ARE YOU BREAKING UP WITH ME? 

HOW-TO ROMANCE YOUR EMAIL COMMUNITY AND WIN MEMBERS BACK WITH A RE-ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN

Every relationship has its ups and downs. But if you notice your email members are not looking at you the way they once did, let alone clicking your digital buttons, it might be time to woo them back with a re-engagement campaign. 

Every year you’ll lose the attention of 10-25% of your email subscribers (Loren McDonald). Maybe they’re just not that into you anymore, or maybe they’ve packed their digital belongings and moved to another address.

Either way, before you erase the memories of your time together by removing them from your email community it’s worth considering that it’s often cheaper to re-engage existing members than it is to find new ones.   

Running a re-engagement campaign before cleaning your email community will make sure you only have the people that really want to be there.

This will give you more accurate email campaign results rather than results that are skewed by inactivity due to people who have vacated an email address, for example.

A more engaged, active audience also keeps your sender reputation looking good, which is important for email deliverability. 

So, here’s how a re-engagement campaign works.

SEGMENT YOUR INACTIVE EMAIL COMMUNITY MEMBERS

Step one is to identify inactive people. 

Who you determine as an inactive member comes down to your business and how often you email your community. But a common option is to select people who have not engaged with your emails over the past 90 days.

Alternative options can include segmenting people with a defined number of emails not opened, or people who haven’t clicked on a call to action link during a defined period of time. 

CREATE A RE-ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN SEQUENCE

Next you create your re-engagement campaign.

For a re-engagement campaign it is typical to send two to three emails to inactive people. 

Depending on your brand personality you can make your re-engagement emails light and funny, or keep them more formal. Either way, make sure each email is simple, to the point and addresses the reader personally.  

Re-engagement emails are typically short with a single call to action and no distractions. They have one job – to encourage inactive people to click to stay.

In your emails you need to remind your reader why they originally signed up to hear from you. What value can you offer them and what difference will you make to their lives? How will you make their life better? 

You can also consider using incentives like discounts and freebies to encourage readers to stay. Or you may wish to ask for their feedback about what they’d like to hear about from you, or encourage them to enter a prize draw. 

Here are some examples of good re-engagement emails I’ve come across. 

BRIT+CO

Rue

Urban Outfitters

Boden

WRITE AN ATTENTION-GRABBING SUBJECT LINE

Spend time crafting a good subject line that’ll grab attention.

This is your last chance to win your inactive email members back, so make sure your subject line piques their interest. 

Think about how you can make it stand out among other subject lines in the inbox.

Some common re-engagement subject lines include iterations of:

• Are you breaking up with me?
• Are you giving me the flick?
• Don’t leave, you’re important to me…
• I/We miss you, <insert name>
• Come back, <insert name>
• Is it something I said/did?
• You’ve gotta open this….
• Here’s what you missed…
• While you were gone…

SEND + REMOVE INACTIVE PEOPLE 

I like to send re-engagement emails for my clients seven days apart – so typically a full re-engagement campaign can take three to four weeks to implement.

In each email tell the reader when they will be removed from your email community if they don’t take action.

You also need to make sure the unsubscribe function is included at the bottom of your email as usual. Don’t simply encourage readers to hit unsubscribe if they no longer want to be on your list, because doing this can be detrimental to your sender reputation. 

Instead ask subscribers to click on a call to action link/button if they want to stay. I typically tell readers to do nothing if they want to be removed and that I will automatically remove them on a set date. This helps to stop spam alarms going off due to too many unsubscribes. 

At the end of the campaign, people who have not opened or clicked on your call-to-action links can be tagged as inactive and removed or archived from your list. How you tag and remove inactive people from your list varies by email marketing platform, so make sure you check their help resources to confirm how you do this.  

And that’s it! The core steps for running a re-engagement campaign. 

If you’re struggling to work out a strategy for your re-engagement campaign, or can’t find the right words to wake-up your readers, I’m here to help! Simply get in touch to book an email strategy session.