How to Re-Engage Dead Email Subscribers

Check your spam box. Odds are good that‟s it‟s filled with emails you have no intention of ever

opening. That‟s why some pundits say email marketing is ineffective. Not so, says Brain Clark,

the founder of Copy Blogger.

“Email provides you the most direct line of communication for conversion to sales … which is

why the most savvy online marketers have no intention of giving it up any time soon,” he said.

While utilizing your email marketing efforts can prove to be the most effective way to boost your

ROI, “25% of your list will expire every year as readers switch jobs, email providers, or

unsubscribe from your emails,” says Melissa Miller, a writer for Hubspot.

Building an email list can take years of engagement (see details about our Renown SEO

Blogging Program below to give your email subscription list a boost.) The worst part? Some of

those email subscribers seem to have fallen off the Internet planet. So if you want to re-engage

your email subscribers, we‟ve compiled a list of top strategies to win them back.

Stay Relevant

Most of the time, when people initially sign up to a newsletter, they‟re excited about the content

they thought they would receive. If you‟re starting to see your open rates drop, it‟s probably

because you lost their interest. “Seven in ten messages flagged by recipients as spam are actually

legitimate newsletters, with irrelevant content one of the causes of this trend,” states an article

published by Content Plus. Keep your content relevant and formulated to the direct needs of your

audience. By producing emails that are entertaining, but at the same time informative with

relevant news within your niche, you can get them to start opening their mail again.

Pare Down the List

Before you do anything to re-engage inactive leads, you must define an inactive lead. The

majority of marketers will gauge “inactives” as anyone who has not responded, opened, clicked,

or acted on any email sent in the past 6-12 months.

That said, sometimes you need to know when to fish or cut bait.

“I recently cut deadwood from my email list – about 500 names,” Carol Tice wrote in an article

for KISSMetrics. “I sent them an email first that said, „Do I bore you?‟ and asked if they wanted

to stay subscribed. Twenty people responded to us…and we deleted the rest of that list.” She

points out that there is little sense in wasting a whole lot of money on people who are never

going to become paying subscribers. If they don‟t engage, remove them from your list.

Call to Action

You can always offer people something to induce them to come back. For example, offer them a

discount or a gift card. You don‟t have to offer a sales pitch, just a call to action. Try sending a

series of re-engagement emails, using simple, clear language and a clear call to action. There are

a lot of different routes you can take when it comes to initiating a call to action. For example,

“you can send out emails that allow them to change their email preferences or that force them to

click a link to continue receiving emails. It‟s always important to have a call to action in your

emails, but for re-engagement emails, it‟s especially critical because you want to ensure that you

can separate those who are still interested from those who have checked out,” says Erik

Harbison, the CMO of Aweber. Not everyone is going to re-engage with you, but here‟s the

thing – it‟s a lot easier to re-engage old customers than it is to find new ones.