How to send a re-engagement campaign?

Cleaning your list is incredibly important to ensure a great sender reputation and deliverability. So, it's a good idea to suppress your inactive contacts every few months. But to make sure you're not unsubscribing recipients who still wish to receive your content, it's always best to first send them a re-engagement campaign and give them a chance to stay on your list.

Identifying inactive contacts

To start, you'll need to identify your inactive contacts. You can use our segmentation feature to locate these contacts. To do it, go to the Lists tab from the main dashboard and click on the list with contacts you want to suppress. Then, go to the Segments tab and click the Create a segment button.

You can use the Contact activity category to find subscribers who qualify as inactive in your specific scenario. In the below example, we searched for recipients who didn’t engage with anything that we sent them and weren't added to the list in the last 30 days:

Depending on your sending frequency, you may want to increase this number (up to 365 days). For instance, if you send to your list once a week, 90 days would be sensible – it would include contacts who haven't engaged with your last 12 campaigns.

Creating your re-engagement campaign

Once you saved your segment, you can proceed to creating your campaign.

First of all, it's important to include an enticing subject line that will stand out in your recipients' busy mailboxes. Here are a few examples of re-engagement email subject lines:

We miss you, {{FirstName}}! Are we still friends? – This subject line is personal and creates a sense of belonging.

Is this goodbye? Confirm your subscription. – Adds a sense of urgency and makes it clear action is required.

{{FirstName}}, you're about to be unsubscribed! – Personalisation combined with urgency.

Don't miss out on what's next – click to stay subscribed! – Highlights the value of staying subscribed and gives a clear call to action.

Since your main goal here is to give your contacts one last chance to remain on your list, you should keep a few other elements in mind:

1. Personalised greeting: Use the subscriber's name to make the email feel personal and targeted.
2. Clear purpose: Explain why you're reaching out. Be transparent about wanting to ensure they're still interested in receiving emails from you.
3. Value proposition: Remind your subscribers of the value your emails bring, whether it's exclusive content, tips, deals, or updates they won't want to miss.
4. Easy unsubscribe link: Ensure there's a clear way for them to unsubscribe if they're no longer interested. You can use a button hyperlinked with our unsubscribe link merge tag.
5. Engagement Incentive: Consider offering a special discount, freebie, or exclusive content as an incentive to stay subscribed.
6. Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Make it clear what you want them to do, such as "Click here to stay subscribed".
7. Deadline or Urgency: Adding a timeframe encourages prompt action. Let them know that they'll be unsubscribed if they don't take action by a certain date.

Here's an example of a successful re-engagement campaign created with our Abacus: Re-confirm template. You'll find it in the Curated templates section.

You can use this template for this purpose or create your own template to fit your brand. If you decide to use the Abacus: Re-confirm template, you can edit the "Of course I'm in" button link to include a link to your own website (or any other website of your choice; it could even be a link to download some exclusive content) so that we can track it in your campaign report. To do it, click on the button and change the link in the left-hand side panel.

The "I'd rather miss out" call to action should always be hyperlinked with {{UnsubscribeURL}}.

Suppressing inactive contacts

Once you've sent the campaign, wait until the deadline you gave your recipients in the re-engagement campaign. Then, go to the Segments tab in your list and create a new segment based on engagement with that last campaign.

Save this segment and return to the Contacts view. Click on the Segment drop-down and choose the segment you've just created. Select all contacts and click on Actions, then click Mark as unsubscribed.

Repeat this process every few months to ensure your list is clean and engaged – this is the best way to maintain an excellent sender reputation, which in turns gets you great metrics and conversion.