You know you have a bunch of unengaged subscribers on your list. These people haven’t opened an email in the last 60-90 days.
You also know that re-engagement email campaigns are an effective way to win some of these people back.
What do you say to these people to convince them to start opening your emails again?
First, a quick reminder…
What Are Re-Engagement Email Campaigns?
Re-engagement email campaigns are a sequence of 1-5 emails you send only to subscribers on your list who haven’t opened your emails in the last 30 to 90 days.
The reason I use such a broad date spread is because it depends on how often you email your list and what you’re selling.
If you’re an e-commerce company that sends emails to your customers every day or every week, you’re probably more in the 30-45-day range.
If you’re a musician who only emails once a month, you’re more in the 90-day range, possibly longer.
Many businesses fall somewhere in between. For example, I send 2 emails a week to my subscribers. If someone hasn’t opened an email in the last 60 days, I send them a re-engagement email campaign to start reading my emails again.
Why Should You Run Re-Engagement Email Campaigns Regularly?
There are several reasons, most of which I wrote about in this blog post.
Here is a quick recap:
- Up to 22% of the email addresses on your list become inactive every year. This is not your fault; people open new email accounts all the time.
- You pay for every single email address on your list. Sending emails that don’t get opened costs you money.
- If your subscribers stop opening your emails, their ISPs will think your emails are spam. Not only does this mean your emails don’t make it to the inboxes of your unengaged subscribers, it can start to affect delivery to your engaged subscribers’ inboxes too. (Which is really bad.)
- It is always cheaper to re-engage a former customer or subscriber than it is to get new ones. It can cost up to 5 times more to get a new customer than to keep one. Even if you only win 10% of your unengaged subscribers back, that’s a huge savings for you.
Will you get every single unengaged subscriber back?
No.
But it is definitely worth trying.
What to Say to Your Subscribers in Your Re-Engagement Email Campaigns
First and foremost, these are not sales emails. You don’t want to try to make a sale as your primary goal. Personally, I don’t recommend selling at all in these emails, though some companies do.
The point of these emails is to get your subscribers to open and read them. To say, “Yes, I am still interested in your content” by taking an action of some kind. Or, to self-select and remove themselves from your email list instead of making you do it for them. (Because that will happen too. Which is a good thing.)
A re-engagement email campaign can be a single email, or several. I’ve seen up to 9, but 5 is a good number. It will depend on what you sell and how you want to approach this for your business. Each email should be an invitation for the subscriber to come back. Assume they didn’t see the other emails you sent.
Let’s start at the top of the email.
The Subject Line
Your subject line has to grab your subscriber’s attention. Obviously, it hasn’t been doing so for a while. Now is your chance to fix that.
Consider these emails to be more like a friend checking up on someone they haven’t heard from in a while. After all, you and your subscriber have a relationship, of a sort. You are being a good friend, reaching out to make sure they’re alright.
Here are a few ideas for subject lines:
- Are you okay?
- I miss you [NAME]
- I haven’t heard from you in a while
- (Knock knock) Anyone home?
- Do you still want to hear from me [NAME]?
You’ll notice I include the person’s name in a couple of these ideas. A person is much more likely to pay attention to their own name in a subject line. They’re also more likely to click on that subject line to open the email.
The Email Body Copy
Now that you’ve gotten your unengaged subscriber to open your email, the body copy needs to do 3 things:
- Convince them to keep reading.
- Remind them why they subscribed to your email list in the first place.
- Get them to take a specific action that will reactivate their subscription (show you they’re alive and still interested in receiving your emails.)
Let’s take these one at a time.
Convince Your Subscriber to Keep Reading
To convince someone to keep reading your email, you need to answer the eternal question in every person’s mind, “What’s In It For Me?”
Why should this person keep reading your email? What benefit do they gain from giving you their time and attention?
You’re writing because you haven’t “heard” from this person in a while. They haven’t opened your emails or bought anything.
Express your concern for their welfare. Go ahead and say, “I’ve noticed you haven’t opened my emails lately, is everything okay?” That is what a friend would do.
Also, make sure you include the benefit of receiving your emails somewhere in your copy. Here are a few very generic examples:
- I send you an email every time one of your favorite items is on sale, which is why I’m surprised you haven’t opened my emails lately.
- You originally signed up because you wanted to know more about (Insert product type here). We’ve made a lot of improvements since you last opened an email and I want to tell you about them.
- Every week, I send you (number of emails you send) emails, chock full of awesome information to help you grow your (Insert your business model here).
Again, these are very generic ideas. You can adapt them to your business as you see fit.
Remind Your Subscriber Why They Joined in the First Place
Did they download a specific lead magnet?
Did they join because they were looking for a certain product or service?
Were they added to your list after they bought something?
Sometimes, people forget why they’re receiving your emails. If they remember why they wanted information from you in the first place, they’re more likely to start opening and reading your emails again.
Tell Your Subscriber to Take a Specific Action
Finally, you want them to take a specific action to re-affirm their interest and “reactivate their subscription.” Please note, I put that last action in quotes because their subscription never really went away, they were the ones who went away.
The specific action should be clicking on a link that triggers an action in your ESP or CRM to remove this person from your re-engagement email campaign. Once they’ve shown they’re still interested in receiving your emails, they can go into a warm-up campaign, then be re-introduced into your normal email cadence. (I’ll write about that next week.)
Here are a few simple ways to get someone to click on a trigger link:
- Share a few blog posts they may have missed. (Base the date of the posts on how long it has been since they opened an email.)
- Ask them to take a short survey.
- Give them a gift of some sort. This can be a download, a physical object you ship to them or that they can come pick up, or even a coupon code for a discount. (I did mention that some companies do sell in their re-engagement email campaigns. I don’t like to, but you can do it if it’s appropriate.)
What Happens Next for Your Subscriber?
Once they click on the trigger link, they should either land on a thank you page or receive an email that thanks them for clicking on that link. This tells them they were successful in reactivating their subscription and it can deliver that gift, (or information about the gift) if that’s what you promised.
After that, I recommend sending a warm-up email campaign before you start sending your normal sales emails. This person has been out of touch for a while. You want to remind them of the value you give before you start selling again.
As I mentioned above, I’ll write about that in next week’s blog post, so stay tuned.
Do You Want to Learn How to Write and Automate Successful Re-Engagement Email Campaigns?
As it happens, I’m getting ready to teach a course on how to do just that.
I’ll walk you through every step, including:
- How to determine what “unengaged subscriber” means for your business.
- How to identify who hasn’t opened an email for a while.
- How to separate these people from your regular list so you can send your re-engagement email campaigns.
- How to write the email sequence for your campaign.
- How to automate the entire process so you don’t have to think about it anymore.
Please click on the button below to join the waitlist for this course.
I’ll send more information about the course as soon as it’s ready.