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The advent of behavioral targeting in email platforms has led many marketers to develop a far greater understanding of who is engaging with their emails, but also who isn’t. This understanding can often present some frightening statistics, as it is not unusual for some marketers to discover that close to 50% of their subscribers have not engaged with their emails in at least the last 6 months.
This presence of inactive addresses will not only impact revenue, but it will also have a detrimental effect on the following:
· Inbox delivery rates – Many ISP’s are now using customer interaction to determine whether to deliver or block email messages.
· Conflicting reporting – Including non-actives in your reporting means you don’t get a true reflection of your email programs performance
With this new understanding comes the talk of re-engagement and how to get those inactive subscribers back into the habit of interacting with your brand. After all, these people were once interested enough in your products and services to give you their email address. I would like to highlight a couple of our current favorite approaches to re-engagement. In this case, re-engaging a lost customer and re-engaging an inactive email subscriber.
Engaging a lost customer:
This email sent by Firebox is sent to recipients who have historically purchased regularly, but who haven’t made a purchase for a period of four months.
The email uses very little personalization, but it does include a voucher code to incentivize the recipient and to make the message feel more personable. The subject line of “Firebox misses you – have five pounds off” reminds the recipient of the relationship, while the body of the email acknowledges that purchases have been made in the past but not recently. They entice the recipient to visit the website to see ‘tons’ of new items they’ve added. And as an incentive to purchase, they’ve given a code to use to get £5 off.
Interestingly, Firebox have adopted a plain text approach for this email campaign.
Engaging a lost subscriber:
This email sent by Opodo is sent to recipients who have stopped opening emails.
The email focuses on reminding the recipient what they have been missing out on in recent newsletters as well as providing plenty of calls to action to visit the website.
The subject line of “Is this goodbye?” really stands out as being different to their usual sales promotions.
Other nice touches within the email are that they ask the recipient to email them with feedback on what they can do to make the newsletters more interesting as well as promoting Twitter if the email channel is not right for them. Evidence that incorporating social media into your email marketing works!
