What is a Re-engagement Email Campaign? Actionable Tips and Best Practices

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.

Here are steps to identify your inactive subscribers and re-engage them:

1. 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. 
2. Use email analytics: Look at your subscriber engagement metrics to understand how many people actively open and interact with your emails.
3. 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. 
4. 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 re-engage them.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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. 
8. 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.
9. 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 cleaning it manually. 

Here are the best ways to start:

1. Define your goals: Outline the goal of your re engagement campaign — do you want to boost email campaign metrics or recover lost customers? This will set the tone for your email series. 
2. Segment your audience: Segment your audience based on demographic data, psychographics, geographic locations, and behavioral attributes. This allows you to create tailor-made re engagement campaigns.
3. 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.
4. 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. 
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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. 
10.  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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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:

• Mass email marketing,
• Halloween email marketing,
• Holiday email marketing,
• Direct email marketing,
• Easter email marketing,
• Social media email marketing,
• Lifecycle email marketing,
• Real estate email marketing,
• Affiliate email marketing,
• Local email marketing.

If you’re looking for inspiration to craft subject lines for other types of emails, read on:

• Last chance email subject lines,
• Reconnecting email subject lines,
• Funny email subject lines,
• St.Patrick’s Day email subject lines,
• Abandoned cart email subject lines,
• Valentine’s Day email subject lines,
• Thanksgiving email subject lines.

Let’s look at them below:

• 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.
• 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.
• Direct Subscribers to the Preference Center: If your recipients haven’t unsubscribed, direct them to the preference center to manage email frequency. 
• 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.
• Create engaging content: Whether it’s sharing success stories, tips, or product updates, provide value with every sentence. 
• 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?
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Automate drip campaigns: Set up automated drip campaigns to send a series of re engagement campaigns over time. 
• Monitor and analyze metrics: Continually monitor open rates, click-through rates, and conversions to check the effectiveness of your re engagement campaigns.