Best methods for reactivating an inactive email list

It happens to the best of us: our once-enthusiastic subscribers lose interest in our material and stop clicking, reading, or interacting with it. Unengaged subscribers alter our numbers, leaving us to wonder, “Was it anything we did?”

It’s crucial to remember, though, that churn is typical. It is fairly uncommon for subscribers to become disengaged over a lengthy period of time (even if it does feel a little personal).

In this piece, we’ll go over best practices for unengaged subscribers, including how to identify them, re-engage them, and what you can do to reduce unengaged lists in the future.

What causes someone to be disengaged?

Unengaged subscribers are often individuals who stop opening emails entirely. A subscriber may interact infrequently or miss a few emails, but someone who hasn’t read the information in six months or more is considered unengaged.

Someone may quit interacting with your material for a variety of reasons, including:

• You are sending them far too many emails.
• They are unfamiliar with the given name.
• Because your emails aren’t sent on a regular basis, people don’t recall subscribing.
• They have lost interest in the brand.
• They haven’t been paying attention to the material lately.
• Their inbox is overflowing.

You can’t control a subscriber’s degree of interest or how crowded their inbox is, but you can manage your email cadence, the name of your organization, and the amount of autonomy you provide the subscriber.

Best practices for sending emails to a list:

• When they join up, tell them how frequently they’ll hear from you (e.g. daily, weekly, or monthly)
• Maintain a distinguishable from name.
• Provide a preference center where subscribers may choose the kind of emails they wish to receive (e.g. promotions, newsletters, etc.)
• Allow customers to cancel their membership for a period of 30 days.

What should you do about unengaged subscribers who are impacting your metrics?

Once you’ve imported your list and are beginning to expand your audience, it’s critical to pay attention to who gets disenchanted with your content.

Your disengaged subscribers might have an influence on your email engagement stats over time. So here are some pointers on how to purge your list and boost your campaign stats.

Create a section to identify your disengaged subscribers. In the preceding video, we construct a section that has not launched a campaign in the last 12 weeks.

You may change that time to fit your organization’s needs. You may exclude your disengaged group from your campaigns after it has been formed. On the other hand, you may segment depending on who is the most engaged with your email content. Reward their loyalty with early bird offers, special promos, or just a thank you message.

You may also put unengaged subscribers in a distinct category using the same rationale. After you’ve separated your unengaged subscribers into their own category, you can start catering to them with a re-engagement campaign.

Developing a re-engagement strategy

Before you delete unengaged subscribers from your list, you should launch a re-engagement campaign to entice them back. After all, retaining consumers is less expensive than acquiring new ones.

You may start your re-engagement campaign after you’ve built a division for your unengaged subscribers. This should give a nurturing environment.

The first email

Your initial email of re-engagement should be extremely tailored. For example, you may individually address the subscriber with a message like, “Cameron, we miss you.”

This email should request that your subscriber confirm their want to continue on your mailing list. Ideally, this email would direct subscribers to a preference center where they may unsubscribe completely or adjust the frequency of the emails.

The CTA in the Framebridge email below makes it simple to stay on the Framebridge mailing list. The material is likewise brief and straightforward, allowing subscribers to make an informed selection.

The second email

Subscribers should have reacted positively to your original email, indicating that they want to continue on the list. You’ll want to capitalize on your increased relevance with re-engaged subscribers.

Send them compelling material, such as a content download, a new product announcement based on their interests, or a discount if you want to promote conversion. Blue Apron’s email below is a great example of how you can use a re-engagement email to motivate members.

What should be done if individuals do not participate?

Some individuals will unsubscribe from your list if your re-engagement campaign is successful, while others will re-engage. However, it is possible that some individuals do neither. To put it another way, people may continue to disregard the emails in their inbox.

It’s doubtful that you’ll persuade these subscribers to re-engage, making them an extra and useless expenditure. It is preferable to eliminate these individuals from your list.

What you can do to enhance list hygiene in the future

There will always be some unengaged subscribers and list churn, but there are several email best practices you can do to reduce this behavior in the future.

To boost long-term retention, you must begin at the beginning. This entails designing a personalized experience from the start.

How to reduce churn from the start:

• Create registration forms with email type and cadence information (e.g. Sign up for our weekly newsletter)
• Set up a preference center.
• Include a two-step opt-in process.
• Humanize your brand by sending a welcome email or series.
• Maintain your cadence.
• Include a name that is easily remembered.
• Segments are used to provide tailored content.

Wrap up

If any of your subscribers seem to have lost interest in your material, don’t worry: your metrics won’t suffer. You may maintain healthy metrics and engaged subscribers by segmenting your list into engaged and unengaged subscribers, conducting a re-engagement campaign, and cleaning your list on a regular basis.