Over time, your email list can get a little\u2026 stale. People will subscribe to your list and they\u2019ll stay subscribed and yet rarely (if ever) actually open your emails. And then there you are constantly emailing them anyway.<\/p>\n
This hurts your open rates. Over time, this hurts your email deliverability<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many times, I\u2019ve watched email list owners who lament their low open rates<\/a>. They may even blame the software they\u2019re using and wonder if switching to another platform would solve their problem. However, in most cases, I found that they have not been maintaining their email list. It doesn\u2019t matter what software you\u2019re using\u2026 if you\u2019re not maintaining your list your open rates will suffer over time.<\/p>\n Keep in mind\u2026<\/p>\n The SIZE<\/em> of your email list really doesn\u2019t matter all that much. What REALLY<\/strong> matters is how many people on your list actually engage with your emails. The ones that are subscribed but never even look at anything might as well not even be there.<\/p>\n The purpose of a re-engagement campaign is to warm up subscribers who have not been responsive. It is a campaign that you should run periodically \u2013 perhaps even automatically.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s go over that process and how you can build and run your own re-engagement campaign.<\/p>\n One time I sent out a re-engagement campaign and got some interesting reactions. The last email in the series basically tells them I\u2019m going to remove them from my list. Why would I do that? More email subscribers, the better\u2026 right? But, he asked\u2026<\/p>\n How much money or time has it cost you to have me on you mailing list?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Truth is\u2026 more than he thinks. And here\u2019s why\u2026<\/p>\n Engaged subscribers are what maintain high delivery rates.<\/strong><\/p>\n If I have a number of people on my list who aren\u2019t engaged, then it affects my overall ability to reach the inbox on everybody else.<\/p>\n How is engagement measured? Well, by many potential factors, including:<\/p>\n These are all signs of engagement with the list. If they never open, click or reply to your emails, then they simply don\u2019t care. Chances are, they\u2019re not ever seeing your emails.<\/p>\n The thing is, email service providers see this. Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook, Yahoo and other providers SEE<\/em><\/strong> email engagement across their entire pool of users. They see the email senders that people are routinely ignoring. And if you\u2019re one of those email senders, you\u2019re way more likely to have your email go into the spam folder or the promotions tab.<\/p>\n A large pool of disengaged email subscribers makes it less likely that you\u2019ll be able to reach the people who truly want to hear from you.<\/strong><\/p>\n Its that simple. Having long-unengaged subscribers stay on your list just to make the list look bigger actually HURTS the effectiveness of your email marketing.<\/p>\n The basic goal of a re-engagement campaign is to send out a series of emails to get them to open or click on something. By them showing ANY signs of engagement with that email (usually a trackable open or clicking a link), we consider them \u201cengaged\u201d.<\/p>\n The basic process is simple:<\/p>\n At the end, the people who have not responded can either be outright deleted from your list or you could segment them in such a way where you don\u2019t email them anymore. We\u2019ll talk more about that below.<\/p>\n Ideally, re-engagement is something you will do habitually. Every 60-90 days is ideal. You can choose your own timeline for how loose you want to be with your timeline. Ideally, you will automate it using your CRM software so that you don\u2019t have to think about it anymore. If you do not (or can not) automate the timing, then just manually run the campaign over 60-90 days.<\/p>\n Re-engagement campaigns are only sent to people who are stale. People who are opening or clicking on your emails at least once every 60-90 days will never see your re-engagement campaign.<\/p>\n The whole process begins with separating out the people on your email list who haven\u2019t been responding to anything for awhile. Most email list management software makes this pretty easy because they track opens automatically.<\/p>\n I personally use (and recommend) FluentCRM<\/a>. My screenshots and examples here will use FluentCRM<\/a>, however the process is pretty much the same on other platforms. <\/p>\n With FluentCRM<\/a>, the process is simple:<\/p>\n You can change your timeframe if you like. In this example, I\u2019m searching for people who haven\u2019t opened or clicked on anything in 90 days or more. You can adjust this to 60 days\u2026 or go up to something higher like 180 days. It is up to you. <\/p>\n FluentCRM<\/a> also has a feature called Dynamic Segments. This enables you to create a search similar to above and save it as a constantly updated segment. Subscribers will come and go from that segment depending on their activity. Here\u2019s a dynamic segment I use called \u201cUnengaged for 90 Days\u201d:<\/p>\n Now, searching for this segment of people doesn\u2019t really DO anything with them. You\u2019re simply finding them. Once you have found them, you can either manually add them to your re-engagement sequence or you can tag them with something like \u201cUnengaged<\/strong>\u201d and then use that tag to trigger an automation.<\/p>\n Every CRM is different in it\u2019s capabilities. With some, you can fully automate this entire process. With others, you will need to manually trigger the process and then it can be automated from there.<\/p>\n For it to be fully automated, your CRM software would need to be able to automatically trigger an automation based on email activity. It would need to trigger an automation automatically if a lead enters your inactive segment. Not all CRMs can do this.<\/p>\n However, even if your CRM cannot fully automate re-engagement, you can still set up the automated email series. It would be like a script that runs on automatic, but you would need to manually hit the \u201cGo\u201d button.<\/p>\n With FluentCRM<\/a>, this is your best approach. FluentCRM<\/a> does not (currently) have the ability to trigger an automation automatically based on email inactivity or by entry into a dynamic segment. But, what you CAN do is set up the automation to be run and then manually add people to it. If you just do this every 90 days or so, it would be like a routine maintenance action on your email list. Think of it like changing the oil on your car. \ud83e\udd2a<\/p>\n We\u2019ll talk about the basic \u201cplumbing\u201d in a bit, but the core of your re-engagement email campaign are the emails you are going to send to them.<\/p>\n Remember, the whole point of these emails is to get them to CLICK on something. A click is an intentional action on their part and it is something we can track with 100% accuracy. An email open is not reliable for a variety of technical reasons, so we cannot rely on an email open to show they are engaged. If you do, you could end up removing people from your list that are actually legit.<\/p>\n What kinds of things can we get them to click on? A few ideas might be:<\/p>\n And at some point toward the end, you might even need to engage in a little bit of \u201ctough love\u201d. In other words, be upfront with them that they seem to be really quiet and not interested in anymore. Subject lines such as \u201cDid I hurt your feelings?<\/em>\u201d or \u201cDid I do something wrong?<\/em>\u201d might get their attention. And it is also a good idea to be upfront about the fact that you\u2019re going to need to remove them from your list unless they respond in some way.<\/p>\n Keep your emails nice and friendly and in the same basic tone that you usually email your list. Just be yourself. \ud83d\ude0e But, at a certain point, you may get a little more serious and just let them know the end is near unless they click on something and show that they\u2019re actually interested in hearing from you.<\/p>\n It is also OK (and very effective) to actually tell them to unsubscribe if they\u2019re not interested in hearing from you. Be nice about it, of course. But, in the end, you\u2019d much rather have people click to unsubscribe than not click anything at all. At least that\u2019s a vote and a response and you won\u2019t waste your time and resources moving forward. Remember, them being there constantly getting emails they never open actually hurts deliverability for the people who actually want to hear from you.<\/p>\n There is no one right answer to how many you should send. Many list owners will send out one-off email campaigns regularly just to unengaged subscribers and they just do it regularly. Others will write a pre-written email sequence several emails long and let it rip.<\/p>\n In the past, I used to run a full email sequence consisting of 10 emails sent over a 14-day period. To be clear, I don\u2019t run this sequence anymore and I think it is rather excessive. Attitudes shift. \ud83e\udd2a But, that\u2019s what I did at the time.<\/p>\n DOWNLOAD<\/strong>: The full PDF of my old 10-email reengagement sequence is available in the Document Library<\/a> if you have a ONEPass membership<\/a>. Click here to view and download this PDF.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Today, my recommendation would be to keep it shorter. I\u2019d say 3-4 emails is adequate. You can just mix it up using some of the ideas in the list above to try to get them to click on a link and show signs of life. In the final email, just tell that if they don\u2019t act to stay active on your list, then you\u2019ll be removing them.<\/p>\n If you want, you can create more than one different re-engagement sequence and have them sitting in your system ready to go. Then, if people end up in your unengaged segment more than once, they won\u2019t see the exact same emails. You can mix it up a little. \ud83d\ude07 Totally up to you.<\/p>\n It is one thing to write the series of emails you will send them\u2026 and it is another to build the mechanics of making it all work. So, let\u2019s discuss how to do that.<\/p>\n Keep in mind, every CRM can have different capabilities. There are also usually multiple ways to get the same thing to happen. What I will do here is simply show an effective way to build out the mechanics of re-engagement using FluentCRM<\/a>.<\/p>\n First off, you will need 2 tags:<\/p>\n I would then create a dynamic segment such as the one mentioned above in this article. You can set whatever criteria you like. Mine looks for people not active for 90 days, haven\u2019t opened or clicked on anything in 90 days, and still in the \u201cSubscribed\u201d status.<\/p>\n Note that you need to play with the segment criteria and make note of the and\/or logic of your search. As you can see in mine above, I have two sets of rules (each using AND logic), but either one can apply (using OR logic). Also, the reason I use the \u201cLast Activity\u201d criteria, too, is that that catches people who may have logged into the site, bought something, or did ANYTHING on the site. Even if they haven\u2019t opened an email, if they\u2019ve logged into the site I consider them engaged.<\/p>\n The guts of it all will be the Rengagement Automation itself. Here\u2019s the bird\u2019s eye view:<\/p>\n This particular automation is built to accommodate the capabilities of FluentCRM<\/a>. It currently lacks the ability to attach Smart Links to dynamic links (such as latest blog posts)\u2026 or to react specifically to clickable links within an automation. So, what I\u2019ve done here is set up an automation which sends out a series of 3 emails. And then after each email, we run a new check to see if they\u2019ve clicked on anything in the last 90 days. If they have, we remove the Unengaged tags and remove them from the automation. If they have not, it continues. If it reaches the end and they\u2019re still in the system without any activity for 90 days, we\u2019ll tag them as Stale.<\/p>\n In terms of the emails themselves, you can customize them to fit your needs. In my case, I make use of the Latest Posts block in FluentCRM<\/a> to show them my latest newsletter issues, latest videos and latest blog posts. Because those blocks are dynamic, I know they will always show the latest content whenever I run this automation.<\/p>\n I also make use of buttons to get them to \u201cvote\u201d on whether they want to stick around or leave my email list. I use FluentCRM<\/a>\u2019s email shortcodes to make these links dynamic.<\/p>\n They\u2019ll either unsubscribe or they\u2019ll click on ANY of the numerous links in these emails. And, of course, if they click on a link, the automation will remove the Unengaged tag and stop bothering them.<\/p>\n To add them to this automation, we do the following:<\/p>\n Then, when sending out email campaigns and newsletters, I just exempt Stale subscribers so they will not get it. If I want, I can delete them.<\/p>\n For the cost of a single Anytime Credit<\/a>, I can import this automation into your FluentCRM<\/a>, help you customize the emails to your needs and modify it as needed. I will also set up the other \u201cplumbing\u201d for you so you\u2019ll be all set to run your own re-engagement campaigns. Click here to add 1 credit to your account<\/a>. Active Concierge<\/a> clients receive an automatic discount.<\/p>\n Not using FluentCRM<\/a>? Get in touch<\/a> and I can probably help you build the equivalent setup in your CRM of choice. I\u2019ve worked with most of them. \ud83e\udd13<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This article is still being updated and edited. \ud83d\ude07<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over time, your email list can get a little\u2026 stale. People will subscribe to your list and they\u2019ll stay subscribed and yet rarely (if ever) actually open your emails. And then there you are constantly emailing them anyway. This hurts your open rates. Over time, this hurts your email deliverability. Many times, I\u2019ve watched email […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":168177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11761],"tags":[67586,18026,1232],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-168176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-affiliate-marketing","tag-10day","tag-sequence","tag-works"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy Email Engagement Is So Important<\/h2>\n
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The Basics Of An Email Re-Engagement Campaign<\/h2>\n
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How To Segment The People Who Are Unengaged<\/h2>\n
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![\"FluentCRM](\"https:\/\/www.blogmarketingacademy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fluentcrm-unengaged-subscribers-1024x433.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"FluentCRM](\"https:\/\/www.blogmarketingacademy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fluentcrm-unengaged-dynamic-segment-1024x587.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nCan This Be Automated?<\/h2>\n
What Emails Do You Send To People?<\/h2>\n
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How Many Emails Should Your Re-Engagement Sequence Be?<\/h2>\n
The Mechanics Of Running Your Re-Engagement Email Campaign<\/h2>\n
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![\"My](\"https:\/\/www.blogmarketingacademy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fluentcrm-unengaged-dynamic-segment-2-1024x585.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"FluentCRM](\"https:\/\/www.blogmarketingacademy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/fluentcrm-reengagement-automation.jpg\")
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Want This Automation Done For You?<\/h2>\n
Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n