Here’s a cold reality about email marketing: Subscribers are going to lose interest in your messages (and maybe even your brand). This loss of interest is not a phenomenon to ignore either. So, how you get these folks to re-engage with you?
Here are some surefire tips on how to create a winning re-engagement email campaign to win back your inactive subscribers or customers.
Identify Your Inactive Subscribers
Start by identifying those subscribers who have been a part of your list for at least 6-12 months and have never engaged with your emails. Put them to one side in a separate segment or group. Decide whether to delete them altogether or throw them in with the next group we’ll talk about.
Then, identify subscribers who haven’t engaged with you in a set period of time. How you determine these factors comes down to:
Type of Behavior: Review the email, onsite and purchase behaviors of your subscribers, and base your identification methodology on the results. Note the number of opens or clicks as well as the number of purchases over a fixed period of time.
Frequency: Base the timeframe on your email sending frequency. If you send monthly, you may decide a year or 6 months of inactivity is a proper timeframe. If you mail daily, your inactive group may start at 30 days of inactivity. If you’re somewhere in between, a good starting number may be 90 days of inactivity.
Once you determine what constitutes an “inactive” subscriber, you can move on to segmentation.
Segment Your Inactive Subscribers
Once you have identified your inactive subscribers, segment them out of your normal list. For this segment, create relevant content to run innovative and exclusive re-engagement campaigns.
Note: We put together a great eBook with Adestra on the “Foundations of Email Marketing: Targeting & Segmentation.”
You can further segment your inactive subscribers based on the following criteria:
- Geographic data
- Demographics
- Personas
- Purchase Habits
- Lifecycle Stage
- Email Clients
- Sign-up Source
- Social Profile Activity
- Their Last Interaction with You
Do Something Different
Re-engagement campaigns need to be radically different. If your “special” emails look and feel too much like your regular campaigns, they are just as likely to be ignored.
Create emails that jolt your inactive subscribers out of their slumber. Use a different tone which grips them and makes them read. Include never-before-seen offers that catch their eye and arouse in them a sense of excitement. Here are some things you can change or add in your re-engagement emails:
- Tone and style of the email content as well as that of the subject line
- Personalized messages and salutations
- The term “We Miss You” (or some derivative of it)
- Different offers, discounts, & incentives
- Videos and cheat sheets
- Links and prominent CTAs buttons
Give Them A Way Out
Simply put: An unsubscribe is better than a spam complaint. They essentially mean the same thing, but complaints hurt you much more in the long run.
In your re-engagement campaigns, provide your recipients with easy, obvious ways to unsubscribe. Include a big, bold and prominent unsubscribe button in all your re-engagement emails if you want.
There is no point in holding back someone who doesn’t want to be part of your business.
Wrapping Up
Re-engagement emails can help to convince your inactive subscribers about your brand value and the benefits they stand to gain by coming back to your “family”.
Want expert help in setting up your re-engagement campaigns? Contact InboxArmy now for a free consultation.
