Re-engagement email

A re-engagement email is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

It’s an email (or often a sequence of emails) that’s designed to re-engage subscribers who have stopped engaging with your regular emails, as measured by engagement metrics such as click rate, open rate (if available), and so on.

In a perfect world, every single subscriber would open every single email and click on every single call to action.

But in the real world, it’s easy for subscribers to start tuning you out.

There are a lot of reasons why people might stop engaging. Some of those reasons are things that you could maybe improve on while others are just totally out of your hands. Here are some examples:

• You send too many emails and people are tuning them out.
• Your emails aren’t relevant to what the subscriber is interested in.
• Your subscribers’ inboxes are packed full of emails from other brands.
• Your subscribers really are interested in what you offer, but they’ve been really busy lately and kind of just forgot about you.
• …you get the idea.

Re-engagement emails are emails that are designed to win back these unengaged subscribers and get them interested in what you have to offer again. For that reason, you’ll also see these types of emails called win-back emails.

Why are re-engagement emails important?

Having a large percentage of unengaged subscribers on your email lists can be bad for a couple of reasons:

• You can reduce your sender reputation if you’re constantly sending emails to people who don’t engage with them (or have marked you as spam).
• Your costs are higher because that subscriber is taking up space on your list. Most email marketing services bill you based on the number of subscribers that you have, so unengaged subscribers are just wasting money and forcing you to pay for a more expensive plan.

Most importantly, if you’re selling products or services, it’s generally easier to re-engage an existing customer than it is to find a new customer, so you could be leaving money on the table by not trying to connect with these people.

Now that you know what re-engagement emails are, let’s go over some re-engagement email best practices that you should consider when you’re setting up these campaigns.

Along with this, we’ll share some real-life re-engagement email examples from brands implementing these best tactics. That way, you’ll have some inspiration to go along with the best practices.

1. Define when subscribers are “unengaged” and create segments

The first step in sending re-engagement campaigns is to make sure you’ve accurately set up your segments so that you really are only sending emails to unengaged customers.

That brings up an important question:

How do you define what an unengaged subscriber is? Is it someone who hasn’t engaged with an email in a week? A month? Two months? A year?

Well, there’s no single “right” answer here, but most experts recommend using around one or two months as the bare minimum of when to consider a subscriber “unengaged”. You’ll also see people recommend longer periods such as six months or even up to a year.

2. Send a sequence rather than a standalone email

As a general guideline, re-engagement emails are generally best sent in a sequence rather than a single email, though this isn’t a hard rule.

Most experts recommend sending about 3-4 emails as part of your sequence but feel free to adjust this to your site’s specific needs.

You typically want the emails to build on one another. So you might start with just a nudge and end with a clear email that tells people they’ll be removed from the list if they don’t engage (in a nice way, of course).

3. Offer an incentive (if applicable)

One great way to win back unengaged subscribers is to sweeten the deal with some type of incentive.

If you have an eCommerce store or sell any type of products or services, the obvious incentive is a sale or discount. You could give them a special coupon with the goal of enticing them back to make another purchase.

4. Reinforce your value

If someone took the effort to sign up to your list in the first place, they probably have at least some interest in what you have to offer.

That means a re-engagement email can be a good spot to reinforce those values that convinced them to subscribe in the first place.

If they think you’re not living up to your values, this might not work. But a lot of people might’ve just naturally forgotten about you in their busy inboxes so reminding them why they signed up can be a great strategy to generate interest again.

5. Highlight new benefits/values (if applicable)

If you’ve added new value or benefits recently, another great win-back strategy is to showcase these new features so that subscribers can see that they’re now getting more than they were when they originally signed up.

For example, maybe you recently launched a new feature that you think people will love. Or, maybe you launched a new course that you think people might be interested in.

You could send a re-engagement email that highlights the value of your new offerings with the hopes that it will win back your subscribers.

6. Add some FOMO

FOMO stands for fear of missing out. It’s a pretty powerful motivator because, let’s be honest, no one wants to miss out on cool stuff that’s happening to other people!

If someone unsubscribes from your list, they’ll quite literally be missing out on what you have to offer. So – don’t be afraid to put a little fear into them – in a friendly way, of course!

7. Let people optimize their experience

In some situations, it might not be that subscribers aren’t interested in hearing anything from you; it might just be that they don’t want to hear everything from you.

That is, they might only be interested in certain types of content that you send, which is why they generally aren’t engaging with the other content.

One useful strategy here is to create segments or lists that let people subscribe to specific interests. Then, you can use your re-engagement campaign to give people the chance to update their interests.

8. Play around with emotion

If it fits your branding, incorporating emotion into your re-engagement emails can be a fun way to connect with customers.

Typically, most brands will go with the “sad” angle when adding emotions.

Does this approach work if you’re Salesforce (or another B2B company)? Probably not. But in B2C markets or industries where you have a close connection with your followers, this type of emotion can be a great strategy.

9. Make it easy for subscribers to opt out

In some cases, people might just really not be interested in receiving emails from you anymore. That’s ok – you can’t please everyone!

In these situations, no amount of quality copywriting and email best practices will convince them to engage.

So, rather than annoying these people, make it easy for them to remove their email from your list.