The Art of the Reengagement Email

Tips for creating reengagement emails that work.

An email subscriber's relationship with a brand generally starts out quite enthusiastically. They've signed up to your list and can't wait for your next email to hit their inbox so that they can find out about upcoming offers and read your latest content. Not all subscribers maintain this enthusiasm though.

Unfortunately the reality is that your email list will decrease by 25% every single year, which means that at some point this year, a quarter of your subscribers will have stopped opening and reading your emails.

That's a lot of web traffic and potential sales that are being lost, which is where reengagement comes in.

Why your subscribers have stopped engaging

There are a number of reasons why your subscribers stop engaging with your emails.

• They have relocated or changed their email address
• They are receiving the similar content and offers from a competitor
• Your emails aren't optimized for mobile devices
• They are receiving too many emails from your company
• You've been sending a lot of the same content

Reengagement emails matter

If you're wondering why you should bother with reengagement campaigns and why you can't just let your subscribers decide whether they want to read your emails or not, you should know that your brand's reputation could be on the line if you leave your email list to its own devices.

Subscribers who stop opening and engaging with your emails can negatively affect your brand's ratings with ISPs. Emails with low engagement rates will usually raise those nasty spam flags and you could see your IP being blacklisted if you're not scrubbing your database on a regular basis.

An email list hygiene company can help with this.

By developing a reengagement campaign you are giving your brand one last shot before you remove certain subscribers from your list. Remind your subscribers why they signed up for your emails in the first place to see if you can bring them around again.

Tips for developing an email reengagement strategy that works

Below are a few helpful tips that can be used to develop your reengagement campaign.

1. Determine who you'll be reengaging. Before you start developing a campaign, put some criteria in place to determine who you will be reengaging. For example, you could decide to target users who haven't opened one of your emails in 6 months or haven't made a purchase in the last 8 months even though they are regular customers.
2. Look at past email reports. Your past email campaigns are good indicators of what your current unengaged subscribers were once reacting to. Look at the last 3 campaigns that they opened to see whether there are any commonalities and how you can use those to reengage them.
3. Change things up completely. Unengaged subscribers are telling you that they aren't as interested as they once were so make sure that your reengagement campaign isn't anything like your usual emails if you want to grab their attention.
4. Give them a reason to stay or ask them if they want to leave.Offering your unengaged subscribers an incentive is one way to get them to start engaging with your emails again. You could also just ask them directly whether they still want to hear from you so that you know whether to take them off your list or not.
5. Consider changing your design.When analyzing your past campaigns, take a second look at your design too and see if there is anything you can change to give your emails a bit of a makeover.

Even though reengagement campaigns can help bring unengaged subscribers back, know when it's time to remove a subscriber for the sake of the rest of your email list and your brand's reputation.