The Top 10 Reasons Your List Subscribers Are Inactive.

“All email marketing lists contain a fair amount of inactive list subscribers to the point where inactive subscribers can make up the majority of a list. Inactive subscribers are ones who seemly lost interest in your messages; taking no action on your emails as they have filtered your messages out of their virtual life.”

The top ten reasons list subscribers become inactive include:

They signed up for your free whitepaper, watched a webinar or downloaded a free guide. To do any of these they are required to submit their email address: which you collect and add to your list. Not a bad practice, most businesses grow their lists this way. However, you may have forgotten to mention that their email address will receive future mailings from you. Some unsubscribe when they receive your next message, and some will continue to delete them instead of unsubscribing, becoming an inactive list member.
How to keep them focused and engaged?

Give them an option to join your list when they sign up for that whitepaper and tell them all the great reasons why they want to get your emails. If they do opt-in, follow up with a Welcome letter.
Your emails are never seen, they automatically go in the SPAM folder. There are several reasons why this happens, ranging from a recipient who never read your earlier messages, deleted them, and inadvertently trained their email client to trash anything from your address. Other times as an example, it could be simply the size of your email or the Subject line you used which triggered a filter.

One suggestion:

In the Welcome letter, recommend they whitelist your email address. And it’s also suggested to always check all your outgoing campaigns for broken links, image alt attributions, unsubscribe footers, and the number of images used compared to the text in the message.
People change jobs and leave their company email address behind. You’re now sending to an inactive mailbox.

Offer a profile page to your list members.

Let your members update their interests and items like a new email address.
Some subscribers may have outgrown your list. You stopped sending information that is relevant to them: For example, they signed up for Doggie News and you’re sending them Cat Tails OR they no longer have a dog and now have a hamster.
Stick to the information people signed up to receive.
AND realize people’s interest changes, keep up with your list members with a survey, or ask for feedback to keep current with their situation.
Life gets in the way. People are busy, get too many emails, so they ignore your messages until a Subject comes up that interests them.

A survey would help you understand your subscriber’s needs.
The reader has become complacent and ignore your email but knows it’s in their box to read at a later time.
You send too many emails. I’ve unsubscribed from several lists for this very reason.

Be balanced with your marketing.

When you make a promise to send a biweekly newsletter, don’t over-promise by sending newsletters every day.
You are repeating the same message, again. Nagging never helps.
The salutation you changed to isn’t personal, it’s rude. I do not like to be addressed as Hey (last name) or hey you or just my last name. Email marketing has come a long way, it’s easy to send a message to Hello Patricia, or hello subscriber, there’s no excuse not to.
When they say I don’t remember signing up for your list, reintroduce yourself and explain all the reasons why they should stay on your list.

Today’s digital email marketer has great tools to create a win-back email marketing campaign. The key to making this work, identify those inactive subscribers before they leave altogether and become a churn statistic. If you have a list of inactive members before you hit that delete button, learn how to do a re-engagement campaign, give us a call and we’ll show you how.