Email Campaign Renews Subscriber Engagement

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There are subscribers on every list who disengage after a while: no opens, no clicks, no interest. In fact, on average 75 percent of email subscribers on any list are inactive. These subscribers can act as dead weight for your metrics and impact inbox placement, which is why those who follow best practices preach healthy list-cleaning habits. However, before unsubscribing anyone, you should always run a subscriber through a re-engagement campaign. Here’s how we helped one media and publishing company create a successful re-engagement campaign to keep subscribers they may have otherwise lost.

From Zero to Hero

One of the largest media and publishing companies in the United States faced a problem many email marketers do: a large portion of their subscribers were disengaged. But their solution was drastic. They cut subscribers off the list whenever they hadn’t opened any emails. Because the company places a high value on deliverability and engagement metrics, this seemed like the perfect solution to their problem.

However, by simply deleting these subscribers, the brand was losing the potential to win them back. In addition, the overall list size was shrinking. That’s when the EverView team stepped in to help. We saw an opportunity to help our client maintain a clean, healthy list while winning back as many subscribers as possible by creating a multi-message re-engagement campaign. And even better, we planned to automate it to keep the ongoing level of effort minimal.

Since people could potentially subscribe to several newsletter lists covering various topics — an average of 1.81 newsletters per person, in fact — the team had to monitor not only whether subscribers were opening the dedicated re-engagement campaign, but any number of other topical newsletters they may have been subscribed to at the time, as well. This made the execution of the re-engagement campaign complicated but was well worth the high engagement rates the campaign garnered overall.

What We Optimized

The EverView team took the reins to create a hand-crafted re-engagement series tailored to the needs of this media and publishing company:

Analyzed current re-engagement program performance to determine how to best identify an inactive subscriber.

Optimized current re-engagement strategies

Initiated new re-engagement strategies including the creation and automation of four dedicated re-engagement emails.

Ensured inactive subscribers were removed only when it was absolutely necessary in order to maintain the largest engaged list size possible. This included designing a re-engagement retouch campaign where those who responded to the re-engagement campaign, but then fell off again in the future, would receive this one-time retouch email.

Sought to maintain current active engagement percentages as well as email reputation and deliverability.

Results

By creating and launching this re-engagement campaign, EverView helped save almost half this company’s subscribers who would have originally been manually deleted for disengagement. The numbers speak for themselves:

Graph and stats

In addition, both lists maintained a higher percentage of active subscribers (15%) and saw an increase in both opens and clicks across the board.

Graph and stats

The company also remained free of deliverability concerns during and after running this re-engagement campaign. There was a slight decline in list size, but that’s where doors opened to execute acquisition strategies and best practices.

Future Strategy

At EverView, we believe a project is never done and that there’s always room for improvement. Although the re-engagement campaign optimization for this media and publishing company was a success, the numbers show us more ways we can optimize and continue improving results. We plan to increase the length of the dedicated re-engagement series by adding re-mails and adjusting the timing. We’re also going to complete subject line and preheader text updates to help drive opens. Finally, we plan to also explore deeper content personalization and interactive elements.

Get Ahead of Marketing Trends with EverView

No matter where you are in your marketing journey, EverView can help you maximize marketing-driven revenue.

The EverView email marketing and personalization platform helps you elevate your customer targeting and daily email strategy and execution to increase your bottom line and grow customer value. With the ability to create segmented, personalized campaigns across channels, you can ensure you’re creating a truly 1:1 experience for your customers.