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6 Steps Toward Email Re-Engagement

 In Email Marketing, Re-engagement

Are the inactive members of your address book tantamount to zero or potential opportunity? The fine art of doing nothing sounds like the life of leisure. And so it doesn’t take a rhetorical master to spin the concept of nothing and turn it into something quite substantial. Lately, even email marketers have found the topic worthy of discussion.

Those members who receive your emails regularly but do not click, may not appear to read, and have not yet unsubscribed are easily classified as inactive email subscribers. Some marketers might be advised to remove these names, the impact of which would certainly improve unique open and click-to-open metrics. Other marketers may be convinced to re-engage inactives via promotions and sweepstakes, or highly targeted marketing.

Ponder the thought that these inactive members of your address book are little sleeping giants keeping your business softly in the background until the moment is right at which time they click, they buy, they share, and your brand again becomes top-of-mind. These apparent slackers are simply opportunities for brand impression and with a fatal stroke of suppression, you’ve removed the ability to keep your brand in their faces from now until eternity.

Reactivation Campaigns

Reactivation campaigns targeting your disengaged list segments (those that haven’t clicked a single link or opened a campaign in 6 to 12 months) create opportunities for action. Here are six steps that will help you create a smart reactivation campaign that re-engages your disengaged.

Six Steps To Re-engage Inactives

  1. Create a new list segment of those email addresses that have not opened a message or clicked in the last six months.
  2. Create 2 re-engagement campaigns:
    • The first campaign invites inactive members to continue receiving your email with a enticing and smart subject line. Ideally, it should provide a value proposition or incentive: a discount coupon, gift card, product sample, demo, or link to a whitepaper. You could ask your subscribers to take a feedback survey that asks them how to improve your content. All the while, keep your focus. The main purpose of this campaign is to encourage recipients to re-engage or simply to unsubscribe, once and for all.
    • The second campaign, sent out in about 7 business days, informs those that did not open the first campaign that you’ll be removing them from future communications if they don’t re-opt-in by a certain deadline. This is an aggressive step but you can always decide to re-engage at a later date when you have an attractive offer.
  3. Keep your design simple, so that the re-opt-in and unsubscribe calls-to-action are clear.
  4. Keep the campaign short and to the point.
  5. After the re-engagement campaign is over, keep your word and remove disengaged members from your active campaigns.
  6. Make your next regular campaign spectacular and send it out within the next 2 weeks.

Sample Campaigns

re-engagement email example b2b
re-engagement email example b2c
re-engagement email example b2c
re-engagement email example b2c
re-engagement email example b2b
re-engagement email example b2c
re-engagement email example b2b
re-engagement email example b2b

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