You have two different types of subscribers on your email list. The folks who open your emails with some regularity and the folks who never open your emails at all.
I realize that each of those email addresses are hard-won. The problem is, the folks who never open your emails may be inadvertently harming your entire list.
Which is why you need a re-engagement email strategy, so you can get those folks back on board, or remove them from your list.
What is a Re-Engagement Email Strategy?
It’s exactly what it sounds like. A strategy to re-engage people who haven’t opened your emails lately.
“Lately” means within the last 30 to 90 days, depending on your regular email cadence.
If you only email your subscribers once a month, it’s silly to try to draw them back in after only 3 emails. But if you email every day and there are people who haven’t opened a single email in the last 30 to 60 days, it’s time to have a chat with them.
A re-engagement email sequence is the series of emails you would send to people who have stopped engaging regularly with your “normal” emails.
A re-engagement email strategy is the plan you put in place to manage those emails and the people you’re sending them to.
Why Do I Need a Re-Engagement Email Strategy?
I’m so glad you asked…
As wonderful as it may be to have a huge email list full of hundreds or thousands of email addresses, some of them are weighing you down.
Internet service providers (ISPs) pay attention to how often your subscribers open your emails. If they stop doing so, their ISP may not let your emails through to their inbox anymore.
The more often your emails get caught in a spam filter, the more likely it is that other ISPs will do the same thing, even if you started with an excellent sending reputation.
Unengaged subscribers can cause your emails to be marked as spam 9 times more than engaged subscribers.
Honestly, people who don’t open your emails are damaging your ability to send emails to people who do open them.
Plus, people who don’t open your emails are costing you money.
You pay for every single email address in your email service provider (ESP) or customer relationship management (CRM) software platform. If people don’t open your emails, you can’t sell to them.
Unengaged subscribers are bad for your ROI.
But… My Hard-Won Email Addresses…
Yes, I know. It’s painful to let them go. Especially after you worked so hard to get them in the first place.
And I don’t want you to just go in and delete them. That’s why this is a re-engagement email strategy. I want you to re-engage them.
Here’s how it works.
In your ESP or CRM, you create a segment of the people who haven’t opened your emails in the last 30, 60, or 90 days, again, depending on how often you send emails to your list. You remove these people from all other email campaigns and broadcasts, so they’re isolated.
Then you send them a specific re-engagement email sequence, designed to get them to open up and show they’re still interested.
Once they do show they’re still alive, they’re still checking the email address you have in your ESP or CRM, and they still want to hear from you, you send them back into your normal email cadence of broadcasts and campaigns.
They become re-engaged and start opening your emails regularly again, you have more people seeing your valuable content and sales messages, it’s a win-win all around.
Some folks may take additional persuading to open up and re-engage. If they don’t respond to the first re-engagement sequence, you send them another sequence, designed to win them back.
I will be completely honest with you.
Not everyone will open up.
According to HubSpot, email marketing databases naturally degrade by about 22.5% every year. This is because 17% of Americans create a new email address every 6 months and 30% change their email addresses annually.
Some people opt in for your lead magnet, then never open another email. (I’ve seen situations where people didn’t even open the lead magnet email.)
Others get overwhelmed by all the emails they get and filter out everything except the emails they want or have to deal with regularly.
Don’t take it personally. Things change. People move on.
For your part, you want people to move on if they’re not interested in what you have to say. As mentioned above, having them around is doing damage to your sending reputation and costing you money.
What Do I Do with the Subscribers Who Don’t Re-Engage?
You let them go.
That is the whole point of a re-engagement email strategy. You want to weed these people out, so you know your email list is as engaged as possible. That way you’re getting great deliverability, so the maximum number of people are seeing your messages and taking action.
If you’re really attached to them, you can keep them in a separate segment that you only email once or twice a year, to see if they come back.
You can also run these subscribers through an email list cleaning service to make sure their addresses are still valid.
Unfortunately, it’s likely these folks will never come back.
Which is sad.
It means they’re missing out on the wonderful products and services you have to offer.
But, if they weren’t interested enough to open your emails regularly, perhaps they didn’t really belong on your list anyway.
So, you remove their email addresses from your list.
As heartbreaking as that may be, it’s for the best.
And who knows, perhaps some of them will opt-in again with new email addresses that they check regularly, and you’ll still end up giving them value and turning them into customers.
How Do I Set Up A Re-Engagement Email Strategy to Keep My List Clean and Healthy?
Funny thing that…
I am preparing to teach a course on how to write and automate a re-engagement email sequence.
You’ll learn everything you need to know about getting your subscribers to start opening your emails again, then how to nurture them with valuable content, so you can start selling again.
I’ll open registration for this course next week.
Be the first to find out when the course will be available by clicking on the button below to join the waitlist.