Once you decide to invest time and budget resources to upgrade your list quality, one of your first targets should be winning back the segment of your mailing list that has gone inactive. That segment could be pretty sizable, given that 50% or more of a typical B2C list can be inactive.

A recent article, published by ClickZ, explains why some list subscribers go inactive and offers some tips on how to wake-up your sleeping subscribers.

Why Do Subscribers Go Inactive?

Any one of these conditions can increase your inactive segment, but you probably have two or more working together to amplify inactivity:

• List age. As e-mail ages as a marketing channel, mailing lists themselves get older. If addresses on your list are five to 10 years old, they could be abandoned but not invalid yet.
• No welcome program to engage new subscribers immediately.
• Messages that don’t meet subscriber expectations or match preferences.
• Weak inbox presence (unbranded sender line and/or generic or boilerplate subject line)
• Unsubscribe process that’s hard to find, complicated, or untrustworthy
• Large percentage of Web e-mail clients, like Yahoo or Gmail, with high mailbox storage capacity, allowing unopened e-mails to pile up.
• Mailing frequency – either too frequently for subscriber comfort and expectations or too seldom
• Offer repetition, where you rotate through the same offers every week. Subscribers catch on and simply ignore your messages, waiting until they are finally in the mood to purchase.

As with any e-mail marketing effort, there is a right way and a wrong way to manage your inactive subscribers. For starters, don’t just chop off addresses that have no clicks or opens associated with them. Often you’ll be asked to come back to these folks months later. Because they haven’t heard from you in a while, they often tend to forget they signed up many moons ago.You could also lose subscribers who are reading your e-mails but blocking images (thus not recording an open), or who aren’t in the market more than once or twice a year.

Given the money you spent to acquire those addresses, you are better off creating a multilayered campaign to identify who’s still engaged but not recording opens, who needs a nudge to unsubscribe, and who has abandoned their e-mail addresses without unsubscribing.

This has a deliverability impact, too. ISPs are beginning to include engagement (subscribers opening and clicking on your messages) in the formula for deciding whether to deliver your e-mail to the inbox, route it to the bulk folder, or block delivery.

Reactivation Program Tips: Open With a Survey or Profile Invitation

Reactivation programs work best when they become an automatic element of your e-mail marketing program, like a welcome series.

But, first things first. I often begin with a subscriber survey or an invitation to create or update subscriber preferences. These messages can replace a mailing if you send e-mail more often than once or twice a week. If you mail less often, you can send a survey or profile-update request in mid-cycle.

With this first campaign – test your subject lines, message content, and segmentation strategies. See what works best before moving into a more permanent program.You can also establish a baseline for inactivity, showing you more precisely how much of your mailing list is asleep or absent.

Watch for Complications

Once you send your campaign, you’ll want to measure how much activity it generates, beyond opens and clicks on the message itself. Also, watch your delivery reports and be on the lookout for more spam complaints.

To avoid a sudden surge in spam complaints, it is best to send messages in small batches instead of all at once. This strategy will help keep your more important e-mail marketing programs from being blocked or filtered because of spam complaints your reactivation campaign might generate.

Placing an unsubscribe link at the top of the e-mail message in the preheader region can also deter complaints.

To read the entire article, click here.