Understanding Passive Subscribers: Who Are They?
Have you ever wondered if your newsletter subscribers are genuinely interested in what youâre sharing. Or are they simply tolerating your emails. You may have a fair number of passive subscribers on your list, but they may not always seem like it. After all, it can be hard to tell whatâs going on behind the scenes, especially if it seems like theyâre reading your newsletters.
But hereâs the thing about passive subscribers. You may have a few that are clicking on every email you send, but they may not follow through on any action. You could also have those who donât even open your emails - and those who do the opposite - those that open every email but donât interact with them. Passive subscribers are generally individuals that donât buy into what youâre selling, they donât click on links or read blog posts or sign up for new collections.
These individuals arenât quite interested in what youâre saying or sharing, or in some cases, donât know if youâre sharing anything at all. It may not seem like a big deal to have passive subscribers in your list. They could be counted as an engaged subscriber because theyâre technically âengagingâ with your emails - even if it is passively.
But passive subscribers could be holding your newsletter performance down by lowering your average open and click rates, and even getting flagged as spam by their email servers. Even if one third of your audience comprises of passive subscribers, that could cause a lot of trouble for both you and them. While youâll probably get marked as spam when it happens often enough, their mail servers will begin identifying you as spam to prevent it from happening more. It can be fairly simple to spot who passive subscribers are with the right tools at your disposal.
While some passive subscribers can somewhat go unnoticed if they regularly engage with your emails and only skip out on CTAs, most other email marketing software identifies them for you so you can run re-engagement campaigns dedicated solely to them. The way I see it, itâs important to keep in mind that despite the difficulty in engaging passive subscribers, it is somewhat possible.
Crafting the Perfect Subject Line for Re-Engagement
How many emails do you think most of us get every day. I canât quite count but itâs safe to say we are generally all bombarded with emails we probably donât care for, and sometimes, those emails are from you or your brand. So when you send out an email with a compelling copy but a boring subject line, thereâs a high chance your audience will miss it. A memorable or clever subject line will reel in most readers because they stand out from the horde of dull and generic ones.
From my experience, being witty pays off with puns and funny phrases that stand out. Or you can add a sense of urgency with a limited offer or discount code. And if youâre writing for GenZ, pop culture references might be the best way to go. This is important because no matter what content youâre offering your readers, it wonât be of any use if they never open it.
Regardless of how creative you want to go with your subject line, the main aim is to make sure it is relevant to your reader and doesnât come off as desperate click-bait. A general rule I follow is to keep things simple and direct without giving away too much of whatâs in store for them inside the email. Remember that your main aim here is not always to sell to them but to re-engage them and prompt them to stick around for longer. This means that some of your email subject lines might have nothing at all to do with sales or marketing; like wishing them on their birthday or marking a cultural event thatâs special to your audience.
Personalization Strategies to Reignite Interest
Ever wonder how brands keep you hooked, even when you think youâre done with them. The secret isnât just clever advertising or even some magic message frequency. At the centre of it all, youâll find thoughtful personalisation. Not the creepy âwe know your last haircutâ kind â rather, a gentle nudge that shows they see you as more than just a monthly biller.
Think about the last time an email actually caught your eye and got you to act on it. Iâd bet my last unopened loyalty coupon that it was personalisation at play. Maybe it was an offer tailored to your previous purchases or a recommendation that matched your taste.
Thatâs how much of a difference it can occasionally make when brands remember your preferences and use them to make you feel seen. It doesnât have to be something huge. Even using your first name can do the trick. Brands are beginning to realise that people donât want to be bombarded with generic newsletters or one-size-fits-all promotional content anymore.
They want offers and recommendations that are relevant to their life at that moment â not what the data says people should be buying right now. Data can, of course, help identify trends, but thereâs more value in using it for segmentation and understanding who is probably active and who isnât. Not everyone wants every piece of content, so why bother sending it.
You might end up getting more unsubscribes than sales by sending constant messages to disinterested parties. Personalisation is a bit like alchemy â if you get the ratios right, you could turn casual browsers into regular buyers or loyal subscribers with nothing but a timely email and a compelling message. People want brands to value their presence and time â things they donât give easily these days â so an honest âHey.
We havenât seen you in a while, how have you been. â could do wonders if done tactfully. Thereâs no need for grand gestures when sometimes all it takes is subtlety.
Timing is Everything: When to Send Re-Engagement Emails
Is it better to re-engage after a week, a month, or more. This seems like the million-dollar question, and you wouldnât be wrong to ask. Itâs natural to want the absolute best time to send emails that bring subscribers back, but thereâs no one size fits all answer. Every business has their own rhythm and every audience is unique.
There are a few things you should keep in mind while deciding on the right time for sending your re-engagement email. The most obvious thing is your own emailing frequency - if you send out daily newsletters, someone might appear passive if they donât open your email for just three days, but someone who gets an email from you once a month can easily be considered inactive if theyâve gone 90 days without interacting. It might seem like a good idea to wait longer, so you donât risk irritating them too much by constantly reminding them to interact with your content, but an overly long gap between emails can mean losing potential revenue. It seems like the best way to go about it is to segment and observe.
The way I see it, segmentation is extremely important when re-engaging because people could have varying degrees of passivity and different reasons for it. After some testing with different groups at different intervals, try splitting your groups into âslightly disengagedâ, âcompletely inactiveâ, and anything else that works for your specific audience. For the slightly disengaged group, send out smaller reminders at regular intervals in line with your brandâs tone of voice (jokes usually work great), while reserving rare reminders for the completely inactive ones. With some experimenting and plenty of observation, you should be able to come up with an interval that works just right for your customers - that way everyone gets what they want.
Creative Content Ideas to Capture Attention
How do you win back the attention of people who might have tuned out. Iâve found that the hardest part is actually getting the foot back in the door. While most businesses spend lots of time thinking about their target audience and people they can attract, itâs often more cost-effective and a fair bit easier to win back people youâve lost along the way. But thatâs not always an easy process.
Thereâs so much you can do to create content to capture attention. It doesnât always have to be complicated or expensive - though yes, having more resources helps - but finding something that actually piques their interest is all about creativity. If youâre creative about your re-engagement efforts, youâll likely see some pretty good results, which might look different depending on what your business does or your goals.
Regardless, there are a few things I find work for businesses across the board, and you could try these to see how they fit your needs. Focus on creating email content that has value. I know it sounds a bit obvious, but youâd be surprised how little most people think about what people really need when it comes to email content.
A good way to test this is by asking yourself if you would read through the email if it wasnât yours. When creating these emails, try experimenting with video content, quizzes, exclusive offers, or even free resources. Another thing that works is rather highly personalising your emails with segmentations and automations so people get content they want instead of feeling spammed by the same thing everyone else gets. You could also try using customer behaviour data to determine what it is they want from you, then tailoring your emails accordingly.
Or go completely old school and send out beautifully handwritten notes for special occasions or milestones - it shows attention to detail in a way emails just cannot.
Measuring Success: Analyzing Re-Engagement Campaigns
Have you ever wondered how much of your re-engagement campaignâs success can be attributed to the witty subject line or the cat gif you used. Letâs talk about how to measure if your efforts are working. Comes Across As because itâs not enough to guess.
We have moved past vanity metrics and so, open rates may not be enough. Now that emails require users to âloadâ images before counting it as an open, we canât solely depend on this metric. That said, low open rates may still indicate that there is a bigger problem at play. If your email is not being opened in the first place, there is no chance for clicks or conversions - and we need to see where the problem lies.
Click rates are crucial because they tell you what people do after opening your emails. It could mean that they like something in your content or a particular CTA resonated with them. Unsubscribe rates are something you must keep an eye on as well because if people start leaving after a re-engagement campaign, it might mean they were startled by it or found it off-putting for some reason.
Another metric that is often overlooked is spam complaints and bounce rates. Email marketing platforms tend to penalise accounts with high bounce and spam complaint rates so definitely keep track of those. What weâre hoping for with a re-engagement campaign is getting subscribers back into our regular communication cycle - which means higher engagement levels within a certain period of time post-campaign.
And even though all these metrics are important, what matters most is getting subscribers to engage with you again after drifting away in the first place. So keep an eye on what changes after a re-engagement campaign and see how far along your subscribers move down the sales funnel. That should be the biggest win.