Maintaining a strong sender reputation is paramount in email marketing as it directly impacts your email deliverability and the success of your campaigns. Engaged sending, which involves primarily targeting and communicating with subscribers who have shown interest and interacted with your brand, is a reliable way to uphold a positive sender reputation.

However, there may be occasions where you want to reconnect with an older, less-engaged email list. These lists often contain subscribers who have not actively engaged with your brand for a considerable period. While reaching out to these subscribers presents an opportunity to reignite their interest and potentially regain their engagement, it is essential to proceed with caution to safeguard your deliverability.

Why re-engage an old email list?

Re-engaging an old email list can be an incredibly valuable strategy for businesses and marketers. There are several compelling reasons why it is worth considering. 

Firstly, by reconnecting with subscribers who have become dormant or disengaged, you have the opportunity to reignite their interest and bring them back into your marketing funnel. This can lead to increased customer retention and loyalty, as well as the potential for additional sales and revenue. 

Re-engagement campaigns also allow you to maximize your existing resources, as you are leveraging contacts you have already acquired. This makes it a cost-effective approach compared to acquiring new subscribers. 

Additionally, by reaching out to your old email list, you are demonstrating that you value their engagement and want to maintain a relationship with them. This can help build trust and loyalty over time. 

Re-engagement campaigns also provide a valuable opportunity to gather feedback and insights from your disengaged subscribers, enabling you to refine your marketing strategies and tailor your content to better suit their needs. 

Factors to consider before re-engaging

Before proceeding with sending emails to an old email list, there are several factors that you should carefully consider:

1. Whether you need to send to this list: Evaluate the necessity of reaching out to the old list. Determine if there is a specific goal or objective that justifies contacting these subscribers. Consider whether there are other, more effective methods of achieving your desired outcomes, such as targeting a more engaged segment of your subscriber base.
2. Why your brand is choosing to do this now: Reflect on the reasons behind your decision to engage with the old list at this particular time. Identify the motivations or opportunities that have led to this choice. It could be a strategic initiative, a product launch, or a campaign aimed at reactivating dormant customers. Having a clear understanding of the purpose behind reaching out to the old list will help guide your approach.
3. Who exactly you're engaging with: Take the time to understand the characteristics and behavior of the subscribers on the old list. Analyze their past interactions, purchase history, or any other available data to gain insights into their preferences and interests. This information will enable you to tailor your messages and offers to resonate with their specific needs.

By carefully considering these factors, you can make informed decisions about whether and how to engage with an old email list. This approach ensures that your efforts are well-founded, relevant, and aligned with your overall marketing objectives, increasing the likelihood of success in re-engaging and converting these subscribers.

Identify profiles that may not be worth reaching out to

When dealing with old email lists, it is crucial to utilize the available data to assess the worthiness of attempting to re-engage contacts. It is important to consider whether contacts who haven't interacted with your brand in over a year are worth targeting. Sending emails to disengaged or inactive subscribers can potentially harm your sender reputation and impact email deliverability.

By utilizing NotifyVisitors segmentation feature, you can streamline the process of identifying inactive subscribers and allocate your resources more efficiently. This data-driven approach ensures that your re-engagement efforts are directed towards individuals who are more likely to respond positively, increasing the effectiveness of your campaigns and safeguarding your sender reputation.

To identify such profiles, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Segments > Actions with user properties

2. Apply these group conditions

› Users who did performed:

• Email delivered in the last 365 days

› Users who did not perform:

• Opened email in the last 365 days,
• Clicked email in the last 365 days,
• Placed an order in the last 365 days,

 After creating this segment, it is also recommended to suppress these profiles as they have not interacted with your brand in a year and are unlikely to engage with future sends.

Clean out any potentially invalid emails 

To ensure that your emails reach active and engaged recipients, it is crucial to proactively clean out potentially invalid email addresses. While the created segment excludes unengaged profiles older than 365 days, it's important to address any invalid email profiles that might still exist within the 365 days timeframe.

A highly effective approach is to remove organizational emails from your list, especially if it has been a significant period since your last contact. Organizational emails, typically associated with businesses or institutions, are more susceptible to becoming inactive over time. By eliminating these addresses from your email list, you enhance the probability of reaching individuals who actively check their emails and engage with your content.

Additionally, you can use any third-party email verification service or validation software to thoroughly clean any remaining invalid emails.

Retarget these contacts through other means

Prior to initiating email campaigns for an old list, it can be beneficial to rebuild brand awareness using third-party targeted advertising channels. NotifyVisitors provides integration with Facebook, enabling you to leverage their services to effectively reach out to older contacts.

With this integration, you can sync your NotifyVisitors’ old email segment list with Facebook audience list to reconnect with your dormant audience via Facebook advertisement. This approach presents an opportunity to reintroduce your brand, products, or services to those who may have lost touch over time, all while mitigating any risks to your sender reputation. 

Through customized ad messaging and strategic targeting, you can capture their attention, spark their interest, and entice them to re-engage with your brand.

Re-engage with inactive profiles

When reaching out to an old contact list that has been inactive for a while, it's important to recognize that subscribers may have forgotten about your brand. The content you send should reintroduce your brand and aim to capture their attention.

Separate this old list from your regular communications with engaged profiles, and dedicate your efforts to re-engagement initiatives. By focusing on targeted re-engagement, you can maximize the chances of rekindling their interest and establishing a connection once again. 

Re-engagement email campaign

A re-engagement email campaign is specifically designed to reconnect with subscribers who have become inactive or disengaged from your brand. Its primary objective is to reignite their interest and encourage them to take action, thereby re-establishing a connection with your brand.

Through a well-crafted re-engagement email, you aim to motivate subscribers to engage in desired activities, such as making a purchase, updating their preferences, or confirming their subscription. The email typically includes compelling content, personalized messaging, and clear calls-to-action to prompt subscribers to take the desired action.

The success of a re-engagement campaign relies on effective targeting, relevant messaging, and enticing incentives or offers.

Campaign distribution

The Email campaign distribution feature in NotifyVisitors allows you to effectively manage and send your emails to an old email list by splitting them into smaller batches and distributing them over a specified period of time. 

By sending emails in smaller batches, you avoid triggering spam filters or overwhelming email service providers. This helps maintain a good sender reputation and ensures that your emails have a higher chance of reaching recipients' inboxes.

A/B testing campaigns

A/B testing is a valuable technique that enables you to experiment with different variations of your email campaigns to identify the most effective approach for re-engaging your subscribers. By conducting AB testing for an old email list, you can determine which version resonates better with your audience and yields the desired re-engagement results.

By analyzing the performance metrics of each variation, such as open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, or engagement levels, you can make informed decisions about whether you should communicate with such contacts further or suppress them.

Sunset Journey

To maximize the effectiveness of your re-engagement efforts with an old email list, implementing a sunset journey can be a strategic approach. The sunset journey involves creating a carefully planned series of emails as a final attempt to re-engage profiles, followed by the removal or suppression of unresponsive contacts. 

This process ensures that you no longer send emails to unengaged or invalid addresses while providing interested subscribers with an opportunity to reaffirm their interest in receiving emails from your brand.

Conclusion

Re-engaging an old email list requires a strategic approach to reignite interest and reconnect with subscribers. By following key steps such as assessing the value of contacts, cleaning out potentially invalid emails, and utilizing segmentation, brands can effectively target and personalize their re-engagement campaigns. Implementing A/B testing, leveraging targeted advertising channels, and considering a sunset journey can further optimize efforts to win back inactive subscribers.