Four Easy Steps to Reactivate

I just got back from the Email Evolution Conference this past week, and the talk in many of the sessions was on customer service and how to maintain subscriber engagement. For this post, I want to delve deeper into the topic of reactivation (also known as re-engagement) campaigns.

When I start a conversation on reactivation campaigns with clients, I tend to follow a pattern to establish who we should go after and why, the messaging and our anticipated results and next steps.

Step 1: Data Analysis

As always, it begins by looking at your data. I recommend splitting out your customers from your prospects (those that have never bought from you) as an initial step. You will want to speak to each group differently during this process.

Next, look at trending data. When is your buying cycle? If it is seasonal, we'll want to pull contacts into the reactivation-required group after they've gone through a cycle or two with no activity. For some companies this can be a month or two, for others, it could be a year or more.

Tied into this step, you'll want to establish criteria within which to fit your customers. I typically do this through an RFM analysis (I will be covering RFM analysis and segmentation in a future post). Once you have your customers in their appropriate RFM bucket, pull the bottom tiers as your reactivation segment.

For prospects you can set up a similar analysis based on email and site behavior through progressive profiling (also to be covered in a future post). Those that have the least checkboxes next to desired behaviors get pulled into the reactivation segment. I would recommend removing prospects who open and click on less than 10-20% of your messages or that haven’t opened in six (6) months or longer if you’re sending on a weekly cadence.

Step 2: Messaging

Now that we've established our target audience for the reactivation campaign, let's talk messaging. I like to recommend sending more than one message as most subscribers do not open every message you send. This way, you can do more than give it the 'ole college try and reactivate more contacts than you might otherwise. Clients of mine that have sent two or three messages see more than a small trickle of responses on subsequent messages. Sometimes the final message can get the highest response.

How's that possible? With a strong, compelling subject line and a short, to the point message. The subject line should break the mold, stand out from the inbox and grab subscribers' attention immediately. Try some of these on for size:

"Bronto's crying in a corner because we miss you"

"Don't let Shoes.com walk out of your life"

"Are we on your 'Ignore' list?"

These are just ideas to get the wheels spinning; I'm by no means a copywriter, but you get the idea on how to stand out.

The messaging for prospects and customers have to be different. Treating past customers the same as prospects would be a mistake as you have the potential to lose valuable customers for good.

For prospects, the messaging should center around concepts like how they found you, why they signed up, what they're looking for and how you can help. As a first message, pushing them to a preference center or survey will help you gather feedback on how to improve moving forward.

Next message could be a reintroduction to your brand, reasons to shop with you/your value proposition and how you plan to address their needs based on responses to the first message. An unsubscribe link should be a prominent call to action because if they don't want to be on the list, you should provide an easy way for them to leave.

A final message could be an "Are you still interested? Yes or No" final goodbye message. You want your (possibly) last message to your subscribers to stand out, this is your final chance to get them back or lose them forever. Don't be afraid to say goodbye. WhatTheyThink said goodbye to inactive subscribers with a straightforward goodbye message and they got noticed.

Messaging to your customers will be different and should be focused on their past history with your company. While you'll want to continue down a similar messaging strategy as the prospects, if possible, interject into the messaging what they've purchased. For instance, if you are a floral retailer, the messaging could be "You've purchased flowers on May 1 every year but this past one. Has something changed?" In gift industries you do have to be careful with holidays and anniversaries as loved ones may have passed or moved on.

Ultimately, you'll want to automate your customer reactivation campaigns through post-purchase lifecycle marketing.

You can also consider incentives to encourage reactivation, but be careful not to encourage bad behavior and word your messaging in such a way that it makes it clear this is a one-time deal (hat tip to Ryan Phelan for inspiring this nugget).

Step 3: Measurement

After building the messaging, you then have to determine how you're going to measure success. What constitutes reactivation? Is it simply any email behavior from open through conversion? Is it updating their preferences or confirming that they still want marketing messages from you? Remember that the goal is to inspire action, whether that's a confirmation or an unsubscribe. Anticipate a low (or very low depending how far back you go) response and reactivation rate, but know that you'll be left with those that truly want to hear from you.

Step 4: Next Steps

The final step before you deploy should be a decision on next steps. Many marketers shy away from removing non-responders as they represent potential revenue, however, these guys not only make you look bad, they can also be toxic to your deliverability. To ease clients into the process, I tend to recommend dropping the prospects that don't respond because they represent the least value to your company.

I'm also okay with holding onto valuable past customers a bit longer and push them through another sales cycle with a lower cadence, for instance, as they were once invested in your company.

In addition, I've found that reaching out to these customers directly, be it through direct mail or phone, can be extremely beneficial from a feedback and retention standpoint. Heck, Gary Vaynerchuk retains 40% of his Wine Library TV unsubscribes by having his team personally call each one (Source: EEC keynote presentation).

For those that you do reactivate, you'll want to keep them separate from the rest of your engaged audience to monitor long-term behavior and engagement and you'll want to change the messaging for these folks because what you were sending before, on the whole, wasn't working for them.

Thoughts? What are the steps you take to reactivate? Share below.

Kelly Lorenz
Email Marketing Strategist at Bronto
@KNLorenz