Ask any email marketer, and they will tell you that the biggest heartbreak at work is seeing your subscribers turn into strangers. Yes, seeing your subscribers engage less frequently and turning into a redundant lead isn’t uncommon for email marketers, and this translates to lost revenue generation opportunities. Since the ROI is sky-high ($42 per dollar), there’s no way any firm would appreciate losing subscribers, and hence, re-engagement emails become an extremely necessary part of email marketing strategy across organizations. In this article, I will walk you through some Mailchimp and Adobe templates to illustrate re-engagement email best practices. Let’s get started:
#1 Avocode: Give A Simple Reminder
The first thing you need to do is to give a simple reminder to your subscribers that they have subscribed to your mailing list for a reason and they have something to do with your product/service. This may not seem genius, but it should be a part of your re-engagement SOP as it can help you familiarize your brand for future communications in case it slipped out of your recipients’ minds. Have a look at this example from Avocode as take quickly arrived at the point, and it gives the reader a good reference point to return to their platform:
#2 Miro: Reintroduce Yourself
The next email on your re-engagement email series should be a re-introduction message. At times people subscribe to email newsletters during their buyer journey but fail to recognize brands properly. Also, it is possible that they subscribed to your mailing list after consuming a handful of content pieces, leaving them less aware of your brand. Thus, it would be best if you re-introduce your brand through emails and help them get acquainted with your organization. You can also add images and other proprietary data to make the email more contextual to your friend, just like Miro in this case:
#3 Namecheap: Share An In-Mail Product Demo
Naturally, the second step you must take is to share an in-mail product demonstration. This is a wonderful way to move your prospects across the sales funnel without having to invest much time and effort. It is quite possible that your subscribers would have consumed enough data to understand the pros and cons of different solution providers, giving them a certain amount of clarity regarding their options. Providing them with a product demonstration through email can help you put your brand on the top of their attention list as they won’t need to initiate the transaction, at least for your brand. Thus, product demonstration through emails can act as a catalyst and give you a clear picture if your subscriber has turned dormant or if they are in the final phase of the purchase process.
#4 DocuSign: Tell Your Features, Advantages, And Benefits
If you feel that the above tactics would not work the best for your needs, there’s something every organization must do as a part of their re-engagement emails: FAB. As a matter of fact, spreading awareness regarding your features, advantages, and benefits is a very important part of re-engagement emails as these factors make your dormant lead consider your brand. Sharing them through emails like this one from DocuSign can increase your odds of winning them back since they are less likely to interact with your brand on their own.
#5 Postable: Ask If Your Disengaged Subscribers Are Facing Any Technical Troubles
At times it is possible that your subscribers might be facing technical issues, which ultimately lead them to stop considering your product/service. This can be especially true in the case of new brands, so you must send emails to confirm if your subscribers are facing any issues. Generally, such emails are to be sent after you send the FAB emails so that you can come up with a logical conversation in case the disengaged subscriber doesn’t interact with those emails. Postable provided us with an excellent example of doing so as they asked about one of the frequently encountered troubles on their platform:
#6 CLEAR: Use The Carrot
Last but not least, every business must provide some form of incentive to subscribers as a last resort. While you feel that it will only attract freeloaders but in fact, you would be able to harness the power of reciprocity through such offers. To do away with people only seeking freebies, you can use a discount ladder as it will require the recipient to invest some money upfront before accessing the discount/freebie. CLEAR has combined this tactic with general reminders and FAB to increase its conversion rate. See if the below example from CLEAR inspires your future Adobe templates:
Summing Up
One of the key drivers of success in re-engagement emails is to understand at which stage did your leads turn dormant and how you can solve the problem they are facing with your organization. This is, of course, easier said than done, but as you gain experience with your brand and customer journeys, you will be able to address their concerns better. This guide contains different email types that you must use in your re-engagement strategy, but your particular brand may need to use them in a completely different order. I hope that you may use these email types as building blocks for your re-engagement email strategy as you buckle up to win your subscribers back.
Author: Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Mailchimp Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blog.
