Whenever an email subscriber became less engaged or unsubscribed from your emailing list, it was always a good idea to try and win them back with a Re-Engagement strategy. But now as the GDPR looms over our heads, all businesses need to ensure they have a re-engagement strategy in place. Because once the GDPR kicks in (May 2018), inactive email subscribers may be lost and you may lose the right to continue contacting them for good.
This is why throughout 2017, you should be in FULL REENGAGEMENT MODE!
Doing what you can to provide loyalty driving content to your customer database. Not only is it cheaper to try and win back a previous customer than win a new one, it will help with boosting customer engagement, augment cross- and up-selling, increase brand loyalty & establish your customer database under the GDPR legislation.
So how do you go about creating a customer re-engagement strategy?
(When going through these steps, keep your own business in mind, your customer life cycle, sales process, etc. Because every business is unique.)
Step 1. Find your Inactive Email Marketing subscribers
Step 1 is to identify your inactive subscribers. Obviously, how you define an inactive subscriber may differ from business to business. A general rule of thumb would be defining your inactive subscribers as the ones that haven’t opened an email or visited your blog in 3-6 months. You may also choose to use clicks as a metric for inactivity, it is up to you. But ensure you have a clear definition of what makes a contact inactive and sort contacts into the ‘inactive’ list whenever they do become inactive.
Step 2. Determine a Re-Engagement Strategy
A great re-engagement strategy revolves around your brand, industry and your buyer personas. Sending applicable and engaging content, that is tailored towards the customer is the best way to drive engagement back towards your brand.
Step 3. Choose your Re-Engagement Method
There are many formats in which you may want to present your re-engagement email. It is advisable to use one of the below methods:
Polls or Surveys – Asking the person directly what they think about the content you have been sending them is a fantastic way to receive direct feedback on your blog and email marketing content. Try to make sure they are as honest as possible and then make sure you reply to them with more engaging and tailored content.
Discounts/Giveaway – Many e-commerce and retail outlets can look towards using some sort of coupon code/discount to boost customer loyalty. Adding a message for them to visit your site to use the coupon code or visit the store closest to them (you can always get them to update their information, if that store turns out to not be the closest to them).
Play towards Emotions – Let the contact know that you miss them and are eagerly awaiting their return. This may not always work, but on occassion playing towards emotions can strike a chord with your contacts.
Step 4. Create You Email & Set-it for Sending
Once you have determined the best content and strategy moving forward, the next step is to write out the email itself and set it for sending.
Step 5. Track & Monitor your Results
See how many of your inactive list have now been re-activated. Check that the number of your inactive list has decreased (the general rule is that about 10% of inactive subscibers will re-activate).
To ensure getting the best results we recommend creating a number of re-engagement campaigns, for a number of different segments within your inactive list. For example, sales managers may need a different re-engagement email when compared to content marketers. But most importantly of all ensure that the strategy is relevant to the contacts that you are speaking to.
If following this process you don’t quite get the results you are looking for that is fine. It only means you are going to have to continue adjusting your re-engagement strategies. You can send a re-engagement email per contact every 1-2 months and you can adjust the strategy and content for these every time.
We suggest that if you are concerned about losing the ability to contact customers you worked so hard to gain once the GDPR comes in, than implementing a re-engagement strategy is exactly what should be using to ensure that not all of these inactive subscribers go to waste.