Email Marketing: Win Them Back

We all know the importance of keeping a clean email newsletter list. Inactive email addresses can actively harm one's ability to send, as email service providers will consider this when deciding whether or not to deliver your emails to the inboxes of recipients, if they deliver them at all. Obviously you can take steps, such as working with a white-listed sender to pave the way for email delivery. If you're sending to a lot of inactive addresses, however, you run the risk of looking like you keep a dirty email list and of being caught in a spam trap. Before you go through and delete all your inactive readers, however, you might see about running an email marketing campaign to win back any readers whose addresses are legit but have, for whatever reason, stopped reading.

There will be cases where your readers haven't lost interest, but rather, have simply been away. There are many reasons why people might take a break- they may be traveling for extending periods of time, for example. Women who subscribe on their work accounts and take maternity leave are another example. And then, of course, you have the more seasonal interests. If you sell gardening supplies, for example, you shouldn't be surprised to see decreased activity during the fall and winter from readers who will be back to opening and clicking through your emails in spring and summer. These readers are likely to re-engage when they return and that is great. For those that have permanently lost interest (or just aren't there anymore, having abandoned the email address), it is important that you clear them off your list. Hence, the campaign.

In this round of emails you might choose to offer an incentive for returning. A message that says "hi, we're missed you and want to offer you this special deal as a returning customer" is one tact that you can take. Another option is to acknowledge that they're stopped reading and ask if there is anything that you could be doing differently. A survey can reveal helpful details about their choice to stop engaging. It might be that you aren't offering the same thing you used to, that they mostly read check emails on their phone and your format doesn't work there or that you simply send too many (or too few) emails for their tastes. Finding out what is wrong can help you make it right. And, finally, you can send our your final notice saying that in order to maintain the best opt-in email marketing practices, you will be clearing your list of inactive addresses. Encourage interested parties to respond so that you don't accidentally remove them from your list, and then clear your list within a set period of time.