Email Engagement – Email Marketing Blog

Proven Ways to Re-Engage Inactive Email List Subscribers

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon April 12, 2023April 12, 2023in Email Engagement

Introduction

Even the most engaged email list subscribers may become inactive over time, which can significantly impact the success of your email campaigns. These inactive subscribers can cause your email engagement rates to plummet and negatively affect your overall campaign efficiency. However, the good news is that re-engaging these subscribers is not only possible, but it can be a highly effective strategy for improving performance.

In this post, we will discuss the importance of re-engaging inactive email subscribers and provide you with proven strategies to bring them back to your brand. We will also explore best practices and effective tactics for crafting and implementing win-back campaigns, measuring success, and continuous optimization.

Understanding Inactive Subscribers

Inactive subscribers are those who have not engaged with your emails over a certain period. The definition of inactive varies by company and industry, but it typically includes those who have not opened or clicked on an email in the last three to six months.

Unfortunately, inactive list members can have a significant impact on your email marketing campaigns. They can reduce your overall open and click-through rates, decrease engagement metrics, and increase the likelihood of emails being marked as spam. These metrics have a direct impact on your email deliverability.

Re-engaging inactive subscribers is essential in helping you maintain a healthy subscriber list. It also has the potential to increase revenue by bringing back subscribers who may have lost interest or moved on to other brands.

Proven Ways to Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers

Segment Your List

By creating segments based on subscriber behavior, such as engagement levels and past purchases, marketers can tailor their messaging and offers to better resonate with those subscribers. Best practices for segmenting email lists include regularly reviewing and updating segments, using data-driven insights to inform segment creation, and testing different messaging and offers for each segment to optimize engagement.

Personalize the Message

This can be achieved by including the recipient name in the email greeting, referencing their past purchase or browsing history, adjusting the email content based on their demographics or location, and a number of other strategies. For example, sending a birthday or anniversary email can make inactive subscribers feel valued.

Conduct Promotions and Discounts

Offering exclusive promotions or discounts to inactive subscribers is another powerful tactic to encourage re-engagement. These offers can include free shipping, a percentage discount on their next purchase, or a gift with purchase. The key is to make the offer exclusive and time-sensitive, so subscribers feel motivated to act quickly.

Run Win-Back Campaigns

These email campaigns are specifically designed to prompt inactive subscribers to engage with your brand and typically involve sending a series of personalized emails to your inactive segment with a clear call-to-action and a sense of urgency.

Crafting Effective Win-Back Campaigns

The first step in crafting an effective win-back campaign is identifying the inactive subscribers. An easy way to do this is to segment your list based on activity or inactivity, or use automation to identify subscribers who have not opened or clicked on your emails during a specific timeframe.

Compelling Subject Lines

Your subject line is the first thing your subscribers see, and it can make or break their decision to open your email. Make sure that your subject line and email content is clear, engaging, relevant, and personalized to each subscriber to achieve an effective win-back campaign.

Timing and Frequency

To determine the timing and frequency of your win-back campaign, it is critical to follow email marketing best practices. You do not want to send too many emails too often, and risk annoying your subscribers, but you also do not want to wait too long to re-engage them. The optimal timing depends on your industry and audience, but here are some tips that can help you get started:

Set a timeframe for when you will start your win-back campaign. Generally, it is best to start within 30 to 60 days of subscriber inactivity
Determine the frequency of your win-back campaign. Will you send one email or a series of emails? How often will you send them? Typically, it is best to start with a series or two or three emails sent a few days apart
Adjust the frequency of your messages based on the response you receive. If subscribers are responding positively, you may want to increase the frequency. If they are not, you may want to decrease or change your approach

Measure Everything

Analytics are essential for measuring the effectiveness of any digital marketing campaign. By tracking key metrics like open rates, CTR, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates you can determine what is working and what is not, then make informed decisions to adjust your strategy.

See: Email Subject Lines That Work

Other Tips and Best Practices

Avoid spam filters and email bounces

When sending re-engagement campaigns, make sure to follow email best practices to avoid being flagged as spam or having emails bounced. Some tips to keep in mind include:

Avoid using spam trigger words in subject lines and email content
Ensure your email lists are clean and up to date
Test your emails for deliverability before sending them out

Provide Valuable Content and Relevant Offers

To encourage subscribers to engage with your emails again, provide content and offers that are tailored to their interests and needs. This could include personalized recommendations, exclusive content, limited-time offers, or surveys and feedback requests based on your analysis of subscriber behavior and preferences. Try different subject lines, email content, or calls to action to see what resonates best with your audience.

Maintain a Consistent Sending Schedule

Consistency is key when it comes to effectively re-engaging inactive subscribers. Be sure to maintain a regular email sending frequency, but do not overwhelm subscribers with too many emails. Consider sending a series of emails spaced out over a few weeks instead of bombarding an inactive list member with too many messages at once.

Offer Easy Opt-Out or Opt-Down Options

While the goal of re-engagement campaigns is to encourage subscribers to engage with your emails again, it is important to offer an easy opt-out option for those who no longer wish to receive messages and an opt-down option for those who want to adjust how many messages they receive from you. Including this unsubscribe link in your emails can help keep your email list clean and prevent list members from marketing your emails as spam.

See: Create Lasting Value with Evergreen Content in your Emails

Conclusion

Re-engaging inactive subscribers can be a valuable way to improve the performance of your email marketing campaigns. By segmenting your email list, personalizing your content, implementing win-back campaigns, offering opt-out or opt-down options, and tracking your efforts, you can encourage dormant subscribers to take action.

20 Effective Call to Action (CTA) Phrases

Posted by Marianne Celluccion June 5, 2020June 8, 2020in Email Engagement, Email Marketing Best Practices, Marketing Strategy

A good call to action accomplishes two things:

1) it tells the subscriber or visitor exactly what they’re getting when they click on something; and
2) it gives them a sense of urgency and immediacy.

Use a command that clearly states what action you want them to take. Which are you more likely to click on: “Click Here” or “Get it Now!”? Would you be more enticed by “Download” or “Download Now, Free!”? Creating a sense of urgency entices your readers to act quickly. Of course, when the action is less urgent, you’ll want to us use a call to action that works better in your overall site design or email (e.g., “Learn More,” “See How It Works,” etc.). Ideally, you want to start your CTA with a verb.

A New Frontier for Marketers

Posted by Net Atlantic Marketingon June 13, 2018June 13, 2018in Email Automation, Email Engagement, Email Marketing Content, Email Marketing Testing

How Artificial Intelligence is changing the way marketing departments maneuver in a highly competitive marketplace

In our last post, Can Artificial Intelligence help you become a more effective marketer, we discussed how real-world Artificial Intelligence (AI) is far more helpful than the malicious computers found in sci-fi fantasy stories. As AI assistants become more commonly integrated within marketing automation software, marketing departments are having to adapt their workflows to best use this dynamic tool.

Take a look at a fairly typical workflow for creating a summer promotion campaign:

The Marketing Director creates the goal for a summer promotion and the channels they would like to use for the messaging (email, social media, Sunday circulars, etc.).
The Marketing Specialists pour over data from the company’s most recent campaigns as well as last year’s promotion to determine the right type of assets to create, what the content should say and how to effectively send out promotion. This requires the use of several tools, such as Google Analytics, reporting in email software, and Customer Relationship Management systems.
The team then separates their audience into various targeted segments to personalize the promotion to these unique groups (i.e. advertisements of toys being sent to parents, men’s clothing being sent to male customers, etc.).
Once the time-consuming task of data mining is complete, the Marketing Coordinators and Specialists begin creating the various assets for the campaign.
After the content is created, the team sets up a series of tests to fine tune the materials. These tests include: A/B split testing, Email Inbox previewing, SPAM analysis, and many others.
Finally, the campaign is deployed and the team focuses on gathering data to fine tune the messaging as the campaign progresses.

Now imagine the same team has an AI assistant connected to all of their various systems. How would the process look different? The first major difference would relate to the automation of large data mining tasks. AI assistants would automatically segment the audience list and could suggest content for each of the targeted groups. The assistant would also automatically establish testing procedures and give recommendations for improving campaign performance. Essentially, an AI assistant would be able to rapidly complete tasks that are time-consuming for humans, allowing for the marketing to focus on building new creative ideas for communicating with their customers.

Industry leaders are predicting that in the coming years, many of the tasks currently related to marketing campaigns will be effectively automated. While on the surface this might sound alarming, it actually frees the team up to concur new challenges and be more productive. Each generation of marketers have embraced new forms of technology. From computer assisted drawing in 1980’s to online advertisements in the 1990’s, our industry has grown and come up with evermore creative and thought provoking ways to communicate. Now with the advent of AI assistants, we truly are facing a new frontier in communications.

Get Your Email List Into Shape For Better Campaign Results

Posted by Karen Frascaon May 31, 2017June 27, 2017in Email Delivery & Deliverability, Email Engagement, Email List Maintenance, Email Marketing Best Practices, Subscription Management

Now is a perfect time to get your email list into shape. Why? Well, just like our bodies can’t function at optimal levels if we don’t take care of them, our email lists can also suffer if they are not getting the attention they need.

A clean, up-to-date email list is critical to the effectiveness of your campaigns, and to ensuring that you’re getting the best possible results. Once your list is in good shape, with a little ongoing maintenance, you’ll see improved delivery, response, and conversion rates — and a better-looking bottom line.

How To Make Sure Your Emails Get Through To The Gmail Primary Tab

Posted by Steven O'Brienon April 27, 2017in Email Delivery & Deliverability, Email Engagement, Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing Content, Email Marketing Testing, Email Marketing Tracking & Reporting, Sender Reputation

Okay, I’m just going to put this out there: the “Gmail issue” – that is, the ever increasing challenge of getting marketing emails to land in the Gmail Primary tab — is super frustrating! There. I said it! And I know I’m not alone on this. However…

Do you know who doesn’t hate the Gmail issue? Gmail, that’s who! And thank goodness for that, because they’ve given us all a reason to pause and consider how we think about our email campaigns, and what our subscribers want to know, receive and read.

That said, from a delivery and compliance perspective, senders can do a lot to ensure they get the best possible results in terms of where they want their mail to land at Gmail.

Using Social Media and Email Marketing Together for Better Campaign Results

Posted by Karen Frascaon April 20, 2017in Email Engagement, Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing Content, List Building Strategies, Marketing Strategy, Social Media Marketing, Targeted Email Marketing

Email is widely regarded as one of the best ways to build long-term customer relationships, and it’s the most powerful marketing channel for retention and driving conversions.

On the other hand, social media is great for creating a sense of community around your brand, as well as inspiring real-time conversations with your customers and prospects. And then there’s the ability to deliver highly-targeted ads.

While it may not yet be common practice to use these two channels in conjunction with one another, the results can be quite powerful.

How to Get an A+ on Your Email Campaigns

Posted by Steven O'Brienon March 23, 2017in Design & Layout, Email Engagement, Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing Content, Email Marketing Testing, Email Marketing Tracking & Reporting, Email Templates, Design & Layout, Marketing Strategy

With a few months’ worth of the new Net Atlantic Executive Summary report under your belt, you may be wondering how you can improve your grade.

We recommend studying and reviewing trends in your list(s) from month to month. Study your subscribers, list growth, sending habits, opens and clicks, and more. The better you understand each element of your email marketing program, the better chance you have of improving your grade.

Of course, studying is only the beginning; you have to apply what you learn. Below, I’ll take you through the main areas of the Executive Summary Report, and provide some tips on how to improve your results in each one.

Prohibited Content: The Shark in the Email Marketing Waters

Posted by Steven O'Brienon August 4, 2016August 4, 2016in Email Delivery & Deliverability, Email Engagement, Email Marketing Best Practices, Email Marketing Content, Sender Reputation

As you dip your toes into the waters of email marketing, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that some of your email might contain content that people don’t want to receive. This is what ESP’s refer to as prohibited content. When you send a message with content like this — snap! — you’ll feel the jaws of compliance bite down on your email program!

Hello…Is it my email you’re looking for?

Posted by Steven O'Brienon June 30, 2016July 14, 2016in Email Delivery & Deliverability, Email Engagement, Email List Maintenance, Email Marketing Best Practices, Subscription Management

Lionel Richie asked this question (well sort of) back in the ’80s, with his heartstring-tugging hit song Hello.

And you could ask the same question of your subscribers. You know, the ones who haven’t opened one of your mailings in a while. Or the ones who haven’t engaged with you in a way that shows they’re still interested.

Fear the Walking Dead…DOMAINS

Posted by Steven O'Brienon May 19, 2016in Email Delivery & Deliverability, Email Engagement, Email List Maintenance, Email Marketing Best Practices, Sender Reputation

Addresses from dead domains are like zombies. They exist in your list and look kind of like the real thing (i.e., valid addresses that you can send to). They may have been on your list for a long time, maybe since you started collecting addresses way back when. But, like zombies, they are mere shadows of their former selves.

When compliance folks like me talk about dead domains, we are referring to addresses within a sender’s list that are from domains which are no longer in business, or are no longer providing mail client services. Having addresses from these domains on a mailing list is an indication to any good compliance specialist that the list is in dire need of clean-up, or that the list owner may have purchased addresses. Neither of these scenarios is good for the client’s sender reputation, nor the ESP’s overall reputation.

Introduction

Understanding Inactive Subscribers

Proven Ways to Re-Engage Inactive Subscribers

Crafting Effective Win-Back Campaigns

Other Tips and Best Practices

Conclusion

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