The whole point of having an email list and writing to your subscribers regularly is to convert those subscribers into customers.
You do that by building a relationship with your subscribers, so they see your business as a trusted authority and your products and services as the solution to their problem.
In any relationship, you want to encourage a give and take, so both sides feel like they’re getting what they need from the other person. This is no different in your relationship with your subscribers. You give value, they make purchases.
So, what do you do about those people who aren’t participating in the relationship anymore?
You bring them back into the relationship with a re-engagement email campaign.
What Is a Re-Engagement Email Campaign?
Last week’s blog post was about creating a re-engagement email strategy. That’s the plan you make to re-engage people who haven’t opened your emails lately.
A re-engagement email campaign is the series of emails you send to these unengaged subscribers.
I’ve also heard it called:
- A win-back campaign
- A re-engagement sequence
- A reactivation campaign
The point is, you’re doing what any good friend in a normal relationship would do. You’re making an effort to continue the relationship.
You’re reaching out to see what has happened since your subscriber last opened one of your emails.
Why This Matters to Your Bottom Line
You’re probably thinking, “Why should I bother? If these people aren’t opening my emails, I can just take them off my list.”
Or, you may be thinking, “I don’t care. I’ll just leave these people on my list. It doesn’t cost me anything to email them and they’re not doing any harm.
Let me address these issues one at a time.
Yes, you can just remove inactive subscribers from your list. And you should. However, if you do that before you try to re-engage them, you’re leaving money on the table.
According to Invesp, it is 5 times cheaper to re-engage a current subscriber than it is to get a new one.
It’s also much easier to sell to someone who already knows about your company and your products and services than it is to convince someone to buy if they’ve never heard of you before.
It’s worth the time to try to re-engage these inactive subscribers before you let them go forever.
As for leaving people on your list, I have a couple of revelations for you:
- You do pay for every email you send to your subscribers, because the amount you pay your ESP or CRM every month is based on how many subscribers you have. Therefore, unengaged subscribers are costing you money.
- The more unengaged subscribers are on your list, the worse your deliverability rate gets. ISPs notice when your subscribers don’t open your emails. They’ll start sending those emails to the spam folder instead of your subscribers’ inboxes. Which means your overall deliverability is affected because those same ISPs will start sending your emails to the spam folders of the subscribers who have been opening your emails recently.
What Goes into Creating a Re-Engagement Email Campaign?
Basically, you’re writing to your unengaged subscribers just like you would talk to a friend you haven’t heard from in a long time.
You’re asking questions like, “Are you alright?” and “Did something change?”
You’re reaching out, just like any concerned friend would, to see if everything is okay.
And you’re asking your subscribers to show they’re still alive and still interested in your content by offering that content to them.
This happens in a sequence of emails that you send to these subscribers over the course of a week or so.
Some of these subscribers will open your emails and remember that yes, they do still want to hear from you. They’ll keep opening your emails going forward and all will be well with the world.
Some of them will unsubscribe. While this may be sad, it is a good thing, because they are self-selecting. They’re saying they no longer want the valuable information you send or need the fabulous products and services you offer. As business owners, we have to accept this and move on.
Still more of them will never respond at all. These are the folks you remove from your email list so they’re no longer weighing your deliverability rate down.
How Often Do I Have to Run a Re-Engagement Email Campaign?
Ideally, this is something you set up once and automate. Doing this means whenever someone hasn’t opened your emails for a certain number of days (depending on how often you email) they’ll get put into a special segment that sends them the re-engagement email campaign automatically.
This is considered “good list hygiene” and will help keep your deliverability rate high.
Set up your automation to put subscribers into this segment after they haven’t opened your emails for between 30 and 90 days, (depending on how often you email), so you can keep your list clean.
Base the timing on your email cadence. If you email your list every day, unengaged subscribers should go through this campaign every 30-45 days. If you email your subscribers every month, go for 90 days. If you’re somewhere in between, go for 60. You get the idea.
As for how often subscribers should go through this sequence, only once. The whole point is to keep your subscribers engaged to begin with.
Some people will fall off the wagon (so to speak). But if you’re writing engaging content and delivering value in every email, your subscribers will look forward to your emails and open them regularly.
Will your subscribers open every single email? Sure, some will. Most will open your emails a few times a month. But that’s all you need to keep your business top of mind, so when your subscribers are ready to buy, they turn to your business first.
Where Can I Learn to Write and Automate a Re-Engagement Email Campaign?
Funny thing that…
I’m getting ready to teach a course that will walk you through writing the re-engagement email campaign and set up the automation to run it regularly. That way, your email list stays clean and your deliverability rate stays high.
If you’re interested in finding out more about this course, please join the waitlist by clicking on the button below. I’ll be releasing more info about the course in the next couple of weeks.