Over time, every email program develops an inactive audience. Subscribers who once engaged regularly fall outside your active segmentation window.
Continuing to send indefinitely to subscribers who show no signs of engagement can hurt your IP and domain reputation; causing downstream effects to your loyal readers. But forgetting everyone who hasn’t engaged recently can create another problem: the engagement you can measure doesn’t always tell you whether someone still values your email. Seems contradictive right?
A subscriber might scan your subject lines every morning because the headline itself gives them the information they need. To the subscriber, your email is part of their inbox news feed. To your engagement data, that subscriber looks inactive.
A re-engagement program gives those subscribers an opportunity to tell you before you stop sending.
There is also an attribution side effect which doesn’t show up cleanly in Google Analytics. Your email serves as a brand reminder to drive direct traffic later.
Start by Understanding Your Un-engaged Audience
If you don’t already have an always-on re-engagement program, don’t start by sending to your entire inactive audience. Start by understanding who’s in it.
Run segment counts based on the last time subscribers meaningfully engaged and received an email. Breaking the dormant audience into 90-day windows is a good place to start:
- 0–90 days
- 91–180 days
- 181–270 days
- 271–360 days
- 361–450 days
- 451+ days
The distribution may tell you quite a bit about where to start. It also lets you decide how far back it’s reasonable to attempt re-engagement.
Someone who last engaged four months ago is very different from an address that hasn’t shown meaningful activity in two years. The goal isn’t to see how much you can mail. It’s to identify the portion of your dormant audience where there’s still a reasonable opportunity to confirm continued interest.
Work Through Your Dormant File Gradually
Once you’ve identified the subscribers worth attempting to recover, don’t send to the entire population at once.
Re-engagement campaigns inherently target a less engaged portion of your database, so introduce that volume gradually. A good starting point is to keep re-engagement volume to no more than 10% of your normal daily sending volume.
Start with the most recently engaged segment and work backward. Monitor engagement, complaints, bounces and other deliverability signals as you go.
The deeper you move into the dormant file, the more closely you should watch those results. Performance from subscribers who last engaged 120 days ago may look very different from subscribers who haven’t engaged in 365 days.
This is a process to closely align with your Deliverability Consultant.
Tell Subscribers Why You’re Contacting Them
The content of the re-engagement email matters just as much as the targeting.
A common approach is to tell subscribers that you miss them or ask whether they still want your emails. But that assumes a lack of opens means a lack of interest.
Instead, explain what’s actually happening.
Tell subscribers that you periodically review engagement and may stop sending to people who haven’t opened or clicked recently. Then give them an easy way to tell you that they still want the newsletter.
For example:
Still want to hear from us?
We’ve noticed you haven’t opened our emails recently. We don’t want to send you updates you are not interested in.
If you’re still getting value from seeing us in your inbox; even if you don’t open every email…we’d be happy to keep sending.
[Keep me subscribed]
This does more than generate a click. It tells the subscriber why you’re asking and gives them a clear way to correct what your engagement data may be telling you.
It can also change future behavior. Someone who regularly scans your subject lines but rarely opens may have no idea that their behavior could eventually cause them to stop receiving the newsletter.
Decide What Counts as Re-engagement
Before sending anything, determine what action will return someone to your active audience.
An open alone may not be enough. Apple MPP and other privacy features have made opens a less reliable indicator of individual engagement. And even when an open represents a real person, opening a re-engagement email doesn’t necessarily mean the subscriber wants to continue receiving your newsletter.
An explicit confirmation provides a much stronger signal because the subscriber is directly telling you they want to continue receiving the newsletter rather than requiring you to infer their intent from an open.
Subscribers who re-engage can return to your regular targeting. Those who don’t can remain suppressed according to your engagement policy.
Don’t Build Another Dormant File
Working through your existing dormant audience solves today’s problem. It doesn’t prevent you from having the same problem again.
Once you’ve worked through the historical file, make the re-engagement an always-on part of your subscriber lifecycle.
Instead of waiting six months to run another campaign, define the point at which an inactive subscriber should automatically enter re-engagement. When someone reaches that threshold, pause them from your normal newsletter audience and send your re-engagement message or series.
If they confirm their interest, return them to your active audience. If they don’t, keep them suppressed.
That keeps the dormant population from continuing to grow and gives every subscriber the same opportunity to tell you whether they still want to hear from you.