# How Carlos won back attendees who hadn

## Who and when

Carlos manages a concert venue in Madrid with an average of five shows per month. He has a database of 12,000 contacts, but knows a good percentage haven't bought or opened an email in the past year.

Before the autumn season, he wants to try to win back that dormant audience with a targeted campaign. He doesn't want to send it to the full database, because that would drag open rate metrics down and could generate more suppressions.

## Before vs. after

| Process | Without Nevent AI | With Nevent AI |
|---------|-------------------|----------------|
| Identify inactive contacts | Export list, filter in Excel | Plain-language description |
| Verify segment size | Count rows in Excel | Instant preview |
| Check deliverability | Review panel manually | One question to the assistant |
| Prepare campaign draft | Navigate between panel sections | One instruction to the assistant |

## What you need

- Nevent account with [Email Marketing](https://nevent.ai/en/features/email-marketing) active
- Nevent AI connected in Claude or ChatGPT
- "Read and prepare" access level (minimum)
- Estimated time: 15 minutes

## Step by step

1. **Define who the dormant audience is** — Carlos wants contacts who haven't bought a ticket or opened an email in the last 12 months.

   > "Preview a segment with contacts who haven't bought any ticket in the last 12 months and haven't opened any of my emails in that same period"

   The assistant calculates: 4,200 people.

2. **Refine to avoid overly cold contacts** — Contacts who have been inactive for more than two years have very little chance of reactivating and can generate spam complaints.

   > "How many of those 4,200 registered more than 3 years ago and have never bought?"

   The assistant filters: 1,800 contacts with those characteristics.

   > "Exclude those 1,800 from the segment. Save it as 'Reactivatable dormant autumn 2026'"

   Resulting segment: 2,400 people.

3. **Check domain status before sending** — A reactivation campaign to inactive contacts carries a higher risk of generating complaints. Better to review the domain status first.

   > "Is my sending domain validated and what is the spam suppression rate for the last month?"

   The assistant confirms the domain is in good shape and the spam rate is at 0.05%, below the warning threshold.

4. **Prepare the draft** — Carlos has a specific template for reactivation campaigns.

   > "Create an email campaign draft for the 'Reactivatable dormant autumn 2026' segment using the 'We miss you' template. Subject: 'It's been a while... will you come back?'"

   The assistant creates the draft.

5. **Schedule the send** — Reactivation campaigns work best on weekday mornings.

   > "Schedule that draft for next Thursday at 10:30"

   The assistant requests confirmation and Carlos confirms.

6. **Review results 48 hours later** — Carlos wants to know if the campaign had the expected effect.

   > "How many people opened the 'We miss you' campaign? And how many clicked?"

   The assistant returns the open and click metrics.

   > "How many of those who clicked bought a ticket in the following 48 hours?"

   The assistant crosses click data with subsequent sales.
## Why it works

This workflow combines Nevent's [audience segmentation](https://nevent.ai/en/solutions/segment-event-audience) — which allows building lists with very precise inactivity criteria — with the [attendee retention](https://nevent.ai/en/solutions/retain-event-attendees) module, designed to reconnect with audiences that haven't interacted in a while.

The key is the preview step: Carlos doesn't send to 12,000 people, but to 2,400 who have a real reactivation profile. That protects his sending reputation and improves the campaign's chances of success.

## Variants

- For an annual festival, the dormant audience can be defined as "attendees from previous editions who haven't bought for the current edition" rather than inactivity by time.
- If you have different levels of inactivity (6 months, 12 months, 24 months), you can create separate segments and send different messages with tiered offers.
- The same logic works for SMS or WhatsApp if you have those channels active in your account.
**Want to see how reactivation works in your account?:** [Nevent](https://nevent.ai/en/solutions/retain-event-attendees) has specific tools for winning back and retaining attendees.
**[Request information with no commitment →](https://nevent.ai/en/request-information)**