transpond’s insanely effective plan to revive and reboot your email marketing…
The last email you sent to your list was months ago. The frequency of your newsletters has dwindled, or you’ve fallen into the trap of sending widespread email blasts that receive little or no engagement. Don’t panic! We’ve got your back and compiled a tactical plan for you to use to re-launch your email marketing and successfully re-engage your subscribers.
The ideal scenario in email marketing is to plan, schedule and send consistent email content that your subscribers can’t get enough of. BUT as we all know, life isn’t perfect and sometimes emails don’t get sent, subscribers become inactive, and others just start deleting them.
Neglect happens. But let’s not put all the effort you put in to building your list go to waste. There are ways you can fix this.
So, how do you effectively re-launch your email marketing activity? Follow our proven plan to re-engage your subscribers and bring your list back to health.
Step 1: Diagnose the cause.
The first step to reviving your list is to examine the symptoms and correctly diagnose what’s happened. Was it a freak incident? Or a degenerative illness?
Some of the gravest issues that can damage your email list include starvation (not sending regular content), boredom (sending out the same, dull content every week) and drowning (sending way too many emails).
Often, a large proportion of email subscribers have entered a coma-like state rather than being completely dead. These inactive subscribers offer a lot of potential and with the right treatment, you can bring them back to life once again.
Step 2: Develop your treatment plan.
Now you’ve established the cause, you need to determine your course of treatment, so you should create your email calendar, or schedule. This will determine the frequency and content of your email communications to bring your list back to optimal health.
It's also good practice to run a "List Clean" against your subscribers regularly, which ensures your subscribers still exist and haven't become "spam traps" which can be damaging to your reputation. You can clean your list directly from within the transpond interface.
Step 3: Prove your Identity
Hopefully, prior to falling into ill-health, you worked on establishing your brand identity with your list. Even if you didn’t, this is a great opportunity to build professional-looking emails that include your company logo, a company bio, and a reminder of how a subscriber signed up to your list.
Design can make or break an email, and if it’s difficult to ingest, chances are your readers will stop reading or engaging with you.
Whilst it may seem counter-intuitive, it’s also sensible to include an unsubscribe link in your template. Anyone who genuinely no longer wants to hear from you will just be a deadweight on your list. If they can’t find a clear way to unsubscribe, it’s likely they’ll mark your email as SPAM, which can hurt your ongoing deliverability.
Step 4: Explain the situation and ask permission (again).
The very first step of building an engaged email marketing list is to get express permission from contacts who want to hear from you. It’s not just common courtesy, it’s required by GDPR law.
A sensible option after a period of hiatus, is to address the fact you haven’t been in touch for a while and ask disengaged contacts whether they still want to hear from you. Remind them of the value you offer them and tell them how you plan to communicate with them in future.
Ignoring a lapse in email sends implies you aren’t paying attention. An explanation can act as a springboard to excite your audience about what is to come.
Step 5: Use powerful subject lines
Pay attention to your ‘From’ line and subject lines. Inboxes are flooded with emails daily. It takes us nano-seconds to decide what we do with them, and we usually make these decisions based on who they are from, or what the subject line is.
Your ‘From’ name should stay consistent, so subscribers don’t get confused and start to recognise your content.
It is also vital to create a subject line that will appeal to your readers and improve your engagement rates. Strong subject lines are short, descriptive and enticing. Find out how you can nail your subject line here.
Step 6: Deliver on your promise.
To fully nurse your list back to optimal health, you need to give subscribers some motivation. This means providing the best value you can. Offer freebies, discounts, e-books, downloads, webinars or new videos to watch to encourage them to open your emails once more.
There is a catch to this though, you don’t want people to re-engage for the offer, and then never engage with you again. This is why we recommend you stop selling and start offering value.
Keep up the momentum by regularly delivering what they want, according to your plan (you can learn this by monitoring what they respond to) and let them know when they can expect to get more of it.
This will encourage subscribers to trust you once again – hopefully enough to do business with you.
Step 7: Keep a close eye on your data
If after all this you’re still seeing inactive and unresponsive subscribers, it’s time to delete them. One of the most damaging aspects of email marketing is to send to invalid addresses and this could be the cause of the problem.
Cleanse your list to ensure you’re working hard to keep your active subscribers interested, and you’ll make sure everyone is happier and your list is healthier than ever before.