Over time, email subscriber lists will change. Whether it's through new product offerings, a change in focus, or a refined marketing strategy, new audience members can often share different traits than the original subscribers of an email list. As a list brings in new subscribers, some older subscribers will become uninterested. Part of a successful email marketing strategy is not only about adding more subscribers to your list, but also managing your audience.
Why spend time on the subscribers of a list who haven't shown interest? After all, the audience count is going up, so that's a good thing right? Subscribers who don't engage with your emails can actually have a negative impact on sender reputation. And sender reputation is what tells the new subscribers' inboxes that the business is legitimate and can be trusted (learn more about sender reputation in our Deliverability best practices guide). It's not about how many contacts you send to, but rather how much engagement you can get from those who receive your campaigns.
1. Identify who is disengaged
Create an audience section based on who isn't engaging with your emails. You can easily pinpoint disengaged subscribers by utilizing Delivra's segment builder. Create clauses using historical actions or lifetime engagement of your subscribers. Learn more about segments here.
2. Run a Re-Engagement Campaign
After identifying your disengaged audience, you can automate a re-engagement campaign to that specific group to see if there is any potential interest left. Delivra has a pre-set re-engagement automation template you can use as a starting point.
3. Remove your churned audience
If, after going through a re-engagement campaign, you still have a portion of your audience who is not interacting with your content, it's likely time to omit that group from your future sends. Either by unsubscribing or suppressing them from your typical send audience, you can boost your chances of better engagement from your campaigns by focusing on the parts of your audience that will interact with your content.
List cleaning isn't a one-time chore. It's recommended to look into your audience on an annual basis to pinpoint how much of your audience has churned. It could impact how many new subscribers you need to bring in to make up the difference. You should also evaluate your email delivery to keep an eye out for any spikes in bounced emails.