Has your campaign stagnated? Your open rate seems lower than you’d like and it just stays the same, no matter what you try to improve on it. The problem might be your mailing list…
I’ve said a lot about mailing list management in the past, but recently a new focus has come up – both in the industry and on our own mailing lists: What to do about inactive subscribers?
We all have them – those subscribers who repeatedly receive your newsletter, but never react to it. They don’t open it or click on your links, but they don’t unsubscribe or launch a spam complaint against you either. They’re either not interested in your news or products anymore and just too lazy or unaffected to unsubscribe; or they just haven’t been interested in your product of late but know that they may want to purchase or do business with you again in future.
Question is: What do you do about them? Should you do anything about these passive recipients?
Yes! Inactive subscribers make it difficult to track how well your campaign is doing. If they’re just temporarily inactive it’s worth keeping them on your list till a later date, but if they’re going to remain inactive they’re lowering your open, click-through and social share rates and negating the positive effects of your campaign. Of course, even though emails are low-cost, it also means you’re wasting send credits on subscribers from whom you might never generate any revenue.
Not only that, but ISPs are taking steps to take recipient engagement into consideration when filtering spam. This means that, when you do bulk sends and a very low percentage of your recipients respond to the email in any way, it raises the risk of your emails being spam trapped.
However, just because someone doesn’t open every single one of your newsletters doesn’t mean they never will…so how do you know whether they should still be on your mailing list?
A few things to try…
Revamp! Perhaps a subscriber doesn’t engage with your campaign anymore because their needs have evolved – but it could also be that your content is no longer relevant because your newsletters have shifted focus.
Review your newsletter content to ensure that it’s relevant to your subscribers and test variations of your newsletter or subject line to see what works best for your mailing list. Try some new ways to get them interested again: Ask them to update their details on your system (that way if they’re really no longer interested, they might just unsubscribe out of their own); launch a promotion or promote other channels they might follow you on, like Facebook, Twitter or SMS updates, as these might provide them with an easier alternative if they no longer prefer email.
If this still doesn’t work it’s time to…
Get brutal. Once you’ve done your best to get inactive subscribers involved again, it’s time to start making some cuts on those who still show no interest. Now, I’m not a fan of hacking at a list that might still contain some recipients who are future potential clients, so I advise you to think carefully about who needs to go. Rather than cutting someone who hasn’t been active over your last two or three sends, set up a timeframe that suits your business. For instance, if you run a guest house it’s likely that past guests feature quite heavily on your list. Your time frame might be one of a few years – after all, not everyone revisits the same holiday spot every year, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to come back in four years’ time.
Which brings me to my next point – look at past purchase history. If you run a business where subscribers tend to make purchases on a more regular basis, you might want to cut subscribers who haven’t reacted to your mailings in six months or a year. People who have purchased from you in the past or also more likely to come back for more at some point than those who’ve never bought your products; even if they have been inactive of late. Also keep in mind that, if you send out a weekly mailer, your periods of inactivity should be shorter than if you send out a monthly or bi-monthly newsletter.
If you want to be absolutely sure whether or not it’s worth deleting an address, you can also look at other channels of activity, for instance Facebook, Twitter or your Support/Customer service logs. If someone has recently contacted you through one of these channels it shows that they are still actively participating with your brand, even though they haven’t read recent emails.
Subscribers, as precious as they are, can be detrimental to your campaign if they don’t show enough interest. Take some time to consider how best to go about getting rid of inactive subscribers. In the end, hacking at your list a bit will actually benefit your campaign. And wouldn’t it be nice to see your open rates rise?
