The power of re-engagement campaigns

The change in trends, the new adoption of Smartphones, tablets and other devices are rapidly growing and it has changed how the customers want to be reached and how they react. With the myriad of devices and channels to reach out to your customers, it has become extremely essential for e-marketers to adapt to these changes and re-invent their marketing mix. In this context, email marketing strategies play an upper-hand since email is the primary medium that can be accessed via all these devices and has lower response time (a subscriber can take immediate action through a marketing email).

However, before developing your email marketing strategy, you need to accept some of the bad news – there might be a frightening number of inactive population on your list. Statistics show that around 60-70% of every email database could turn out to be inactive in a short span for 24 to 36 months, irrespective of the business type. Regular mailing patterns targeting this inactive base can harm your domain reputation considerably. Activation campaigns can help you to identify the truly lapsed customers which hurt your e-mail deliverability and respond accordingly.

First things first – identify your inactive base.

The reasons might be many why your subscribers are no longer interested in your marketing campaigns: 

• You send too many messages 
• They don’t need or want the service/product at present 
• Your content is irrelevant 
• They are too busy 
• They have multiple accounts and the current email address with you is not an active one. 
• They do not see your messages (mails getting blocked or routed to spam folder) 
• Your emails are not ‘differentiated’ in the email clutter 

Irrespective of the reasons, activation campaigns play a major part in the re-engagement of the inactive subscribers in your data base. But before developing your activation campaigns, you should make sure that you have categorized your mailing list based on their behavioral data and you have clearly defined the mailing objectives assigned to each segment. Use the behavioral data to identify the inactivity level – when was the last mail they opened, how long has it been, what were the kind of emails they had opened previously etc. Based on these data, you can further enhance your re-engagement strategy.

The more you know about your client the better your activation campaigns would be. Broadly, there are three types of activation campaigns:

Early activation campaigns – for subscribers who are new to your database (joined within 0-90 days) :

The early activation programs are your highest performing category as it consists of your newest subscribers. Make sure that keep a close eye on them so they won’t drop off. Your campaign can include first purchase offers, next purchase offers, update preferences, multi-message “best-offer” campaign or VIP/Loyalty recognition.

Mid activation campaigns – for subscribers who have been inactive between 3-12 months:

Some of the campaigns like update preferences and best offer e-mails will work well with this category. Some additional campaigns you can try are using surveys and using a ‘we miss you’ (come back offer).

Late activation campaigns – for subscribers who have been inactive for over a year:

You still need them even if they haven’t interacted with you in a long time and seize as many possibilities as you can from that subscriber. You need to proceed with caution, be personal and direct and try sending best-offer campaigns to this segment as well. For example, a personalized subject line, “Hey Ketan! We are missing you at DP2Web”

Image souce: EmailDelivered.com