Grow value from users who are still active by supporting repeat purchases, upsells, and higher transaction frequency. Optimize toward downstream revenue events, with existing-customer suppression preventing spend on the users who would have converted anyway.
03 · From signal to renewed value
Set the outcome each campaign should drive — a return visit, a repeat purchase, a renewal, or another approved value event.
Distinguish users by recency, activity, value, and intent, so each mode reaches the right audience instead of everyone at once.
ORCA AI scores each opportunity in under 100 milliseconds against the user's predicted likelihood of returning and their predicted value if they do, adjusting delivery as inactivity windows advance. Models retrain every four hours.
Evaluate what happens after exposure, isolate incremental return with a holdout group, and feed the result back into future audience and budget decisions. Campaigns typically produce a reliable read within two to three weeks.
04 · Built for lifecycle growth
Rank lapsed and dormant users by predicted 30-day value on return, not by how long ago they left. Segments build from your own event history, with inclusion and exclusion lists and frequency caps applied before the bid.
Optimize toward return visits, repeat purchases, renewals, restored subscriptions, or in-app revenue — any event your measurement partner passes back. Around 50 of the chosen event per week is enough to optimize stably.
Score and bid in under 100 milliseconds, with targeting and timing adapting as inactivity windows advance and behavior changes. Models retrain on fresh outcome data every four hours.
Run multiple offers and messages per segment and let outcomes decide, with creative review usually clearing within two business days.
Apply one re-engagement approach across 190+ markets, with per-market inactivity windows and budgets that reflect local return behavior instead of one global default.
Attribute through the measurement partner you already use, on a 7-day click and 1-day view window by default, and run a holdout group to separate users you actually won back from users who would have returned on their own.
05 · Value you already earned, earned again
Give previously active users a reason to come back. Campaigns typically recover 8–15% of a lapsed cohort within 30 days of launch.
Connect re-engagement spend to the behaviors that sustain value. Reactivated users who complete a second valuable action commonly retain at rates close to users who never lapsed.
Reconnect with users who showed intent but stopped short, timed to the window where intent is still live rather than weeks later.
Hold re-engagement budgets to incremental return. Because winning a proven user back typically costs 40–70% less than acquiring a new one, lifecycle spend is often the cheapest revenue on the plan — once a holdout confirms the lift is real.
06 · Built for different lifecycle models
Bring lapsed players back for a new season, event, or feature, and grow value from active users.
Recover abandoned intent and drive repeat purchases and higher order frequency.
Reactivate cancelled or dormant subscribers and support renewals.
Bring back customers who ordered once and stalled, timed to the next need.
07 · Re-engagement in practice
Explore how teams use ORCA Ads to bring lapsed users back without paying full acquisition price to do it.
A regional grocery marketplace saw roughly a third of shoppers place one order and never return, and blanket discount blasts to the entire lapsed base ate into margin without reliably bringing shoppers back. Win-back campaigns were rebuilt around inactivity windows tied to typical reorder cycles, with the optimization event set to a completed reorder rather than an app open. Programs run this way typically recover 8–15% of a lapsed cohort within 30 days, at 40–70% less than the cost of acquiring a new shopper, measured against the marketplace's existing customer-value baseline.
"We were spending like every lapsed shopper was worth the same discount. Once win-back was priced against reorder likelihood instead, the same budget brought back more of the shoppers worth bringing back." — Head of Lifecycle Marketing
A subscription video-on-demand service treated every cancelled account the same regardless of how long they had been inactive, and re-engagement spend went to the largest reachable audience rather than the audience most likely to come back. Campaigns were segmented by inactivity window and prioritized on predicted reactivation likelihood. Over a two-week read, this approach recovered 8–15% of the lapsed base at 40–70% less than new-subscriber acquisition cost.
"Reaching everyone who cancelled was easy. Reaching the ones who were actually going to come back was the part that changed the economics." — Director of Retention Marketing
09 · FAQ
Acquisition finds new users; re-engagement brings back users you already have. Because returning users have proven value, winning one back typically costs 40–70% less than acquiring someone new.
Reacquire (win back churned high-value users), reactivate (wake dormant users), and monetize (grow value from active users). Each targets a different segment and outcome.
Return visits, repeat purchases, renewals, restored subscriptions, in-app revenue, or any other value event your measurement partner can pass back. Campaigns need roughly 50 of that event per week to optimize stably.
Through the measurement partner you already use, on a 7-day click and 1-day view window by default. Because some lapsed users would have returned anyway, pair the campaign with a holdout group — that is the only way to read true incremental return rather than post-exposure activity.
Next step
Talk with the ORCA team about the users you want back, the actions that matter, and how you measure return. We can walk through a re-engagement approach built around your lifecycle.