You’ve got a solid email list. And a great email marketing strategy for turning sends into sales. But every email list could be bigger. And every unsubscribe list could be smaller. The key is to put those unsubscribed email addresses to work for you with a campaign to win back unsubscribers. The catch? You can’t email someone who already opted out of your list. So you’re going to need to reach them another way. But once you do, your email marketing strategy will be working twice as hard for you.
Evaluate Your Unsubscribed Email List
In order to effectively launch a campaign to win back unsubscribers, you first have to evaluate your unsubscribe list. How many email addresses are on it? Dating back how far? What, if any, data is appended to the users, i.e. how much do you know about why they unsubscribed or their purchase behavior before they left? If your list is very small, a campaign to win back subscribers is still possible, but the growth opportunity for your list is reduced. Not everyone will resubscribe, so in this case, a larger unsubscribe list works in your favor. Too large, however, and your campaign can become unwieldy. You may want to segment by unsubscribe date and start with the most recent before moving back through your unsubscribe history. Then you can refine further based on what you know about your unsubscribe list and develop specific offers for this group or segments of the larger unsubscribe list.
Develop Offers For Unsubscribed Email Users
Once you’ve assessed your unsubscribed user situation, you can determine the best offers to entice them back. The key to a campaign to win back unsubscribers is to use what you know about them. This works best if you have a robust CRM that includes purchase history and other pertinent details, but the mere fact that they were once interested in your products or services is a head start on an unknown user. Play to their familiarity with you by getting right to your unique selling proposition; there doesn’t need to be a long introductory period or broad awareness campaign. And whatever you choose as an offer, make it appear exclusive to them. If you can offer a richer deal (15% off for resubscribers vs. 10% off for brand new) even better. But if not, your wording can still convey exclusivity and limited-time appeal.
Utilize Opt-In Advertising To Target Unsubscribed Email Users
Now that you’ve got a segmented, useable unsubscribe list and a targeted offer specific to former customers, it’s time to start marketing to them. But they’ve unsubscribed from your list—you can’t exactly email them these great offers. That’s where opt-in advertising comes in. We take your list of unsubscribed users and develop a campaign to win back unsubscribers by showing targeted, specific messaging to only those who appear on your list. How? By encrypting the email addresses and pre-pinging the publisher’s site where the ad is scheduled to appear. Each email address has a unique encryption, so while the actual email address is never disclosed, if the encryptions match, we know that the user is one of the former customers you are looking to target. We show the ads within the campaign to win back unsubscribers to the matches, and not to anyone else.
Tailor Lead Nurturing For Your Previously Unsubscribed Email List
We’ve found that opt-in rate on a campaign to win back unsubscribers is pretty high. After all, they signed up once, so a little incentive to rejoin is often enough. They are already familiar with your product or service, so you can get right to selling as well. The key is to move quickly once they have re-subscribed to your list through the opt-in campaign. Start your lead nurturing campaign immediately and deliver on the campaign promise. Provide what they need to take advantage of the offer shown in the ad, and automate this first email send if possible. That way you can start the sales process practically as soon as they click the ad. Keep close tabs on this list and segment your email marketing campaign so you can track performance. You may want to ramp up efforts and send more frequently in the days following their initial ad viewing. And while they already know you, a little informational content can be beneficial. Remind them of who you are and what you stand for, but always include an actionable offer as well.
Finally there’s a way to make use of your unsubscribed email list. Ready to get started? We can help.