How to Wake Up Your Inactive Email Subscribers

Ever wondered what to do with email subscribers who don’t open or click your emails? Our most recent webinar discussed creating effective strategies to entice your most quiet subscribers to open, read, and click your emails.

You’ll learn:

• Why subscribers stop or never engage in the first place

• The foundation for winning back email subscribers

• How to optimize your win-back strategy for long-term success

What are some reasons my contacts are not engaging with my email?

While this can vary, the most common reasons discussed during the webinar were that the contents of your email are not relevant to your audience, they aren’t able to buy or donate to your cause at this time, or the email is too promotion-focused. 

How to create a segment to find the "least engaged" contacts?

Using a pre-built segment is the quickest way to find your least engaged contacts. Here are the steps for navigating to that area:

• In the left-hand menu, click Contacts > Segments.

• In the Pre-built segments section, find the engagement option you want to work with and click . . . > View contacts.

• From that view, you can: send a targeted email to the segment, copy the segment, add the segment to a list, and/or export the contacts.

How many times should you try to re-engage before removing from lists?

Ultimately, the exact number of emails might vary slightly based on your industry, email frequency, and audience, but two to three targeted emails are generally considered sufficient to give inactive subscribers a fair chance to re-engage before you remove them from your active list. Do not delete them from your account. Keep them segmented for future potential engagement.

Would you remove an email address from your account if they have not opened it? If so, when do you remove them?

You do not necessarily need to remove inactive email addresses from your list; however, it is important to manage them strategically in your contacts. The better approach is to segment them and keep them separate from your active subscribers. That way, you can continue to reach out to them with reengagement campaigns, without them bringing down open and click rates when sending to your active lists. The only reason to remove them would be to keep your contacts within the pricing tier of your subscription. If you are at risk of bumping up to the next pricing tier, it could help to remove them. However, managing your bounces can help with this as well. If you do decide to remove contacts, make sure to export them into a file first so that you still have them for your records, and then 6-12 months of inactivity would be an appropriate timeframe to remove them.

What should I do with unsubscribed contacts?

When contacts choose to stop receiving emails from you and opt out of your contact list, three things happen:

• They're marked in your account as "unsubscribed" and can no longer receive emails.

• They're considered "inactive" contacts for billing purposes. You're only billed for the number of "active" contacts in your account.

• The email and SMS reporting and engagement history stay in your account.

If a contact unsubscribes and then later re-joins your contact list through one of our sign-up tools, we remove the "unsubscribed" status and they can start receiving emails again as an "active" contact. Their reporting and engagement history picks up again where it left off when they originally unsubscribed.

More information can be found here: Understanding unsubscribed contacts.

Any tips for subject line strategies that grab attention?

A subject line is one of the most important parts of your email. Not only does it entice your contact to open the email, it also has an impact on delivery. We have some suggestions on optimizing your subject line.

A few examples for a win-back campaign:

• [Name], we miss you!

• Exclusive information just for you

• We haven’t seen you in a while

You suggested using emojis in the subject line. I read that I shouldn't use punctuation in the subject line for a better opportunity to get past firewalls.

While it is true that excessive punctuation can trigger spam filters, including one emoji should not make a negative impact. Learn more about best practices for using emoji in an email subject line.

What do I include in a win-back campaign?

Here are a few suggestions from Patty:

• Mix it up! If you are ecommerce-based or a B2C, offer a coupon or another incentive.

• Let your contacts choose how often they would like to receive your emails with a feedback block (mentioned more below)

• Ask for a review

I use emails to encourage donors to give to our nonprofit but they’ve been dropping off. How does a win-back campaign work here? We don’t want to lose any more donors.

If you don’t ask, the answer is going to be “no.” Think about what’s important to your donors and include this in your messaging. If someone directly benefited from a past donation, ask if they would be comfortable sharing their experience.

Any specific tips for non-sales emails? More for education where we share articles written by our experts.

No matter the content, the main thing to always focus on is the value you are providing for your reader. What is in it for them? What problem are you solving for them by sharing these educational articles? Why should they take the time to read this information? This is what you can emphasize in your subject lines, headlines in the body of the email, and calls to action.

What are your suggestions for financial institutions?

Educational content is key for your industry. For a re-engagement campaign, I would start by providing some sort of different content or offer that you catch their attention. Maybe it's an important change or topic that's really important at the moment too. Check out our guide: The Ultimate Guide for Financial Services Marketing.

I have contacts that are opening my emails but aren’t clicking on any links. What else can I do to increase engagement?

The feedback block is a quick and simple way to encourage your contacts to engage with your email and make it interactive. Insert a poll to get to know them more or use the star system to have them rate your email or rate your service. Get creative!

What about resending my emails to those who don’t open them the first time?

There is a place for this, but it should not be done for every email. Only resend your most important emails, like those that include a deadline or informing them of an upcoming event. When resending to non-openers, we suggest changing the subject line. Don’t send it right away! Wait two or three days. We found that waiting a few days tends to be more successful in increasing your opens.

Did you say to clean your bounces after every email send? I send a weekly email. Should I clean bounces every week?

That would be the recommendation! It's important to remove them from your list as soon as you are able, to ensure that your list is clean and that you won't run into any deliverability issues.

How accurate do you find subject line testers?

The subject line A/B testing feature in Constant Contact is a great way to test which subject lines work best while finding a winning subject line after a period of time, and then using that subject line to send to the rest of your list.

With the A/B testing reporting, you can even see who engaged with each subject line!

Can you tell us where to find the zerobounce.net integration?

Zero Bounce is a 3rd party tool that you can integrate with. You'll want to find the integrations tab on the left side of your account and you can search for Zero Bounce in that section. Please note that Constant Contact does not provide support for the integration and all support must go through Zero Bounce.