Come back! How to re-engage your B2B email subscribers

Email doesn’t have to be old school. It has evolved and is still vital, with 91% of surveyed marketers designating email as a key communication channel for their business. However, keeping subscribers engaged is a job in itself.

In this article, we explore five critical components of re-engaging your email subscribers:

1. Why they left

2. Sending it to the right person

3. How to trim your email list

4. Revamping your emails

5. Don’t forget the stats

Why they left

An email subscriber is a warm lead and much easier to reel in than a cold prospect. Therefore, it is important to understand why they are disengaging from your communications. Taking stock of why respondents have gone inactive can provide much-needed answers.

Before you win them back, let’s tackle why they drop off in the first place.

• Loss of interest

• Boring content

• Lack of understanding concerning your product

• Purchasing from another company

• Emails aren’t relevant

• Quantity of emails is overwhelming/underwhelming

Most of these reasons can be remedied with better content. If subscribers have lost interest or don’t understand your product, that is on you. You may need to rework your messaging and to do that you must be clear on your product’s value. If you can’t explain in a couple of sentences the benefits of your product, how are you supposed to relay that in an email?

It also doesn’t hurt to take a break from sales-oriented emails. Provide value before you launch into a sales pitch. Respondents want to know they are more than a cashbox; they want to know you care about them too. Rework your content to directly speak to the customers’ needs. Written skillfully, you can thread your benefits through the readers’ pain points.

If you are sending too many emails it doesn’t matter how great your content is, readers will become overwhelmed and tune you out altogether. Too few emails and you will be forgotten. Depending on your company goals and product, strike a balance between too much and too little.

Sending emails to the right person

Identifying a B2B company isn’t hard but finding the correct person to email can be. One reason for unopened emails could be you are sending them to the wrong people. Typically, there are several people in a company who are part of the decision-making process and it’s important to find out who they are. Don’t just rely on one person to engage in your emails, target multiple contacts who have a hand in purchasing your product.

Different employees also have different roles along the purchasing pipeline, so your email strategy will need to address these different stages. Sort out the contacts and adjust your content for each. This can be time-consuming but if you aren’t fishing in the correct pond, you will catch very little.

Trim the line

At some point, you must face facts and throw the uninterested parties back in the water. The reason for this is three-fold.

1. Mailbox providers have a variety of metrics they use to decide if your emails are worthy of the inbox or delegated to the spam folder. Having too many emails tagged as spam can affect your deliverability rates. If a recipient doesn’t engage with your emails, your inbox deliverability rates go down.

2. If a percentage of your list isn’t responding to your emails, you are wasting time and money. Two resources better spent analyzing your email strategy and reaching out to customers who are more likely to purchase. This gets more eyes on your emails and can boost your re-engagement campaign.

3. Skewed open rates can render an inaccurate analysis of your email metrics. Without exact numbers, it’s difficult to diagnose which components of your emails are working and which parts need to be revamped. You don’t need to dump an entire email if you can determine which parts work and which parts don’t.

Keep in mind, there is a difference between an inactive subscriber and an inactive customer. If a customer is still active on your website or still purchasing products, you must decide whether to leave them on the email list or not. Some customers may not open your emails but still purchase your products. If that’s the case, leaving them on the list may be a good idea.

Two important factors to consider when trimming your list

Frequency: How often do you send emails? If it’s a weekly occurrence, look at subscribers’ engagement activity spanning three to six months. If your frequency is once a month or quarter, give recipients a longer time frame to determine if they’ve grown stale. If you send out daily emails, consider if you are saturating your customers with email noise. Depending on your content, reducing your emails to weekly or monthly can boost your open rates.

Behavior: Consider the recipients who don’t open your emails but still purchase or visit your website. Their level of interest may lie solely in a one-time purchase. If that’s the case, keep them on your list to lure them back for repeat purchases. If a recipient doesn’t open your emails but purchases on a regular basis, then email may not be their preferred mode of communication. Take the time to call them and find out how they prefer to communicate. They will appreciate the personal touch.

Revamping your emails

A recent study shows 55% of marketers feel only half of the emails sent by their company are relevant to the recipient. This lack of confidence shows little connection between the content and the actual subscriber. Even more so, it shows a lack of strategy concerning their email campaigns.

Conducting a content audit of your previous emails is the first step in bringing back wayward subscribers. Scrutinize which emails had the best open and click-through rates and which emails tanked. If you use a heat map tool, you will be able to tell which sections of your email kept their interest and where they fell off the page. This will help you form future content into easily digestible, attention-keeping content.

Don’t forget to employ analytics tools for your audit. A great tool should be easy to use, customizable and provide actionable data.

Additional aspects to consider when revamping your emails

Length

Busy professionals often have very little time to grab lunch, much less read every single email. If your emails are content heavy, think about shaving them down. A punchy, short and informative style can often raise your engagement rate. Ask what the goal is of this specific email. If you are alerting recipients to a new product launch, create a quick, dynamic content piece that alerts them to the product and specifies their next steps to learn more.

If you’re just trying to keep in touch, short informative emails can do the trick. A single bit of value-driven information can go a long way to get your emails read. Respondents just want to read something that can help them. Sometimes just a quick “Thanks for tuning in, we appreciate you!” type of email reminds customers that you value their business and you’re still around.

Content

It’s important to view the emails you send as regular brand content. How are your emails fitting into your content and marketing strategies? Do they align with your content goals or are they a separate entity? Once you understand their purpose you can conduct a content audit of your emails. If they are forging their own path against all your other content you may need to rethink what it is you’re sending out. Emails with no specific agenda are working against you. Fit them into your overall content and marketing plans so they support your goals.

Preferences

Emails aren’t for everyone. Some people would rather download a case study to read after dinner, while others choose video over all else. Understanding your audience will take you far. Think about including an educational download or short video embedded within your email. Giving recipients the option of choosing how they consume your content can keep your subscriber list actively engaged. Options for downloadable, digital assets include:

• Guides

• White papers

• Yearly/monthly reports

• State of the market reports

• Relevant statistics

• Case studies

• Trend reports

• Industry benchmarks

• eBooks

• Product demos

• Webinars

This type of content is considered premium content and can position your company as a thought leader within the market. You are delivering high-value commodities that provide insight into your sphere as a whole.

Another advantage of downloadable content is its capacity to grow your list through ‘shares’ and ‘posts’. Adding social media icons to your content allows readers to easily share your content.

Don’t forget the stats

Testing plays a dynamic role in email marketing. Even small bits of information can guide simple adjustments in your campaign. Re-engagement of dormant subscribers should be measured in several ways to determine success. Your KPI depends on the proper analysis of the following metrics:

1. Bounce rate

2. Open rate

3. Conversion rate

4. List growth rate

5. Unsubscribe rate

6. ROI

7. Sharing/Forwarding rate

8. Click-through rate

Wrapping up

Re-engaging your inactive subscribers requires research, a strategy rethink and a willingness to change your content. It also helps to think of your customers as people instead of just email addresses. Put yourself in their position and determine what type of content would engage you the most. Take your time and get it right – an active subscriber list is invaluable.

Key takeaways:

• Find out why subscribers have disengaged with your content

• Make sure your emails are reaching the right contacts

• Whittle down your email list

• Evaluate and change your email content

• Use analytics to make informed decisions about your email strategy

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