EMAIL MARKETING
Signs that are considered
positive by algorithms include:
moving a message out of the
spam folder/marking as not
spam, replying, adding the
sender to an address book,
reading/viewing or moving to
another folder or tagging.
On the negative side, signs
considered bad by algorithms
include: deleting a message
without opening or reading,
marking as spam or moving to
the junk folder, or reporting the
email as a phishing attempt.
Clicks are not tracked as a metric
for reputation, as tracking what
a user does within an email
generally is considered to be a
violation of privacy.
Defining Inactives
Taking it a step further, the
majority of marketers will gauge
inactives as anyone who has not
responded, opened, clicked or
acted on any email in the past
six to twelve months. Inactives
may be best defined as people
whose email addresses are still
active and valid, but who are not
engaging in any way with your
emails. The average list’s inactive
rate is around 60 percent. This
means that a list of 10,000 has
only 4,000 true subscribers
reading its posts. Considering
the huge amount of time online
marketers spend building their
lists, having a majority of the list
not responding after signing
Visual Contenting
up is a huge loss in terms of
engagement and revenue.
How to Re-Engage
There are multiple Do’s and
Don’ts in the re-engagement
process. Simply asking customers
to update their email information
can have surprising engagement
results, where re-permission
emails—where the sender
attempted to get long inactive
recipients into receiving emails
again—were found to be
ineffective. Those only had a 1.8
percent average read rate.
While the definition of an
inactive subscriber will be unique
to each company, ultimately
you need to be able to define
an inactive subscriber as
someone who has not opened/
clicked within a certain amount
of time by analyzing your
subscriber history. Use past
data to determine the average
amount of time between when
subscribers sign up and when
they stop engaging. Then
strategize your re-engagement
program around that window of
time by having a strong call to
action, removing non-responders
and keeping subscribers engaged
to prevent those inactive users.
You can also send a survey
to current subscribers asking
something as simple as what
they think of your email
campaigns and offering a small
incentive can help to understand
where things need to be shored
up, but also to point out which
customers have remained
engaged over time, as they are
your most likely responders.
Don’t immediately, however, cull
your list if you don’t see a good
response to winback emails.
Studies have found that 45
percent of people who receive a
winback email will re-engage at
some level with the brand, but
only 24 percent of them actually
read the winback email. The
average time between receiving
a winback email and re-engaging
with a subsequent message from
the sender was around 57 days.
Even in light of this information,
the majority of inactive
subscribers will stay that way.
Having a clear idea of when you
ought to disengage for good can
save you problems in the future.
From Reach Mail
Check out this infographic
on Visual Contenting.