What To Do With Unengaged People?

Hey, it’s Emiel from The Email Standard.

Today, I want to tackle a common question from eCom brand owners: “What should I do with the unengaged people on my email list?”

But first, I’ve got something special for you—one of my latest YouTube videos on How to Run Email Marketing in 2024. It's a must-watch for every eCom brand owner or marketing manager.

» Watch the video right here «

Now, let’s dive into today’s topic.

What To Do With Unengaged People?

First, let’s define “unengaged people.”

These are subscribers who haven’t interacted with your emails, texts, or website for a set period, typically 90-180 days.

That means people have been receiving emails for 3-6 months, without opening your emails.

So what this means is that it will be very difficult to re-engage those people.

Think about it.

If you’ve been receiving emails for six months, but you’re not opening those emails.

Why would you open them again after six months?

There must be a VERY good reason for you to engage with this brand again.

Now we got that out of the way, let me ask you another question:

Is It Actually Bad To Have Unengaged People?

Not at all.

Every email subscriber won't stay interested forever.

Subscribers churn—that’s just the nature of the game.

Instead of focusing on reactivating unengaged people, concentrate on growing your list and adding new subscribers.

So How To Re-Engage Unengaged People?

While re-engaging shouldn’t be your main focus, it’s still worth a try.

There are two strategies that we implement for our own clients.

But before I share those, I want to warn you.

Sending too many emails to unengaged people can hurt your email deliverability and lead to fewer emails landing in the primary inbox for your active subscribers.

So always be cautious.

Strategy #1: The Sunset Flow

The first thing I like to do is set up a Sunset flow.

This flow will be sent to people who join the segment “Unengaged 120 Days“ (or 90 days).

So everyone who hasn’t opened an email in the last 120 days but did receive at least a couple of emails.

The flow includes three short plain-text emails.

Why plain-text?

Plain-text emails tend to have better deliverability compared to designed emails. And especially for unengaged people, you want the best deliverability possible to increase the chance of landing in the primary inbox.

The content of those three emails is straightforward:

• Email 1: Ask if they still want your emails and offer an easy way to unsubscribe.

• Email 2: Offer your highest possible discount to entice a purchase.

• Email 3: Send a reminder and a final goodbye.

If they don’t engage after these emails, tag them as ‘Unengaged’ and suppress this segment from your email list.

Strategy #2: Send An Email To Your Entire List (On Specific Moments)

So, in most cases, you want to send your campaigns to engaged people only.

But we like to send one campaign to the entire list every month or every two months for our clients.

By only doing it once a month or every other month, we’re not hurting our email deliverability too much (do watch your metrics), but it allows us to re-engage some of the unengaged people.

Make sure you are strategic about when to send an email to the entire list (with the unengaged people included). Choose strategic times like:

1. Product launches
2. Re-stocks
3. Sales announcements or last calls

These strategies will help re-engage unengaged people, but don’t stress too much over them.

It’s normal for interest to wane.

Suppress those who remain unengaged to cut costs and focus on your active subscribers for a higher ROI.

How I Can Help

1. Check out my tweets, which goes in-depth on email marketing on a daily basis (link)

2. Check out my free YouTube videos, with in-depth videos on Klaviyo, specific flows, and much more (link)

3. Are you looking for ways to increase the revenue of your eCommerce brand? Book a call with me now and let’s discuss our Email & SMS Marketing services (link)

or, you can just reply to this email.

See you next time!

Emiel from The Email Standard