E-commerce Link: Wake Them Up!
How to re-engage inactives on your e-mail list
July 2006 By Regina Brady
Does it surprise you that a substantial portion of your e-mail list is inactive? If you’re like most marketers, you’ll find between 25 percent and 40 percent of your list is not opening or clicking through on your messages. This group drags down the overall performance of your program, so it’s important to identify your inactives and create strategies that will re-engage them.
Define Inactives
Someone who has not opened or clicked on your messages in the past six months certainly is not avidly involved with your programs. Use this time frame to conduct benchmark analysis. If you don’t send e-mail on at least a monthly basis, you may want to use a longer period, such as nine months. To analyze your list, start by selecting list members who subscribed more than six months ago. From this group, identify those recipients who have not clicked-through or opened your messages. Now you’ve isolated your least-productive contacts. You can calculate your inactive rate by dividing this group by the total number of names that met the first criteria.
Further Analysis
Now that you have isolated your inactives, do some additional analysis. Look at the source of the names. Are they co-registration names, individuals who participated in a contest and opted to also receive your e-mails, or are these appended names? These names may not be as qualified as other names on your house list. Also, examine the list by domain. Do you have a good deal of names at free e-mail accounts? If so, you probably do not have the primary e-mail address of these members. Also, if you see a substantial percentage of these addresses come from a particular domain, this may indicate your e-mail either is blocked or delivered to a bulk folder. Some ISPs flag accounts that have been closed for a substantial period of time and use them as spam traps. Continuing to mail to these names may jeopardize your overall mailings and result in delivery of all your mail to a bulk folder.
Can you determine other data attributes that are consistent across your inactives? Is there a particular demographic characteristic that stands out? This may indicate that your content or offers are not resonating with the group. Are some of these names buyers? If you have postal address information, consider doing a matchback against online and offline orders. While these buyers may not respond to your e-mails, these messages may be influencing a sale, so you’ll want to put these names in a separate category and continue to mail them. If you see particular trends based on any of these circumstances, this information can help drive your communication strategy.
Define Inactives
Someone who has not opened or clicked on your messages in the past six months certainly is not avidly involved with your programs. Use this time frame to conduct benchmark analysis. If you don’t send e-mail on at least a monthly basis, you may want to use a longer period, such as nine months. To analyze your list, start by selecting list members who subscribed more than six months ago. From this group, identify those recipients who have not clicked-through or opened your messages. Now you’ve isolated your least-productive contacts. You can calculate your inactive rate by dividing this group by the total number of names that met the first criteria.
Further Analysis
Now that you have isolated your inactives, do some additional analysis. Look at the source of the names. Are they co-registration names, individuals who participated in a contest and opted to also receive your e-mails, or are these appended names? These names may not be as qualified as other names on your house list. Also, examine the list by domain. Do you have a good deal of names at free e-mail accounts? If so, you probably do not have the primary e-mail address of these members. Also, if you see a substantial percentage of these addresses come from a particular domain, this may indicate your e-mail either is blocked or delivered to a bulk folder. Some ISPs flag accounts that have been closed for a substantial period of time and use them as spam traps. Continuing to mail to these names may jeopardize your overall mailings and result in delivery of all your mail to a bulk folder.
Can you determine other data attributes that are consistent across your inactives? Is there a particular demographic characteristic that stands out? This may indicate that your content or offers are not resonating with the group. Are some of these names buyers? If you have postal address information, consider doing a matchback against online and offline orders. While these buyers may not respond to your e-mails, these messages may be influencing a sale, so you’ll want to put these names in a separate category and continue to mail them. If you see particular trends based on any of these circumstances, this information can help drive your communication strategy.




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