A lot of people can’t help but ask, “Are email lists dead?”
Well, the answer is a resounding no.
Even with the popularity of social media, a lot of clients still like receiving emails. It’s also great for business, as email marketing is 40 times better in acquiring new clients compared to Facebook and Twitter.
While effective, the issue is how to win back the inactive subscribers in the first place. Even if you have thousands of customers, it’s useless if only 10% engage with your emails.
Before you delete them all from your repository, it’s best to try these top 10 tips to reactivate your email list first:
Categorize Inactive Users
Before you undertake the process of reactivation, you need to weed out your users first.
Make sure to categorize the inactive users who have not clicked, opened, or responded to your mails for 6 months to a year. More often than not, these inactive users take about 60% of the entire email list.
With the help of segmentation, you can determine the right strategies for each type of subscriber.
Refine Your Email List
Imagine, if 60% of your subscribers are inactive, it means you’re wasting money over a lot of people who probably won’t convert. Although it was hard to collect their addresses, it’s time to let most of them go.
To do this, send an email and ask them if they’re still interested in subscribing. If they respond, then good – keep them. If they don’t, it’s time to remove them from your list.
While this may be hard given all the efforts you made to acquire them, it’s good for your business. Think of all the money you can redirect to consumers who are more likely to convert.
Survey What Your Clients Think
Another email marketing trick you could try is sending out surveys. This can help you determine what your clients think about your email list.
For best results, provide a reward to those who respond. While this may put a little dent in your finances, it can bring a level of reengagement that is worth every penny.
Ask for Updates
Apart from sending surveys, you can ask your subscribers to update their data. Who knows? The reason they may not be engaging with your business is that they changed their contact info.
You can also ask them to subscribe to mobile or social media updates, as these platforms may be their preferred areas for engagement.
Call the Subscriber to Action
To re-engage your clients, try to send a reactivation email that includes a simple yet effective call to action or CTA.
There are many ways for you to do this. For one, you can send an email that allows the user to change his/her preferences. Your letter could also require the user to click on a link to continue receiving emails.
Whatever your tactic might be, it’s essential to incorporate a CTA with every email.
Keep it Relevant
Email subscribers deal with a lot of emails – about 121 a day. This makes for lower open rates – about only 18% of promotional newsletters get opened, after all.
If you don’t want to be part of the losing 82%, then be sure to send relevant information. Keeping true to the readers’ interest will keep them engaging for a long time.
Provide Options
Your subscribers may be inactive right now, but you can get them to engage by giving them options.
For example, you can give the reader the option to receive newsletters regarding your company or the latest news about the industry. With this, you can keep your subscriber glued to your emails.
Use Facebook
Make the most out of social media content marketing by using the Facebook Custom Audience feature.
With this, you can upload your entire email list and generate a specialized campaign for your subscribers. That way, you can reach out to customers who are more receptive to social media than email marketing.
Constantly Re-Engage
Now that your subscribers are re-engaged once again, you need to keep this fire burning. While you may be tempted to bombard their email addresses with promotions now and then, don’t. You can see better conversion rates by providing something of value.
For example, you can hold webinars on how to improve businesses. While this may require additional effort, it sees higher conversion rates.
Calm Down a Bit
It pays to be aggressive when promoting stuff, but this is not always the case. Put yourself in your subscriber’s shoes: wouldn’t you disengage with a company that sends the same subject line to your email address five times a day?
If you want to get back to your users’ good old graces, then you should consider calming down – at least for a bit. Stop pestering your readers with too much info.
Restart your reactivation campaign at a later date and you’ll be surprised with the reengagement this brings.
