Resurrect your subscribers (from the grave) with reactivation campaigns

When last did you consider how much of your subscriber base is inactive and unresponsive? If you were to take an honest look at your database in terms of deliverability and interactivity across campaigns, how serious is this issue?

The dead wood can represent as low as 20% or as high as 90% of your database. According to Silverpop’s Loren McDonald, most inactivity falls within the 30 – 40% range translating into about a 3rd of a database. This costs you money and muddies the waters when trying to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Perform CPR or flick the switch?

While inactive and unresponsive subscribers represent a cost in the marketing budget and may do harm to your future email campaign in terms of deliverability, is the right strategy just to remove them from your database altogether? I say – first give every effort to restoring the lost relationship through reactivation campaigns and methods. This way you can try to elicit responses to your marketing campaigns which ultimately re-introduces them to your brand.

If you then find that you are still left with unresponsive subscribers, then consider the best practice approach; cull these addresses from your email database before they cause deliverability issues for you.

But don't forget the campaign analytics

Looking at dormancy is of course only one side of the coin. Campaign analytics need to be measured in terms of actual purchases by a customer, as not all customer interaction is created equal. Some customers may never open or click on a campaign, yet they make regular or semi-regular in-store or online purchases all the same. Some customers prefer to buy through alternate channels e.g. call centres. So it begs the question, did something as subtle as the campaign subject line or pre-header move a client into action without them opening and engaging with the email? Referred to as the ‘nudge effect’ by Dela Quist, this kind of subliminal marketing cannot be discounted, however I do not believe you can be dependent on a 3rd of your database taking action through ‘subliminal’ marketing tactics.

Reactivation campaigns should be run according to customer activity e.g. no interaction with brand through any channels for 3 months. This approach needs to be tailored to your company and how you measure customer engagement – whether as open and click-throughs, purchases or both.

4 Steps to avoid having too many inactive and unresponsive subscribers:

1. Start before you have a problem. There are tactics that can be employed whilst your customers are still engaged. The majority of inactive customers result from email address churn. Using tactics such as SMS and alternate email address on registration you provide your company with alternate ways to contact a customer - having them provide you with updated details or permission to continue marketing to them. Email address hygiene should be an ongoing (monthly or campaign-by- campaign) process.
2. When a customer first joins your database ensure all of your touch points are in place. Losing out on an opportunity to engage will cost you later. An email welcome series is the first step in a customer retention program. Getting customers to engage at the beginning of their relationship with you is critical in raising the probability that they spend / continue to spend with you.
3. Start segmentation from the beginning of the customer lifecycle. Spray and pray marketing approaches have been passé for many years. Ensure your company does not send un-segmented, un-targeted and often irrelevant communication to subscribers.
4. Keep up the momentum. Keep the dialogue open with your customer, build trust and continue to ask them for preferences as your relationship progresses. Ensure you USE the preferences accordingly if you want your customers to continue to provide you with this kind of information.

Some extra tactics

Having all of the above in place does not guarantee a 100% engagement from your base. It never will. At the point that you start to see your open and click-through-rates dipping, you can employ the following tactics to encourage your customers to re-engage.

1. Incentive: some customers may be bribed back to life with a once off incentive. Remember that you run the risk of encouraging the wrong future behaviour, in that customers may continue to wait for ‘never to be missed offers’ before they engage again. Weigh up the revenue reward and risk and see if this approach is right for you.
2. Subscribe down: Less frequent and more targeted communication may be what your disengaged customer needs in order to bring them back from inertia.
3. Education: Your customers may need to be reminded of your offer - what value is offered to them as a subscriber and how they can access that value?
4. Survey: Ask your customers what they like and dislike about your campaigns, product, service etc. Understand where the problem lies and use this feedback to address these problems and assist in segmentation e.g. reduced email frequency.

Remember that reactivation campaigns never promise a full return on your investment. Rather employ an ongoing reactivation program that addresses email churn and disengagement of valid email address subscribers on a regular basis and that acts as a proactive methodology rather than a desperate attempt to win back a subscriber after years of disengagement.

Want to breathe life back into your unresponsive base? Get in touch.