Notwithstanding the flak that open rates and other so-called “surface metrics” receive, these are the prime indicators of how your email program is performing. So if your open rates and click-through rates are plummeting, you can’t overlook it and say they don’t really matter, what matters ultimately is how many subscribers you are converting.
But what if a portion of your subscribers are no longer engaging with your emails? The first order of business is to re-engage them.
To that end, setting up a sunset flow should be your top priority.
If our experience with over 5,000 global clients tells us anything, it’s this: Email sunsetting is widely misunderstood. As already hinted, a sales-driven mindset often overrides practical considerations, prompting businesses to send out sales-focused emails to cold subscribers.
In this blog post, we’re setting the record straight. Let’s dive in!
How to sunset inactive email subscribers
What is email sunsetting?
Email sunsetting refers to the process of phasing out inactive subscribers from your list. It’s not synonymous with re-engagement.
The primary goal of sunsetting is to clean and optimize your email list by focusing on engaged subscribers, thereby improving your email marketing performance metrics.
Re-engagement, on the other hand, serves as a final attempt to win back those cold subscribers, testing the possibility that they might still find value in your content. It’s a proactive approach that avoids assuming disinterest outright. However, if subscribers remain unresponsive, the focus shifts to letting go of those who no longer engage with your emails. Which is alright. A lost subscriber doesn’t necessarily mean a lost customer. These individuals may still retain an interest in your brand.
How to sunset inactive email subscribers
Speaking generally, email sunsetting involves the following four steps:
- Define your inactive subscribers
- Create an “inactive” segment
- Send re-engagement or winback campaigns
- Automate your sunset flows
Let’s look at each of these steps in detail.
1. Define inactive subscribers
The term “inactive” can mislead you into taking an extreme position.
There could be multiple reasons why a subscriber is inactive. They might be busy, traveling, or going through certain personal experiences that limit their engagement with emails. The point is: You can’t assume there’s only one reason they’re not engaging with your emails. But then, there are those who are genuinely disinterested, and identifying them is not easy.
Depending on your industry benchmarks and historical data, determine the acceptable engagement levels. Take a tiered approach. You might want to categorize inactives into low engagement and very low engagement.
Also, determine the acceptable timeframe for a subscriber to be identified as “inactive.” For example, if someone hasn’t opened your emails for 90 days, you can push them into the inactive segment—and this brings us to the next step of sunsetting.
2. Create an “inactive” segment
You can make your segments as granular as you like, short of complicating the segmented approach. You may create the following segments:
- Never active: This segment will have those subscribers who haven’t opened your emails in a long time, say more than 3 months.
- Unengaged, zero purchase: This segment contains subscribers who haven’t opened your emails for the last 3-4 months, but have clicked on a purchase link in an email at least once.
- Unengaged, purchased: Subscribers who haven’t opened your emails in the last 3-4 months, but have made a purchase at least once.
In the first case, you want to delete the email addresses from your list. For the second and last segments, you may send out a win-back email.
Now, these criteria tend to be subjective. This is just a template to help you get started. You’ll have to establish criteria that make sense to you.
3. Send re-engagement campaigns
Having identified the inactive subscribers and segmented them, it’s now time to create and send re-engagement campaigns. A few tips:
- Start with a plain-text email in which you tell the subscriber that you’re going to remove them from your list if they don’t reply.
- Be considerate, make sure your copy is short and sweet. If you’re using a template, keep it short as well.
- Incentivize your winback email. Just in case that the inactive subscriber didn’t engage with your emails owing to genuine reasons. But even that was not the case, an incentive can spark interest.
- If you’re sending a re-engagement email to a one-time purchaser, feel free to reiterate the benefits of your products/services.
Below is an example of an excellent win-back email from Office Depot.
Source: MailCharts
Now, that’s one of the best ways to re-engage subscribers. A brilliant blend of formal and informal, humor and seriousness, and so heartfelt.
4. Automate your sunset flow
The final step is to automate your sunset segments and flows.
You want to send out at least 3 emails to your inactive subscribers. You don’t want to be too pushy nor too indifferent. However, you may choose to go beyond the 3 emails depending on the segment you’re sending the emails to. The less the disengagement period, the more the number of emails.
A subscriber inactive for 3 months and another inactive for 5 months shouldn’t receive the same number of winback messages.
Critically, set up triggers in such a way that there’s at least 3-5 days between each winback email. Be logical, and stick to email sending best practices.
Beware of over-sunsetting!
Over-sunsetting may do more harm than good to your email program. Don’t be too strict with your suppression policies.
Insights from Jennifer Lantz, an email deliverability expert, are particularly enlightening. While working with a client, she identified list stagnancy resulting from the client’s overly strict sunsetting policies. As she reveals:
“Even after accounting for roughly 30% list churn that is experienced yearly by most senders, they remained stagnant. They have a very loyal base. But they also have a strict sunsetting policy. It’s worthwhile noting that their sunsetting policy isn’t a permanent one where users are unsubscribed. I would say it’s more of a suppression policy, but if you are thinking about sunsetting or suppression, you’re still working to remove recipients. In both cases, strategy should be involved to make sure you aren’t going overboard, but also aren’t skimping on areas that need more attention.”
As Lantz emphasizes, begin by asking yourself why you’re implementing sunsetting in the first place. Don’t do it simply because it’s recommended. However, if your goal is to enhance your email marketing performance metrics, rekindle lost connections, and re-engage customers who hold long-term value, then it’s certainly worth pursuing.
Need help with automation? Over to us!
Marketing automation/flow is part of our six-tier marketing framework. If you need help with automation and flows, get in touch with our marketing experts, and give a boost to your email performance metrics.
For more information on marketing automation, catch our ultimate guide on email automation.
Susmit Panda
A realist at heart and an idealist at head, Susmit is a content writer at Mavlers. He has been in the digital marketing industry for half a decade. When not writing, he can be seen squinting at his Kindle, awestruck.
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