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It happens to the best of email marketers - dead email addresses begin to haunt your open and click-through rates. They might have once belonged to active recipients, happily opening and clicking through, but they're no longer in the land of the living. It appears that they've stopped opening your emails and they're no longer actively reading or clicking. You're not sure they're around to get your emails at all. If you're seeing low activity from select recipients, it's time to determine if the addresses can be saved or if they should be given the axe.
Are they really dead?
With many recipients having images turned off by default, recipients who are in fact reading your emails may only appear dead because the opens are not registered. For these recipients, you may want to start the process with a simple "reactivate yourself" type message. Select a group that has not opened a message in a given period of time - say six months. Then send them an email that asks readers "To ensure you continue to receive our mailings, click here." The click verifies both the address and the recipients' interest. The click-through can take them to a special offer, or to a page where you might gather more information.
Saving the undead
If chopping your list scares you, consider trying to revive these dead email addresses first. The first step is to identify the percentage of inactivity that is acceptable in terms of your marketing goals. Depending on your business model, someone who responds once a quarter may be good news. For other businesses, three months without an action could be the kiss of death. Determine your average range of activity and from there identify your low responders and non-responders. (Your email service provider should be able to guide you on how to find these recipients in your list.)
What killed them?
Once you've identified this group of recipients, analyze the data you have on them to look for any similar characteristics. For example, were these subscribers collected a specific number of months or years ago? Did they come from a certain acquisition source? Did they respond to a special offer that precipitated their signup? Locating these similarities may help to explain their inactivity. It may also help you to brainstorm ideas on how to revive them. For example, if someone opted in because of a great offer, perhaps it's time to send them another offer they can't refuse to re-engage them.
Finding the elixir
The next step is creating a reactivation plan. The key here is to start testing different options. Determine if you want to treat low responders differently from non-responders. Decide if you want to take a multi-email approach or a quick slash and grab. One option is sending an email to this group of low and non-responders and asking them point-blank if they would like to continue to receive messages from you. If they still don't respond, you can comfortably call them dead and hack them from your list. Other ideas include treating this group differently from your main group - varying your normal routine of contact to send more or less frequently, sending special messages, etc. Use the information you gathered in the step above to send a highly personalized message. Consider offering them a particular benefit to coming back to life, for example 20 percent off their next purchase.
Watching for ghosts
Continue to watch this group closely. One action alone may not indicate they've made a full recovery to the land of the living. Determine at which point you can safely consider them revived and add them back to your active group. Until then, keep a close watch and consider altering your win-back approach if you're not seeing the results you expected.
Burying the truly dead
At some point - and you'll need to determine at which point that is - you may have to accept the fact that some of these addresses are truly dead and cannot be brought back to life. At that point, it's best to cut them from your list entirely. Better to focus your energy and resources on your active subscribers.
Getting through the mourning process
Yes, chopping off the dead weight from your list can be painful. No one likes to see their subscriber list decrease. Take this opportunity to learn from any mistakes. Perhaps it was an acquisition source gone wrong that you can avoid in the future. If you found it was older subscribers who were inactive, develop a lifeline strategy to deal with subscribers differently as they age. And focus on the positive - finding new ways to add more active recipients to your list.
To learn more about using SubscriberMail to increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns, contact us today.
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