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CATEGORY: email-marketing

Making “we miss you” hit the mark

Making “we miss you” hit the mark

As marketers we all understand the importance of keeping our data clean and up-to-date and using it to maximum effect. But what happens with the people who are starting to lose interest, and no longer engaging with your mails as they used to.

How can you keep this data in your communication pot without damaging your results or your deliverability? Lack of engagement can damage your reputation, and worse still may lead you to end up in a spam trap as some providers, google for example, take mailboxes that have not been active for a year and transform them into spam traps. And you don’t want to end up in a trap!

Earning new customers is much more expensive than retaining existing ones and loyal, engaged customers often have a higher average order value. So re-invigorating lapsed customers or sleeping subscribers is a no-brainer.

When done well, re-engagement emails can reduce list churn rates and boost incremental engagement. In terms of deliverability, re-engaging your inactive subscribers can enhance or at least help you maintain inbox placement rates for your emails.

Bringing disengaged contacts back into the fold is no easy thing, but it can be a highly worthwhile exercise. Marketing Sherpa reports that, on average, marketers lose 25% of their email list each year (simply to attrition). Therefore, list retention should be an absolute must for all email marketers.

There are a number of possible avenues to consider when planning the content of your reengagement campaign. So, we thought we would share some examples of campaigns that we have seen work well.

New developments

Your contacts were interested in you once, so remind them why that was and introduce them to what they are now missing by not engaging with you more effectively. New features are always a good conversation starter, but the hook to get the email opened is absolutely critical.  Testing your subject lines and following best practice advice for engagement techniques is never more important that with re-engagement campaigns. For more advice on subject lines and the techniques of using curiosity, scarcity, benefit-led or results-driven subject lines can be found in our dedicated post.

Social Validation

Reminding your readers that they are in good company is also an effective way to re-invigorate their interest. Endorsements, case studies and any form of social proof inspires confidence and a sense of belonging to something greater. Stats are always a great motivator and being able to back your claims of customer success with statistics or uplift figures only makes the story that much more compelling. The same is true of other forms of independent recognition, awards, certifications and authoritative endorsements are all additional forms of validation that supports that you are a wise choice to deal with.

Do you want to hear from us?

In some instances a more direct tactic may be the answer. By simply giving your contacts the choice and being clear and upfront you can ensure that only those that are interested in receiving your content continue to do so. As, at  the end of the day, if they are not interested then cutting them out of your lists, unless they indicate otherwise, will have positive effect on both your results and deliverability.

Incentivisation

We are all suckers for a good offer, and an effective way to reignite the relationship is with a little gift, whether it is a discount, free delivery or some other incentive that little bit of encouragement could be all that is needed to recapture their attention.

Update your preferences

Give your subscribers the opportunity to manage their preferences, in particular to manage the frequency that you contact them, as this is a common reason for people to disengage. In fact one of the key reasons that people start to fade away is frequency of contact, whether it is too much or too little - so give them back the control and re-engage.

And if all else fails….

Promote your other communication channels. It may simply be that this contact, whilst not so interested in your emails, may like to keep up with your on one of your social channels. Talking to your contacts and prospects on these media can be just as beneficial as via email. Social is a great place to keep in touch and share your content, so your contacts can continue to engage, but on their terms.

 Read more in our article: The road to re-engagement

Our team are standing by, ready to help you build an effective re-engagement campaign that will reinvigorate lapsed or sleeping subscribers. If you need a bit of advice why not give us a call on 020 3320 8777.

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