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Disengaged e-mail subscribers are a marketer's worst enemy. Not only does their presence on your list suppress open, clickthrough and conversion rates, it can increase the cost of mailing your list and even negatively impact your deliverability.
E-mail marketing best practices dictate removing subscribers who haven't taken action with any of your e-mails in the past three to six months, and moving forward with the ones who are still opening and clicking. But for many marketers, the thought that some of those subscribers might still be interested makes deleting them from the list a gut-wrenching experience.
Do your business, your conscience and your list a favor: Cut disengaged subscribers loose, but only after you try a re-engagement campaign. Here are five keys to successful e-mail subscriber re-engagement:
1. Create opportunities for action. The goal of a re-engagement campaign isn't to close sales; it's to separate people who are still somewhat interested in your business from those who have completely checked out (and probably won't see your re-engagement e-mail anyway).
Make it easy for those still-interested subscribers to take some kind of action. Ask subscribers to tell you what they want to hear about by filling out a survey. Or ask them to tell you how often they want to hear from you (by clicking a link that says "weekly" or "monthly," or by visiting your preference center). Or use a simple yes/no question to ask subscribers if they're still interested in the benefit they get in your e-mails (this is a great opportunity to remind them of why they signed up originally).
2. Incentivize re-engagement. To maximize response to your re-engagement campaign, offer an incentive to subscribers.
While this can be a discount, you may find more success offering something of value that doesn't remind them that, ultimately, you want money from them. Remember, you're not trying to close a sale just yet. Free whitepapers, consultations, recipes and other relevant content can work well here: Not only do they deliver value, they re-establish your authority and expertise, and create reasons to talk to reengaged subscribers later.
3. Bring back your greatest hits. Subscribers who aren't engaged now used to open and click. Which of your e-mails got them to do that?
Mine your best-performing e-mails for ideas on what kind of content to offer to disengaged subscribers.
Better yet, identify groups of now-disengaged subscribers who likely share an interest in specific areas of your business, based on their past click activity and/or demographics. Segment your disengaged subscribers, and approach each group with a different angle.
4. Don't give up after the first try. Even when subscribers were engaged, they didn't open or click on every e-mail. And they won't all open/click on your first re-engagement try.
Approach re-engagement as a sequence of two to three e-mails. Send the second message to people who didn't respond to the first one, and the third to people who didn't respond to the second one. Starting with the second message, let subscribers know that if they don't respond, they will no longer receive the benefits of your e-mails. Use the last message in your sequence as a clear, urgent notification that subscribers are hearing from you for the last time unless they respond.
5. Know when to let go. No matter how good your re-engagement campaign is, not everyone is going to respond to it. In fact, odds are good that more than half of the subscribers you target with it will not respond to any of your re-engagement e-mails.
Rather than seeing this as a loss, recognize it as affirmation that there is no point to keeping these "dead weight" subscribers on your list. Remind yourself that a bloated, unresponsive list is bad for response rates and deliverability. And move forward with the subscribers who still want to hear from you.
Justin Premick is the director of education marketing at AWeber Communications, a provider of on-demand e-mail marketing software. He spearheads AWeber's efforts to teach businesses how to build lasting customer relationships via permission-based email marketing. He can be reached at justinpremick@aweber.com.
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