Reengagement campaigns help reach subscribers who have not been opening and clicking your emails and also help you identify who should be removed from your list. Cleaner lists mean higher performance from your active subscribers. You’ll also benefit from better deliverability as ISPs look more at how engaged your subscribers are with your emails.
Why send reengagement campaigns?
Reengagement emails are all about connecting with the subscribers in your list that haven’t been interacting with your product. They provide a chance to ask questions, to offer an incentive to become more active with your emails, or to peacefully part ways. It shows that you are taking a thoughtful approach to your marketing and desire to send emails that subscribers want to receive.
Identify disengaged subscribers
Disengaged subscribers are people who haven’t opened or clicked your emails or interacted with your product in a meaningful way over a set amount of time. Every email list has disengaged subscribers. Your product and current sending frequency will help determine how much time should pass before a subscriber is considered disengaged.
When you have a seasonal offering — such as a film festival — a subscriber may be disengaged after one year or more. When you’re operating with regular events, a subscriber may become disengaged after a shorter amount of time. For example, five or six email campaigns may be appropriate. If you’re not sure where to start, a good starting point is to review subscriber activity every three months.
It’s important to look beyond the inbox and review a subscriber’s activity with your product across all channels. For example, you may have less engagement in email but regular purchases either in-store or online. You may want to isolate subscribers that have not opened, clicked or purchased in the past several months. Think about what makes a disengaged subscriber for your organization and then create a plan to reengage them.
Create a reengagement plan
Once you have identified disengaged subscribers, you need a plan for reengaging. Decide what type of email communication you will use, how many times you will reach out, and what you will do if there is still no engagement. Here are a few ideas to consider:
Ask for updated communication preferences
Provide links to your preferences and unsubscribe pages where subscribers can either update preferences or unsubscribe globally.
Ask direct questions
For example, send three emails over the course of ten days with different subjects such as “Where have you been?” or “How are we doing?”. Give the subscriber a button to continue receiving emails or to stop receiving emails.
Make recommendations
Analyze past purchase history and make product recommendations. This helps the subscriber see what other items would meet their interests and also shows how well you know them as a subscriber.
Polls or surveys
A poll or survey can be super effective, but it should be easy and quick (5-10 minutes). You might ask for feedback around your email marketing strategy and what would make the email content more engaging. Make it more appealing by adding in an offer for successfully completing the form.
Send a reengagement campaign
Identify disengaged subscribers in WordFly
- Segment by engagement rating to filter your list and only send to subscribers with fewer than three or two stars. Save your segment to use it again in future email campaigns.
- Export all subscribers and review engagement data. Once you have your export ready, you can create an email list based on this data. However, if you plan on doing these types of emails on a regular basis, we recommend using segmentation so that you can save your segment filter.
- CRM-integrated accounts — Use your database to find any subscribers that haven’t opened, clicked or purchased within your timeframe.
Once your campaigns are sent, say farewell to the subscribers who didn’t reengage. This isn’t easy, but ultimately you’ll benefit from higher inbox deliverability and perhaps lower costs in your email budget as your list decreases to the most engaged subscribers.