Skip to main content

No matter how great you think your marketing campaign is, it’s not worth much unless your prospects do what you want them to do—read, click, respond, or show some kind of engagement. When it comes to email campaigns, this is particularly true. That’s because inactive or unengaged subscribers could hurt your whole campaign, damage your sender reputation, and set your efforts back to start.

What’s Wrong with an Unengaged Email List?

Those unengaged subscribers make your results look terrible (low open and click through rates, etc.) and they could pull your numbers down even farther as your unengaged subscribers grow. Email service providers like Gmail and Yahoo pay attention to how your subscribers interact with your emails. If users don’t interact, the email service provider will start to assume your emails are irrelevant, or even worse – SPAM! Once that happens your sender reputation starts to drop and your whole email list could suffer as a result.

How to Reengage with Your Email Subscribers

Now, that all sounds a bit doom-and-gloom so it’s best to avoid it at all costs. But how? You could just cut out a big part of your list and wash your hands of all those seemingly uninterested recipients. Does the idea of such a broad scale dump of possible prospects sound a little terrifying? It should. After all, a couple of those prospects may still be interested.

The solution? Don’t just abruptly remove a huge chunk of your list. Instead move them into a new campaign: a re-engagement campaign. Give those prospects another chance to engage and give them due warning that they’ll be removed from your list if they don’t take action.

These subscribers may have gone deaf to your usual email messaging or maybe they forgot what made them sign up for your email in the first place. Remind them. With a re-engagement campaign, you can reintroduce yourself, get heard in a new way, and remind your subscribers how great your products and services are.

Steps to an Email Reengagement Campaign

The first step in a re-engagement campaign is to determine whom you’ll target. This will be largely determined by your sales cycle. If your successful sales happen a month or two after initial contact then perhaps a subscriber would be deemed inactive or unengaged after 4 or 5 months. At the very least, anyone who has not engaged in a year should be lumped into the unengaged category.

Now for the fun part!

The second step allows you to try something different, think out of the box. Consider this re-engagement campaign as an opportunity to do something new and exciting. Create a whole new messaging from your usual emails and use a fresh new design that still speaks to your brand. The campaign should consist of two to three emails with the final email acting as a goodbye note, telling users if they don’t take action they will be unsubscribed.  And don’t be afraid to be funny or tongue-in-cheek. Take a chance and turn some heads and bring in some new customers.

In all likelihood the re-engagement campaign will not immediately draw in droves of sales. However, that is not the ultimate goal (although on occasion it can be a great byproduct!); the goal is to add to your active subscribers and clean your list. A clean and active list equals better deliverability and better deliverability means your emails will reach the inbox of more of your prospects who could then convert into sales, brand loyalists, and lifelong advocates.

If you’re ready to improve your email deliverability and launch a re-engagement campaign contact the email experts at CloudControlMedia today.

~Marcy Ansley