Latest / The Email Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Newsletters, Open Rates, and Subscriber Growth / How Re-Engagement Emails Saved a Dying Newsletter List
Transcript
- Lucas: So there's this e-commerce brand that had a list of about two hundred thousand subscribers, and nearly half of them hadn't opened an email in over six months. Sounds like a disaster, right? Luna: Half? That's a graveyard. What did they do, send a 'we miss you' and hope for the best? Lucas: Actually, they ran a proper re-engagement campaign. Three emails, spread over about two weeks. And the result was they won back twelve percent of those dormant subscribers, and overall revenue from the list went up eight percent in two months. Luna: Twelve percent doesn't sound huge, but on a hundred thousand inactive names, that's twelve thousand people. That's a real win. Lucas: Exactly. But the interesting part is how they did it. The first email wasn't a discount. It was a plain-text message that said, 'Hey, we noticed you haven't opened our emails in a while. Do you still want to hear from us?' And they gave two options: stay subscribed or update preferences. Luna: So they asked permission. That's smart. It respects the subscriber while also cleaning the list. Lucas: Right. The second email, sent four days later to non-responders, was more direct: 'We're about to remove inactive subscribers. If you want to stay, click here.' That urgency pushed another chunk to act. Luna: And the third? Lucas: The third was the incentive: twenty percent off their next purchase, but only if they clicked through within a week. That's what pulled in the last wave. Luna: So they went from gentle nudge to strong-arm to bribe. And it worked. But doesn't that train people to wait for a discount before they engage? Lucas: That's a fair concern. But the data here suggests it was worth it. The twelve percent who re-engaged had a higher open rate and purchase rate than the general list for months afterward. And the eighty-eight percent who didn't respond were removed, which improved deliverability for everyone else. Luna: I love that the deliverability angle. A smaller, more engaged list often beats a big, dead one. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's not just about clearing out the dead weight. After the purge, their overall open rate went from eighteen percent to twenty-eight percent. That's a massive jump, and it makes your emails more likely to land in the primary inbox rather than promotions. Luna: So what's the takeaway for a marketer listening to this? Is this a playbook anyone can run? Lucas: I think so, but the key is to set the criteria for 'inactive' carefully. Six months without an open is common, but for some businesses, three months might be better. And you have to be ready to actually follow through on the removal, not just threaten it. Luna: Yeah, if you don't remove them, you lose credibility. Desperation is not a good look. Lucas: Exactly. The other thing they did well was segment the re-engaged group into their own new cohort. So they could track how they performed over time and avoid over-mailing them right after they came back. Luna: That makes sense. You don't want to welcome them back by bombarding them with daily emails and making them regret it. Lucas: Right. One more detail: they used a preference center link in the first email, so people could choose to get fewer emails rather than just unsubscribing. That gave them an off-ramp that still kept them in the fold. Luna: Smart. So the lesson is, re-engagement isn't just about saving individual subscribers. It's about making the whole list healthier and more valuable. Lucas: Exactly. And if you're sitting on a list with a lot of dead weight, this is one of the highest roi things you can do. It takes a few hours to set up, and the payoff can be significant. Luna: I'm thinking about our own email list, actually. We've been meaning to clean it up. Lucas: Honestly, if this conversation has sparked something you've actually used, that's what keeps the show ad-free. If it was worth a coffee to you, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, small gesture, big help. We appreciate anyone who does that. Lucas: Back to the numbers for a second. The eight percent revenue boost was driven by the re-engaged group's purchase rate being twice that of the average subscriber. So even though they were a smaller group, they were much hotter. Luna: So the re-engagement campaign didn't just save the list, it actually made it more profitable. Lucas: Right. And that's the thing. A lot of people are afraid to prune their list because they think they're losing potential customers. But if someone hasn't opened in six months, they're not a customer. They're a liability for your deliverability. Luna: What's the one thing you'd want a listener to remember from this episode? Lucas: That a re-engagement campaign is not just about getting old subscribers back. It's about getting the right subscribers back, and making your list cleaner for the ones who actually want to hear from you. Luna: That's a great note to end on. Thanks for being here, everyone.