What is Re engagement Email Campaign? Actionable Tips and Best Practices
Have you noticed how certain email subscribers disengage from your email marketing campaigns over a certain time period? For an email enthusiast, it translates to losing a significant percentage of your email list, reducing your sender reputation.
Marketers lose close to 25% of subscribers every year due to attrition. Re engagement campaigns are a way to reconnect with these customers who have not interacted with your brand in a while.
A well-executed re engagement email campaign can improve your chances of getting back subscribers, and increase your email performance. Let’s understand the need for re-engagement campaigns, writing the best re-engagement emails, how to re-engage inactive subscribers, best practices, and examples on how to get them back into the funnel.
What is Re engagement Email Campaign?
Re engagement campaign is an email sequences sent to subscribers, encouraging them to interact with your brand again.
If you’re new to email marketing, a common challenge could be “how to re-engage email subscribers” without being pushy.
To send effective b2b re engagement emails, you must understand why subscribers stopped engaging in the first place.
Subscribers might lose interest in your emails for different reasons, such as:
- Technical issues,
- Not verifying your sender identity,
- Poor segmentation,
- Lack of personalization,
- Improper timing,
- Flashing graphics,
- Overwhelming email frequency,
- Boring or irrelevant content,
- Unengaging subject lines,
- Repetitive and salesy offers.
When you figure out the reason for subscribers’ inactivity, you can use targeted messaging to get them back on your mailing list. There are various messaging options for re-engagement campaigns.
But to get into this practice, you should know the perks of re-engaging your subscribers.
Benefits of Re-engagement Campaigns
Building an email list is a long process. However, your once active subscribers could have other priorities or may have forgotten about your brand. In such cases, their activity is reduced, and they disengage from your list. This can have a huge impact on your email deliverability rate and ROI.
ISPs use engagement metrics to determine the legitimacy of your email marketing campaigns. When large numbers of subscribers unsubscribe or are unengaged, ISPs may mark your emails as spam. This can result in your emails not reaching your active subscribers, too.
By re-engaging your subscribers through interesting campaigns, you can win their trust and attention back. But first, let’s learn how to spot the signs of inactive subscribers.
Re-engagement Strategy for Your B2B Re-engagement Campaign
Here are steps to identify your inactive subscribers to send them re-engagement email series:
- Define inactivity criteria: Establish rules for what qualifies as an inactive subscriber. For example, it could include open rates, click rates, or purchases during a specific time.
- Use email analytics: Look at your subscriber engagement metrics to understand how many people actively open and interact with your emails.
- Set a time frame: Decide how long you’ll wait before you move subscribers to the inactive list. For example – if it’s three months without engagement, you can send them re-engagement campaigns. If it’s beyond six months, remove them from your email list. Adapt and adjust the time frame according to your product life cycle and customer behavior.
- Monitor purchase behavior: Compare the number of people who purchase from you with the ones who only open your emails. This helps you identify the more interested subscribers and engage them.
- Use engagement scoring: Use an engagement scoring system to help you remove inactive subscribers based on points. This is much easier than manually removing them. For example, you can provide points based on time spent on your website, number of likes, shares, etc, and the percentage of return users.
- Track website interaction: Monitor subscriber interaction on your website, such as page views or downloads. This will give you additional insights into their engagement levels.
- Consider multiple engagement metrics: Don’t just focus on open and click rates. Instead, combine the results from your different metrics, such as social media shares, purchases, and survey responses.
- Regularly review and update: Subscriber engagement is dynamic and can change over time. Update and review your inactive subscriber criteria to make your re engagement email sequence more effective.
- Utilize email marketing analytics and list cleaning tools: Analytics tools help you measure results without the need for manual data entry.
At Campaign Refinery, you can view your results from a sleek dashboard. We also have an automatic email list cleaning feature to remove all inactive and suspicious subscribers from your list — so you don’t have to spend hours doing it manually.
With consistent efforts and proper marketing strategies, you can create the best reactivation emails. To reinforce your efforts, use these steps to plan and iterate your campaigns.
How to Write Re engagement Emails
Heather Huang, co-founder of Mailtime says “Getting in touch with your emotions before you hit the send button is a great habit to build”. We think a similar tactic goes for customer re-engagement — understand what went wrong before you plan your re engagement campaign.
Here are the best ways to start:
- Define your goals: Outline the goal of your reactivation emails — do you want to boost email campaign metrics or recover lost customers? This will set the tone for your email series.
- Segment your audience: Segment your audience based on demographic data, psychographic data, geographic locations, and behavioral attributes. This allows you to create tailor-made re engagement campaigns.
- Identify inactive subscribers: When you know what types of audiences qualify as inactive subscribers, it’s easier to create targeted messages that will interest them.
- Decide when to trigger: Find out the best time to send an email. It’s usually best to send your re engagement emails after 60 days of inactivity. However, the timeframe depends on your campaign goals, business model, and target audience.
- Develop personalized content: Use personalization based on your inactive subscribers’ past interactions, preferences, or purchase history. This will help you create relevant and engaging content for each segment of subscribers.
- Craft compelling subject lines: Your subject lines must communicate the value of your re engagement offer. Use attention-grabbing and persuasive subject lines, and A/B test them to find out what works best for your audience.
- Offer incentives: You can provide discounts, email coupons, exclusive offers, early access to new products, or other advantages that add value to your subscriber. Attractive incentives encourage inactive recipients to take action.
- Design a clear call to action: Include a clear and compelling CTA that informs subscribers to click through your website or landing page to learn more about your brand and make a purchase.
- Consider multi-channel approaches: Think of your re engagement campaigns beyond email — use social media or targeted ads to reinforce your message and reach subscribers who aren’t active on emails.
- Set up automated workflows: Automated workflows help you streamline your re engagement efforts. You can set up triggers to send follow-up emails or additional incentives based on subscriber actions and behavior.
- Test and optimize: Constantly test your subject lines, incentives, or other offers to understand your audiences’ preferences. Use this data to optimize your re engagement campaigns in the future.
- Monitor metrics: Keep a close watch on email metrics such as opens, click-through rates, and marketing conversions to understand how your campaigns are performing. This will show you what’s missing from your campaigns and help you offer better content in your future emails.
- Implement sunset policy: Observe and remove subscribers who aren’t opening and engaging with your re-engagement emails. This will help you avoid wasting time and maintain a healthy email list.
If you’re new to email marketing, learn about the different emails below:
Regardless of the type of email marketing, ensure to humanize your re-engagement email sequences, and it will help tell your brand story and connect with your subscribers on a more personal level. Let’s see the different types of re engagement emails that will captivate your subscribers’ attention.
Re-engagement Email Sequence — Best Re engagement Emails to Send to Your Customers
Re engagement email campaigns usually consist of four or more emails, each fulfilling different purposes. And you can include as much information in each of these campaign types. Here are the types of re engagement emails you must know:
| Engagement Campaign Ideas | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Personalized offer email | Incentivize inactive subscribers to make a purchase. |
| Exclusive access email | Acts as a reward for re engagement, and creates urgency and a sense of exclusivity. |
| Survey or feedback request | Helps gain insights for future email campaigns. |
| Reminder email | Reminds inactive subscribers of the benefits of re engagement. |
| Anniversary or milestone email | Fosters a positive relationship and cultivates brand loyalty. |
| Gamification email | Includes quizzes, games, and interactive elements, encourages inactive subscribers to re-engage. |
| Product recommendation email | Showcase best-selling products to rekindle interest. |
| Update or feature announcement | Highlighting new features to re-engage subscribers. |
| ”We miss you” email copy | Emotionally appeals to the subscribers. |
If none of the efforts work, you can resort to ‘the regret email’ — it emotionally connects with your subscribers as well as provides an alternative. Whatever type of customer re-engagement emails you use, the subject line is the first email component they notice, and it can make or break the outcome.
How to Re-engage Inactive Subscribers Using Re-engagement Email Subject Lines
Re-engagement campaigns help win back inactive subscribers, but the first hurdle is to get them to open your emails. This is where re-engagement email subject lines play a vital role.
To craft compelling subject lines, you must tailor them according to customer segments and individually address their pain points.
This becomes easier as you compare different email metrics and customize the subject lines accordingly. Or you could take a different approach and learn from common re-engagement subject line examples.
Here are some of the popular re-engagement subject line approaches for different email campaigns.
| Campaign Type/Target Audience | Re-engagement Subject Lines |
|---|---|
| Win-back campaigns (For Inactive users) | We miss you, come back for exclusive offersUnlock special rewards: Return to [Company name] now |
| Re-activation campaigns (Abandoned cart emails) | Hey [Name], did you forget something behind?Leaving so soon? We saved your cart with a little something inside |
| General re-engagement campaigns for Dormant subscribers | Don’t miss out on the latest show. Revive your subscription nowWe’ve got something exciting waiting for you |
| Re-engagement campaigns for Lapsed customers | It’s been too long, come back for a surpriseWe’ve made changes – come rediscover us |
| Engaged leads | Thanks for your interest — let’s dive deeperYou’re one step away from exciting rewards |
These are the standard subject line examples for re-engagement campaigns.
If you’re looking for inspiration to craft subject lines for other types of emails, read on:
You can use the following as an outline for your subject line approaches.
Here are re-engagement subject lines categorized by approach.
| Subject Line | Examples |
|---|---|
| Personalization | ” We miss you [subscriber name]”” Exclusive Offer Just For You” |
| Urgency and Special Offers | ”Unlock your special discount today” |
| Curiosity and questions | ” Is this our last communication? We hope not” |
| Direct messages | ” We want you back” |
| Milestone | ”Celebrate with us” |
| Rewards | ” Use 25% off your next purchase” |
| Curated content | ” Discover what you’ve missed” |
| Interactive elements | ” Play and win this exclusive gift” |
| Feedback Request | ”Help us improve”” What did we do wrong?” |
| Friendly and playful | “Is everything okay?[Customer name]. We haven’t heard from you in a while.” |
| Rekindling the relationship | “Let’s start from the beginning. We’d love to have you back.” |
If you struggle to craft engaging email content, you can use your ESP’s built-in tools to do it for you. For example, at Campaign Refinery, you can easily create re-engagement email sequences with our tailored templates and email automation workflows.
Next, let’s focus on the best strategies that will help you build re-engagement campaigns quickly and effectively.
Re-engagement Campaign Best Practices
When you create so many emails in a day, it’s easy to slip into writing them for yourself rather than for your recipients. Being mindful of the re engagement campaign best practices can help you regain focus on your customer journey, pain points, and actions.
Let’s look at them below.
1. Segment Your List Properly
Create a separate segmentation list for your disengaged subscribers. This way, you can send relevant messages to both active and inactive audiences. The criteria for ‘engaged’ can differ with various factors, but typically, you should plan re engagement campaigns within 2 months of no subscriber activity.
2. Make Your Subject Line Attractive
Mix up your subject lines for variety, and use persuasive words like ” A lot has changed since you last visited.”. You may also use emotional phrases like ”Is this the end” to give your subscribers a chance to change their minds.
3. Direct Subscribers to the Preference Center
If your recipients haven’t unsubscribed, direct them to the preference center to manage email frequency.
4. Use Incentives and Offers
Give your subscribers a compelling reason to get back on the list — you can send freebies and samples, milestone rewards, memberships, loyalty programs, and gamification elements.
With Campaign Refinery’s ‘rewards’ feature, you can incentivize and reward your subscribers for every open and click. The best part is that you can assign any ‘point’ value to your subscribers.
5. Create Engaging Content
Whether it’s sharing success stories, tips, or product updates, provide value with every sentence.
6. Write a Clear CTA
Write a clear CTA that helps subscribers understand what to do next. Look at your CTAs from the recipient’s point of view and ask yourself: does it impress? Is it easily understandable? Will it make people take action?
7. Personalize Your Campaigns
Mention specific products your subscribers were interested in and highlight previous purchases. You can create an upsell funnel or use downsell strategies based on customer insights.
8. Include Social Proof
While social proof like testimonials or reviews does not directly help you re engage subscribers, it can talk about the positive experiences others have had with your brand.
9. Regularly Get Feedback
Surveys and feedback requests are a great way to understand your audiences’ actions and behavior. Use the data to further refine your re engagement campaign strategies.
10. Address Recipient Concerns
It’s crucial to reassure your recipients regarding product quality, customer service, and other concerns. Encourage replies, send a re-assurance email, and gradually send re engagement campaigns.
11. Automate Drip Campaigns
Set up automated drip campaigns to send a series of re engagement campaigns over time.
12. Monitor and Analyze Metrics
Continually monitor open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to check the effectiveness of your re engagement campaigns.
There are many ways you can re-engage email subscribers and communicate the uniqueness of your product or service. We show you how popular brands have done it.
Re-engagement Campaign Examples for Inspiration
The rules in re-engagement marketing keep changing, and to stay on top of the game, you must implement newer strategies to engage your inactive subscriber base. We have collected customer re-engagement email examples to keep your audience on their toes.
My Mind – Give Yourself Space to Think
Good email copywriting is a process — it includes different angles, subscriber interests, and, more importantly, fits the user perspective. We like the below example because of its simplicity and emotional connection. From a subscriber perspective, this email speaks to customer pain points and has a high chance of converting again.
Halfdays — Something New is Coming Soon
This ‘Coming soon’ b2b re engagement email example creates anticipation and curiosity, encouraging inactive subscribers to open your emails. Halfdays uses this re engagement email strategy effectively by blurring the background and focusing on the email header text. Notice how they include a CTA that allows subscribers to stay up-to-date with their events.
Koala Eco – Last Day to Save 25%
Koala’s engagement emails are picturesque with a compelling offer. The email promotes urgency alongside a clean CTA. When it’s a limited-time offer, your subscribers are more likely to take action.
Mode Chocolate — Missed Connection?
A fun and humor-filled email reactivation campaign gives your subscribers a reason to reconnect with your brand. Mode Chocolate has done it using simple and funny language that sparks interest.
Better Bagel — Free Shipping On Something Better
Better Bagel knows how to re-engage lost customers using cart email tactics. It pulls the viewer through product images, an offer, and a good-to-read text. Note that the CTA is subtly mentioned twice in the email — as an offer and a CTA button.
Withings — Go Back to Health in Style
Withings re-engages inactive subscribers with a wake-up call for a health check. The prominent ”Take Advantage” button urges subscribers to start monitoring their health.
Graza – Down to the Last Drizzle
Graza opens the email with a question and then communicates the importance of the product. The email creates a natural flow leading to the CTA. This type of re engagement email instills nostalgia and creates compulsion for the subscribers.
These reactivation campaign examples are wonderful resources to help you re-engage inactive customers quickly. But if that’s not enough, we have copy-paste re-engagement email templates to get you started.
Resubscribe Email Examples (Templates)
Just copy/paste these re-engagement email templates or experiment to see what works for your audience.
Example 1: “We Miss You!” Resubscribe Email
Subject: We Miss You! Let’s Stay Connected
Hey [First Name],
It’s been a while since we last saw you, and we hope you’re okay! We’d love to keep you in the loop with exciting updates, exclusive offers, and valuable content.
Click below to stay subscribed and continue receiving the good stuff!
[Stay Subscribed]
If you’d rather not hear from us, you can manage your preferences anytime.
See you soon!
– [Your Brand Name]
Example 2: “Still Interested?” Email
Subject: Are We Breaking Up? 😢
Hey [First Name],
We hope this is not the end. If you still want to hear from us, simply click the button below to resubscribe.
[Yes, Keep Me Subscribed!]
If not, we totally understand, and you can opt out at any time.
No hard feelings,
– [Your Brand Name]
Example 3: “Exclusive Offer” Resubscribe Email
Subject: A Special Offer Just for You! 🎁
Hey [First Name],
We miss having you around, so we have a surprise for you! As a welcome gift, here’s an exclusive [discount/freebie] just for you:
[Offer Details]
But hurry—this offer expires in [X] days!
[Resubscribe & Claim Your Offer]
Looking forward to having you back!
– [Your Brand Name]
Example 4: “Last Chance to Stay Subscribed” Email
Subject: Last Chance! Your Subscription Ends Soon
Hey [First Name],
We noticed you haven’t engaged with us in a while and we hate to see you go. To keep receiving updates, exclusive offers, and insider content, confirm your subscription below.
[Yes, Keep Me Subscribed!]
If we don’t hear from you, we’ll assume you want to opt out. But we’d love to stay connected!
Hope to see you back,
– [Your Brand Name]
Example 5: “Let’s Start Fresh” Resubscribe Email
Subject: Let’s Start Fresh – We’d Love to Stay in Touch!
Hey [First Name],
We noticed you haven’t been opening our emails lately. And we’re worried you’d miss out on our exclusive offers and updates.
If you’d still like to receive our best deals, exclusive content, and important updates, just click below:
[Yes, Keep Me Subscribed!]
If you’d rather not, no hard feelings. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Hope to see you back soon!
– [Your Brand Name]
Creating re engagement campaigns is a process and requires rigorous testing and optimization. Sometimes, the process can get tricky to handle, which is why we are here to help.
How Campaign Refinery Can Help With Your Re engagement Campaign Strategy
Re-engagement email campaigns are potent ways to restate your brand values and reignite that spark with your subscribers. When you are ready to build one, Campaign Refinery helps you segment and clean your email lists for high deliverability and sender reputation.
Through our email best practices and premium features, our clients have seen an upward of 600% increase in deliverability rates.
We make building re engagement emails a breeze through a smooth software experience — pick a template from hundreds of them in the campaign library, use the engagement rewards feature to interest your subscribers, and strengthen relationships.
While we take care of your re engagement campaigns, build newer relationships through our Lead Magnet Multiplier Course: a guide to getting more subscribers to open your lead magnets.
Get access to more features inside our premium software — apply and become our client today!
FAQ
What is a re-engagement campaign?
A good way to define re-engage is to reconnect with inactive subscribers, sparking interest and encouraging them to engage with your brand. A potent method to achieve this is through we miss you email marketing.
We miss you emails help strengthen customer relationships and build emotional connections. Ensure to include “We miss you” in email subject lines and use a simple email design to highlight this aspect in your “we miss you” email campaign.
