Last updated on May 18th, 2016 at 02:42 pm
According to a Mckinsey report, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring and engaging subscribers than Facebook and Twitter.
While this might be true, it does not account for the number of inactive customers who continue to receive emails while open and click rates are depreciating.
Email might be a cheaper way to make sales, but it’s also complex. If you don’t send the right emails in the right format, there will be no results. Businesses worldwide are implementing database clean ups and it’s a train worth boarding.
Database clean up simply means segmenting leads, or customers who have not opened or clicked your email links in 3 or more months, then creating special content for that segmented list. After a limited time frame, subscribers who don’t open or click the new emails are deleted from the database.
Checklist for re-engaging subscribers
To re-engage subscribers, I’ve created a checklist to use when segmenting and mailing your inactive subscribers.
1. Segment your list and send custom emails
Head into your email list and segment out your subscribers who have not opened your emails in the last three months. Almost every email marketing service should have this feature.
2. Monitor days of the week and time of day in sending emails
Remember your subscribers are humans, revisit your buyer’s persona and determine the best day and time to send emails to them. If you are a Saas company, your target audience should be business owners and procurement professionals who generally don’t check their email by 9am. Instead, your email should be sent somewhere in the afternoon or late in the evening.
In a recent survey conducted by Good Technology on workers and business owners, 50 percent checked their emails while in bed, and 38 percent routinely checked it at the dinner table.
3.Re-engage subscribers
After segmenting your list and researching the best time and day to email your subscribers, you need to win their hearts or trust (which you might have lost). To do this, you could run contests, giveaways, offer discounts on products and services, 7 or 30 days free trial of your service, get creative with your offers.
- Pay close attention to your subject (33 percent of subscribers open emails based on subject line alone – Convince and then convert)
- Get personal – Include the recipient’s name in the subject line (Adestra reports that personalized email subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened)
- Ask your subscribers or customers what they think of you (run surveys on your personal brand or service)
- Hosts Google hangouts, webinars, or blabs
- Ask them to update their information
4. Re-invite, re-impress
We all get second chances in life, so should your subscribers. Invite them to re-subscribe and this time, be more compelling. Hire a copywriter to write a converting landing page, offer the right product and maybe slow down on the frequency of emails. Research has shown that 44 percent of subscribers hate receiving too many emails. Bearing this in mind, draft and send your emails with caution and creativity.
A simple “do we bore you email”? Should get you some open rates and replies, ask those who reply to re-subscribe through a new landing page and delete the rest.
5. Offer two options
When email recipients are offered two compelling options, open and click rates improve.
“Give them two options,” Diana Primeau Director of member services CNET said at Email Summit 2013. “One option is do not miss out on breaking news that people get delivered to their email inbox every day. The second is for tech reviews and new products coming out to the market. That part of the email got most of the clicks.”
6. Use Facebook custom audiences
Facebook Custom Audiences simply means you send targeted ads to specified audiences including your email list. Your Facebook page should have access to this feature. Not all your subscribers are on your Facebook page so this is another opportunity to get them to like your Facebook page.
Simply export your segmented list of inactive subscribers into a .csv file and import it into your power editor on Facebook to send them a targeted ad offering an incentive, promoting an offer or telling them to simply re-subscribe.
7. Check reports
After you’ve implemented the steps above, check your reports to see how much progress you are making then give yourself a high five if you like what you see. Rinse and repeat if you don’t. Rinse and repeat, test, test and test until you find what works for your business and your subscribers.
8. Say goodbye
If after implementing the steps above some email addresses still show no new engagement, delete them without remorse. Deal with what you have, engage who you have and define what worked to improve open and click rates and increase ROI.
