Wake them up! How to deal with inactives on your email list July, 2006 BY REGINA BRADY
Does it surprise you that a substantial portion of your email list is inactive? If you’re like most marketers, you’ll find between 25 percent and 40 percent of your list is not opening or clicking through on your messages. This group drags down the overall performance of your program, so it’s important to identify your inactives and create strategies that will re-engage them.
Define Inactives
Someone who has not opened or clicked on your messages in the past six months certainly is not avidly involved with your programs. Use this time frame to conduct benchmark analysis. If you don’t send email on at least a monthly basis, you might want to use a longer period such as nine months.
To analyze your list, start by selecting list members who have subscribed more than six months ago. From this group, identify those recipients who have not clicked-through or opened your messages during the past six months. Now you’ve isolated your least-productive contacts. You can calculate your inactive rate by dividing this group by the total number of names that met the first criteria.
Further Analysis
Now that you have isolated your inactives, do some additional analysis.
Look at the source of the names. For example, are they co-registration names, individuals who participated in a contest and opted to receive your emails, or are these appended names? These namesmay not be as qualified as other names on your house list.
Examine the list by domain. Do you have a good deal of names at free email accounts? If so, you probably do not have the primary email address of these members. Also, you if see a substantial percentage of these individuals come from a particular domain, this may indicate your email is either blocked or delivered to a bulk folder.
Some ISPs flag accounts that have been closed for a substantial period of time and use them as spam traps. Continuing to mail to these names may jeopardize your overall mailings and result in delivery of all your mail to a bulk folder.
Can you determine other data attributes that are consistent across your inactives? Is there a particular demographic characteristic that stands out? That may indicate that your content or offers are not resonating with the group.
Are some of these names buyers? If you have postal address information, consider doing a matchback against online and offline orders. While these buyers may not respond to your emails, these messages may be influencing a sale, so you’ll want to put these names in a separate category and continue to mail them.
If you are see particular trends based on any of these circumstances, this information can help drive your communication strategy.
Seven Ways to Re-engage Inactives
There is no “magic bullet” that will re-engage inactives. However, you may want to consider implementing a few of the following ideas. - Mix it up. Try sending text messages to this group in lieu of HTMLs. Text messages have a better chance of being delivered. If the images in your e-mails have been blocked or improperly rendered, your recipients may have experienced problems in accessing or understanding your content.
- Re-confirm their permission. Use this strategy particularly if you’ve found a sizeable portion of the names come from secondary vehicles such as co-registration programs or contest entries. Have them re-opt into your program. Yes, you’ll lose the ability to contact these names going forward; but your overall program performance will be improved.
For example, I recently received a reconfirmation email from Dell. I’d been on its list for quite some time, but I hadn’t been reading the messages. The subject line: “Dell sends its apologies. There’s still time to save on $599 desktop savings.” In the email the first sentence was very clear: “If you no longer wish to receive these communications, unsubscribe by clicking here.” The second paragraph asked if I’d prefer to receive emails on a less frequent basis. And, the third paragraph suggested that I add Dell to my address book. Dell attempted to overcome several obstacles with this one communication.
- Obtain better email addresses. This makes sense for those names registered with free email accounts. It’s likely you don’t have the primary email address for these individuals. Flag these names in your call center workstation, and if the individuals call in, have your reps ask for, or re-confirm, their email address. If the economics work, you might also consider either an outbound call program or a mail campaign sent to these names to acquire a better address.
- Ask them to update their profiles. This is a variation on getting a better email address. For example, I received an email from Classmates.com with the subject line “Important – Classmates membership verification.” The body of the email explained it was sending me the message to confirm that my account and profile information was correct. Key elements of my personal information were clearly presented, and I could click on “edit” to update my account.
Hewlett-Packard puts a continuing emphasis on profile capture. A recent email had the subject line “Getting the HP offers you want has never been easier.” The major call to action in the message was: “You can now customize your HP Monthly Promotional email to get the offers you want.” And, they explained how to do it and the benefits I’d receive.
Levinger sent me an email with the subject line “Update your e-list information.” It explained that I am a Preferred Customer and that they were updating their database and suggested I update my information.
- Try a “We want you back” tactic. There are many ways to do this. Many marketers provide a special offer to the recipient and use this opportunity to restate the benefits of its program. Drugstore.com sent me an email with the headline, “We want you back. And to prove it, we’re giving you $5 off any purchase of $30 or more.
One of my favorite examples is a “tongue-in-cheek” message from BMW for its MINI email recipients. The headline in the message is, “Are We Boring You?” The accompanying graphic is of a man sleeping in the driver’s seat of the car. BMW checked in with its readers and explained that if the reader was enjoying the program, that was great. If not, it suggested the individual could modify his or her profile and opt out. It said, “It’s OK. Technically speaking, we’re adults. We won’t be offended.”
- Change frequency. Put these individuals on a different communication cycle. If you have a weekly program, consider mailing this group on only a monthly basis until their activity patterns change.
- Survey them. Different types of communication can often restimulate activity. People like to share their opinions. Send your dormant names a survey with the goal of understanding more about their preferences and capturing additional profile information. Or, include a polling question in your email. You can use this information to customize and personalize ongoing emails.
These are just a few ideas that should help you deal with waking up your inactives. Once you do the analysis to determine the extent of the problem, you can employ several strategies and tactics. After all, you want to wake them up! Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and e-mail marketing consultancy. She can be reached at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net. Return to Articles
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