Have you ever received a mail or a letter from your bank stating that your account is lying ‘dormant’, and you need to activate it? Well, a similar analogy can be applied to your business and email subscribers.
Key Takeaways:
- Inactive subscribers are contacts who have not opened or engaged with emails for many months and represent both risk and opportunity in your list.
- A B testing subject lines on small segments helps identify hooks that reawaken attention without overhauling your entire email strategy.
- Fresh offers, incentives, and creative value propositions can break pattern blindness and give subscribers a reason to reengage.
- Syncing email lists with platforms like Facebook Custom Audiences lets you retarget inactive subscribers in channels where they still pay attention.
- Re engagement campaigns also serve as list hygiene tools by identifying who still wants to hear from you and who should be removed.
Who are Inactive Email Subscribers?
When you send email notifications, some subscribers open and read while others press ‘delete’ without even clicking it. The former category of subscribers is active – they are already engaged.
However, it is the latter category of email subscribers that you need to worry about because they are inactive, passive or dormant and they have not taken the intended action for 6 months or more. The reasons could be any – the emails are going to their SPAM folder, emails are no longer relevant to them, or they don’t want to receive emails but have not unsubscribed yet. You need to re-engage these subscribers.
Here are some useful tips for re-engaging inactive email subscribers.
A/B Test Subject Lines
When you send an email to subscribers, the first thing that grabs their attention is the subject line. If they find it interesting and useful, they will open the email or else simply ignore it. A simple A/B testing the subject line can resolve this issue.
Next time, you run an email marketing campaign, identify two groups of inactive subscribers. Send them different subject lines to each group but keep the content of the main body of the email same. For instance, one subject line may talk about the discount offered while the other may showcase the validity of the offer. After the campaign is over, do an analysis of the subject lines that were clicked the most. You would not only have reactivated some subscribers but also get a fair idea about which subject lines get conversions. Use the same subject line for the rest of the passive subscribers.
Experiment with Offers and Incentives
Variety is the spice of life! Just the way you like to dress up differently and try new foods every day, even your email subscribers expect something fresh. So, instead of offering the same percentage of offers and incentives, keep them engaged with something new. For example, simply saying 10% off on your next purchase, you could offer them free shipping as well along with the discount. Or perhaps, a complimentary trial with a new product launch. Basically, try a mix and match to offer discounts or sales that tempt them to open the emails.
Target Your Email List with Facebook Audiences
Did you know that you can integrate Facebook ads with your existing email contact list? This re-engagement strategy is quite effective because not all your subscribers follow you on Facebook. You can use ‘Facebook Custom Audience’ feature to implement this. Just make sure that the offer or incentive is such that the inactive subscribers feel tempted to avail it.
Figure Out the Ideal Time to Message Them
Remember that your customers have subscribed to several other emails. So, it is quite likely that your email may get lost in their inbox. However, you can increase the probability of clicks by sending the emails at an appropriate time. There are various studies which say that the best days to send emails are Tuesday, Thursday and Wednesday; and the best time to send emails is 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 8 pm, 10 pm and 12 pm. However, do not forget to analyze the performance of emails against the time so that you know whether this has worked or not.
Send a Series of Re-Engagement Emails
Just don’t give up on engaging your email subscribers. Even if they don’t respond to your first one or two engagement emails, keep sending them a few more with different subject lines. You could personalize the email and give them an exclusive offer. For example, ‘15% discount only for you’ or ‘use this promo code for your next purchase’. Other emails could be giving them new product updates or simply telling them that you miss them. The last mail in the series could be giving them an option to receive certain mails, update their subscription preferences or unsubscribe. This is certainly going to get them into action – either they will unsubscribe or change their subscription settings. But, at least you will have activates them in some way and got clarity on their status.
Make sure to have a call to action in your emails in this series of re-engagement so that subscribers know the next course of action.
Cut Down Your Email List
Let’s say; you have 1000 subscribers in your email list. Only 500 are active, and the rest are dormant. Send a straightforward mail to the bunch of inactive subscribers asking if they would like to stay subscribed. Act on the basis of the response you receive. Delete the ones that do not reply at all. As mentioned in point#5 above, doing this activity will give clarity to you. You can now forget the deadwood subscribers and focus all your efforts on the other ones.
Inactive subscribers should not be ignored. By paying a little attention to them, you can re-engage them easily.
