Inactive subscribers. A term that an email marketer knows all too well. These are the people who have displayed a decline in engagement by not opening or clicking on your emails. So what could be the reason for these subscribers to go quiet? Well, there are many reasons (which is a whole blog topic in itself), but the most common one is a lack of interest in the content of your emails. But regardless of the reason, you should always have a re-engagement tactic in place, so that you can put yourself back in good standing with your subscribers.
In this blog I will outline a 5-step guide for re-engaging inactive subscribers.
Step 1: Identify the Unengaged
Go through your subscriber lists and segment all of the people who have not opened or clicked on any of your campaigns in 6-12 months.
Step 2: Create a re-engagement campaign
What
better way to reach out to your unengaged subscribers then by sending an email to check in and see if they still would like to receive communication from you. With this opportunity you could include a special promo/discount, a thank you note or actively ask for their feedback. But most importantly, with this type of email campaign, make sure that the content is relevant and worthy of their time since this is the last chance you have to impress them.
Step 3: Check the reporting
Since numbers don’t lie, check out the reporting from the re-engagement campaign to see how it performed. This will be the true test to determine if your campaign was affective by seeing who out of those unengaged subscribers were engaged.
Step 4: Au revoir. Hasta la vista. Goodbye.
Let’s face it – some subscribers may have just decided to move on. And that’s ok! You took a shot at reaching out to them and they didn’t engage in your email like you hoped for, so now it’s your turn to say goodbye.
While you may have lost some potential customers, on the positive side you will be removing any deadweight from affecting the performance of the rest of your subscriber list.
Step 5: Go back to your old content
Revisit your content and see what can be changed in order to up your game and give subscribers a reason to hang around. The first 90 days after someone signs up are very important, so be sure to focus on effectively communicating to your new subscribers what types of emails they can expect from you and what is in it for them.
To sum it up again, it is all about how relevant the content is to your subscribers. If the email isn’t interesting, they won’t be opening it.
