Temperatures are dropping, leaves are falling and seasonal beverages are selling – it must mean that the holiday season is quickly approaching. And while many people get to wait in anticipation for this magical time of year, marketers are hard at work planning and creating their upcoming holiday marketing campaigns.
In fact, many marketers are likely focused on developing their most creative designs and strategic promotions – critical components to any campaign. But they also need to give attention to their subscriber lists. A recent study found that as much as 50 percent of lists are inactive. If audiences are not engaging with the brand’s communications, then brands may experience diminished returns, or worse.
Why reactivate?
The bottom line is that it is more cost effective for marketers to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones. Past buyers represent higher open, click and transaction rates than non-buyers.
By reactivating their inactive subscriber base, marketers have an opportunity to improve the return on each marketing campaign.
How to reactivate?
Email addresses may appear inactive for a number of reasons. The email address may no longer be in use, the subscriber does not find the content relevant, or the subscriber prefers to scan unopened emails and purchase in other channels. Marketers need to understand the cause behind each inactive address in order to strategically re-engage with past customers.
Once marketers are able to identify all of their inactive subscribers, they will want to segment them into buckets. For example, those that clicked but have not purchased in the past 90 days, or those that have opened emails, but not clicked or purchased in the past 90 days. Each person is unique in their behaviors and interests, so marketers will need to engage these subscribers in a variety of tactics.
- Offering an incentive
- Using an engaging subject line
- Utilizing a confirmed opt-in strategy
- Sending more than one message as part of a reactivation strategy
Marketers who strategically reactivate their inactive subscriber base have an opportunity to bring past-customers back into their sales funnel, and experience more return on their marketing campaigns. By leveraging data and insight to identify and re-engage this group, brands and marketers can also have a magical holiday season.
To learn more about re-engaging your inactive email subscribers, download our e-book.