Got an old email list but you’ve neglected your subscribers? And now when you send out an email, it’s just crickets?
This happens when you leave an email list for too long without sending your subscribers any email broadcasts. Your readers lose interest and sometimes forget who you are (yes it does happen) and then when you send them an email out of the blue, your open rates and click-thru rates are terribly low.
If you’d like to know how to warm up your old email list, you’re in the right place because this article will show you some steps to putting life back into your subscribers.
You can improve email deliverability, engagement, and overall campaign effectiveness by gradually re-establishing your presence and building trust.
Here are the steps to warm up an old email list:
- Clean your email list: Remove invalid and bounced email addresses. Also, if you’ve got at least a few emails in your follow-up sequence, you can go ahead and remove emails that have never opened or clicked an email from you since signing up. It is almost guaranteed that those people used a burner email address (an email address that they never check) to get passed your squeeze page.
- Set your goals for the re-engagement: Is it to simply improve open rates? Or is it to get higher click-through rates, or conversions? Having a clear objective will help you tailor your approach and measure success.
- Craft a compelling re-engagement email: Write an email that is going to speak to your subscribers and get them interested again. Make it personalized, interesting and relevant. If you’re looking for sales, offer an incentive, such as a discount or exclusive content like a special bonus, to entice them to re-engage.
- Gradual re-engagement to segments of your list: Instead of sending a massive blast to your entire list at once, it’s best to start with a smaller segment. Choose a subset of subscribers, preferably those who have shown some engagement in the past. Send the re-engagement email to this group and monitor their response.
- Analyze and optimize: Track the performance of your re-engagement campaign. Monitor metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. This data will help you identify what’s working and what needs improvement. Adjust your approach accordingly to optimize your campaign.
- Regularly clean inactive subscribers from your list: As you continue with your re-engagement campaign (give it at least 7 days after the initial email), locate and remove inactive subscribers and invalid email addresses. This will help to improve deliverability.
- Implement a re-engagement series: If the initial re-engagement email doesn’t yield the desired results, consider implementing a series of follow-up emails to the yet-to-engage subscribers. Send the follow-ups every few days until they re-engage. Make sure to provide additional value or offers to encourage subscribers to re-engage.
After performing these 7 steps, you should have successfully re-engaged a portion of your old less-active email subscribers. There will be a segment of subscribers who won’t respond to your re-engagement emails, but it’s up to you what you do with those. Your best bet would be to delete them from your list, or wait a few more weeks until they see you’re sending regular emails again.
You’ve warmed up your list, now what?
To keep your list engaged and active, these are the two most important things you can do:
- Segment your list with your new engagement data: Segment your list based on their behavior, interests, or demographics. This allows for more targeted and personalized email campaigns in the future, increasing the chances of engagement going forward.
- Provide valuable content consistently: (‘consistently‘ being the key word here) To maintain engagement and prevent subscribers from disengaging again in the future, focus on consistently providing valuable and relevant content. Keep your subscribers interested and give them a reason to stay engaged with your emails.
Remember that email deliverability is influenced by sender reputation, engagement rates, and spam complaints. By following these steps, you’ll gradually rebuild engagement, improve email deliverability, and strengthen your relationship with your subscribers.
Stuart Stirling