5:36 pm admin

It is important to develop an email re-engagement strategy.

With statistics showing that as much as 25% of your email list will die off each year.

Whether it's that people change email providers, change jobs, or simply opt out of your list. So, first things first, QUALITY list building needs to be a part of your email program.

Assuming that you're losing 25% of your subscriber base each year due to factors you can't control, it's even MORE important to not only make sure you're list hygiene is being maintained, but also that you're not dumping ACTIVE/VALID subscribers.

The simple answer is just to keep mailing until you get a hard bounce or until the person unsubscribes.

In the past... that was okay. But it's really not the right answer anymore!

The game has changed and you simply can't do that. The ISPs are looking at engagement rates to determine where to place your emails. That's why some email providers are FORCING their customers to engage their subscribers or lose them (Yes, a well known provider has stated that they are purging all subscribers that haven't opened an email in 4+ months).

Options for Re-Engaging Subscribers

There are essentially a handful of options when it comes to handling unengaged users.

• Good: Unsubscribe or delete the subscribers entirely from your list (This is somewhat heavy handed and probably not necessary, although it certainly is the easiest method and ensures that you are mailing to only the most engaged people at any given time).
  TIP: If you take this approach, consider running some sort of campaign outside of email such as via social media, direct mail, or other, depending on the data points you have access to.
• Better: Take them off of your main list(s) and send only occasional updates/newsletters that they might find interesting.
• Even Better: Send a “we missed you” type of email. This is really the simplest type of re-engagement “campaign” since your basically sending one email message hoping that'll do the trick. While this is better than nothing, you may want to consider a multi step campaign (See the next option). At the very least, spend  time split testing subject lines in order to get the subject that converts the best.
• Best: Set up a full re-engagement campaign. This is similar to option C, but rather than one single “do or die” email, it’s a short series over a period of time that is designed to “win them back”. The remaining steps in this sequence should be used if you’re using this approach.

Again, the IDEAL option is to "re-engage" your subscribers.

What Is An Email Re-Engagement Campaign?

A email re-engagement campaign is nothing more than bringing back to life subscribers that haven't been opening your emails and getting rid of your dead weight (those folks that are no longer interested in what you have to say).

Here are some simple steps for rolling out your own email re-engagement campaigns:

NOTE: It's a good idea to take some time and build in a re-engagement autoresponder series to your various sequences so that you can set it once and forget it...

1. Determine How Long You Want to Go Back
   A good guideline is 3-6 months. If this is your first time doing this type of campaign. Consider chunking it down into segments and watching the stats closely. Chances are that after 6 months of unengaged activity, your re-engagement rates are going to be very low.
2. Segment
   If you have good data on your subscribers, go further than just the aging process. Go through and define key segments that you can create custom engagement campaigns for. The more targeted you are, the more successful the campaigns are going to be.
3. Design your Campaigns
   You'll need to think through your campaigns and come up with something that's extremely valuable - that they won't be able to ignore. Think of this as your FINAL chance to save these subscribers.Spend a good deal of time on your subject line. If they've not been opening your messages, your subject line (or from line) is simply not appealing to them.Entice/Tease. DON'T mislead!Once they open, then you'll want them to READ it (this is one of the metrics the ISPs look at).
4. Send and MonitorYou'll want to set up some tracking mechanism and measure your results. I'd recommend in 24 hours, and then again in 7 days to give adequate time for people that may not be glued to their emails the time to get to your messages.Track the opens, clicks, spam complaints and unsubscribes.Aim to keep your complaints below .1%. Yes, that's pretty low, but anything over that, you'll start seeing hits to your reputation and emails heading straight to the junk folder!Remember: you should be chunking these lists down to segments of 5000 - 10,000 TOPS.
5. Repeat for each segment

BONUS TIP: Take all the subscribers that have not opened your emails or responded to your re-engagement campaign and try to re-engage them through alternative methods.

For example, you can export all of the people that just simply won't respond, upload them to Facebook and run a targeted campaign to those people driving them to an optin page to re-engage them that way.

If you collect mailing addresses, consider a direct mail campaign...

The bottom line is that you should absolutely be running re-engagement campaigns and building them into your processes moving forward. It will improve your reputation, your inbox placement, and your overall profit per subscriber in your list.

• To download the infographic for Email Re-engagement, please Click Here.
• To watch the email re-engagement video, Click Here

Author: Heather Seitz

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This information has been provided by http://www.EmailDelivered.com and written by Heather Seitz. To find out how you can increase your email deliverability, visit http://www.EmailDelivered.com/email-marketing/email-re-engagement/) Don’t forget to sign up for the EmailDelivered Pulse newsetter for articles, tips and recommended resources related to email marketing and email deliverability.

August 19, 2013