Re-Engagement Campaigns

Re-engagement campaigns are paid ad campaigns aimed at people who already have your app, built to bring lapsed or inactive users back rather than to find new ones.

You have a pile of installs that went quiet. Re-engagement is where you pay to reach those specific people again, out in the ad networks, and pull them back into the app. Both Google and Meta run campaign types built for exactly this. Google offers App campaigns for engagement, targeting your existing users, and Meta lets you run app ads against people who already installed. The best of these deep-link the person straight to a relevant screen or offer, so tapping the ad drops them where they can act, not on a generic launch screen.

You run these when your owned channels are not enough on their own. Someone who turned off notifications and never opens your emails is out of reach for free, but you can still buy your way back in front of them with an ad. Paired with a clear offer and a working deep link, it can revive users who genuinely forgot you existed.

Watch the measurement carefully. This needs your own user lists and functioning deep links to work at all, and beyond the setup there is a subtler trap. Many of the people who came back were going to open the app that week anyway, and the campaign simply took credit for them. If you count every return as a win, you will happily spend rupees to reach people who cost you nothing. Measure the incremental return, the extra opens you would not have gotten without the spend.

Pay for the users you actually brought back, not the ones who were already on their way.