How To Re-engage Your Inactive Email Subscribers

You've spent a ton of time building up your email list, carefully crafting lead magnets, and developing killer marketing campaigns. Everything's good to go, right?

Not quite.

Business owners and marketers are in a constant battle to keep their subscribers engaged. After people start joining your list, some will eventually lose interest. As a result, you could spend a lot of time and money trying to reach people who are not opening or interacting with your emails.

The good news is you're not tied down to this fate. There are plenty of ways you can re-engage and connect with your subscribers. Today, I'll share several strategies we use to keep our email list active with people who are genuinely interested in our brand and products.

I believe all of the tips discussed today can be applied to virtually any industry. With that in mind, let's get started!

Define and Segment Inactive Subscribers

Before you can re-engage your subscribers, you need to define and segment them in your email CRM software. If you don't know who you're trying to reach, you're going to have a hard time developing an engaging, relevant campaign.

Most businesses define an inactive user as someone who hasn't opened or responded to an email in 6 months to a year. Though it's worth noting that this timeframe can be more or less, depending on your industry.

You'll want to start by segmenting them into a list made explicitly for inactive users. Simply put, segmenting your audience means dividing your list up into various groups, or segments, based on interests, goals, and behavior.

Research shows that by separating your leads into groups, you can improve your open rate by 14.31%! Segmented users are more likely to read your emails because the content inside resonates with their specific needs. This means that you can immediately improve the odds that these users will open your message.

Encourage Leads to Choose Their Preferences

Are you more likely to engage with a brand if they let you choose your preferences? Odds are, the answer is yes! Your audience feels the same way about the emails they receive from your business.

Asking subscribers to choose their preferences after they've already become inactive can actually bring them back and encourage future engagement. Maybe you were sending a bunch of emails that they don't care about. Perhaps they got distracted and forgot your brand exists. Regardless of the reason, asking subscribers to choose their preferences, such as what you send and how often, can significantly impact your overall conversion rate.

If you use a little foresight, you can ensure that new subscribers stay engaged for a long time with this strategy. I suggest including an option for subscribers to choose their preferences in your welcome email.

When you consider that welcome emails have the highest open rate of all marketing messages (82%), it's easy to see why this strategy is a powerful part of most top-performing email campaigns.

Send Personalized Offers and Invitations

Now that you've segmented your audience and allowed them to choose their preferences, it's time to start sending out personalized offers and event invitations. Believe it or not, 80% of shoppers say they would like to see more personalized content from businesses they love. In other words, personalization is an excellent way to get people to engage with your brand.

Research shows that creating personalized campaigns for your subscribers can boost your open rate by a stunning 26%! If you want to reach more people and increase your engagement rate, personalization is the way to go.

I suggest looking at your customer segments and preferences from each user when developing your personalization strategy. You'll want to promote products, content, and events that align with each persons' goals and pain points.

For example, if a customer bought the same thing from your store for 5 months in a row, then suddenly stopped opening your emails, you could retarget them with a promotion for that product. There's an excellent chance this could encourage the subscriber to open your email and navigate to your website to use their discount.

If you host online events like webinars and giveaways, you should let active and inactive subscribers know, providing the prize or event is relevant to their interests. We've turned seemingly inactive subscribers into engaged repeat customers with this strategy.

Use Retargeting Ads on Social Media

You may be shocked to learn that social media is an excellent place to reach your email subscribers. Specific platforms allow you to import your lead list and connect with your audience. Here are the 4 most popular social sites to use this strategy and links to the associated program:

• Facebook - Dynamic Ads
• Instagram - Sponsored Posts
• LinkedIn - Matched Audiences
• Twitter - Custom Audiences

This retargeting strategy makes it easy to reach inactive subscribers, regardless of which social media platform they use. I suggest starting with Facebook. Over 2.45 billion people use Facebook, so there's an excellent chance you can connect with your subscribers through this channel.

You can create custom ads that are designed to resonate with each segment of your audience. For example, an online pet store could make retargeting campaigns on social media based on each subscribers' pets. So, prospects that have bought cat-related products in the past may see an exclusive discount on premium cat food.

If you can convince your audience to click through to your site from the ad, there's a good chance they will open future emails from your brand. We are big fans of this strategy because it's good for more than just re-engaging subscribers. You can also use social media retargeting to recover abandoned carts, build social proof, and much more!

Ask How You Can Help

If you've tried everything else, and your subscribers still aren't responding to your emails, you should consider flat out asking if there's anything you can do to help them. People are more receptive to businesses and people when they go out of their way to do something nice for them.

I recommend creating an email that makes direct mention of the users' inactivity. You could use an email subject line like, "Is it something we said?" or "Did we miss the mark?" These headlines are designed to encourage subscribers to click through and see what you have to say.

You'll want to mention that you appreciate the user joining your email list, and you want to help them reach their goals and overcome industry pain points. We like to include a survey where we ask our subscribers what we can do to make their experience with our list more enjoyable.

The questions you ask users will depend on your industry and product selection. Use the information obtained from these questionnaires to fine-tune your email marketing strategy and win over subscribers that stopped opening your emails.

Scrub Your List

The truth is, you won't win over every single subscriber that stops responding to your messages. Sometimes, people simply don't need your product or service anymore. Similarly, deliverability issues can lead to an inactive lead list. This trend is far more common than you think. On average, 21% of emails never reach their intended destination.

If you've tried everything listed here and still can't get a response, it may be time to scrub your list. You can choose to send one final email to give subscribers a chance to change their minds. At the end of the campaign, remove subscribers that didn't respond.

You'll find that this will keep your list lean and powerful. After a thorough scrubbing, everyone on your list is an engaged subscriber who is ready and willing to read your next email. I suggest cleaning your list twice a year to improve your engagement rate and conversions.