Removing ‘Unengaged’ Is Key to Deliverability, Too

Cut inactive subscribers from your e-mail lists, but don't use a chain saw. Consider this approach.

Author
Date published
November 04, 2009 Categories

Subscriber engagement is becoming the ISPs’ new rule for deliverability, as I noted in my previous column. Soon, senders whose messages get opened and clicked on will, in general, have better inbox delivery than those whose messages get deleted without opening, reported as spam, or allowed to pile up in the inbox.

On the flip side, having a large segment of inactive or unresponsive subscribers can hurt your sender reputation, which many ISPs now consider when deciding whether to deliver your messages, block them, or route them to the junk folder. You probably know already that spam complaints and hard bounces damage your sender reputation and reduce deliverability. Repeatedly mailing to inactive or abandoned e-mail addresses poses a more insidious threat.

If you do nothing to control or re-engage your inactive subscribers, this segment can grow large enough to trigger ISP filtering or blocking. Even your most engaged subscribers wouldn’t receive your messages if that happens, because your sender reputation is so poor, your messages won’t reach their inboxes. So, your reputation, your deliverability, and ultimately the health of your e-mail program are in jeopardy. This means you can no longer afford to ignore your “emotionally unsubscribed” recipients.

List Hygiene Must Include Removing Inactives

This is a controversial concept. Many marketers resist any suggestion to remove “good” addresses from their mailing lists, assuming that if the address doesn’t bounce or generate a spam complaint, it’s fair game.

They see the money lost on e-mail acquisition or feel the heat from size-conscious bosses who believe that the next e-mail message they send could bring in the big conversion.

What these marketers don’t see is the damage that can happen when they send messages to addresses that never respond.

I can understand this apprehension, especially among retailers who worry that they will remove people who are good customers of their brick-and-mortar stores. These people are the ones who read the offers in the e-mail messages and then convert in the store rather than on a landing page.

Identify Your True Inactives

Use a scalpel approach, which applies a metrics matrix to excise your true inactive subscribers. If you wield a chain saw to lop off anybody who didn’t click after six months, you could end up cutting out genuine customers.

Determine your inactivity cycle. The longer your sales or replenishment cycle, and the less frequent your mailing schedule, the longer you need to wait.

Someone who sends a monthly e-mail promoting luxury vacations, or Christmas/Hanukkah specialty foods, should look for inactivity after at least a year, while a retailer who sends a daily-deal e-mail could begin hunting down inactives after three months of silence.

Use precise metrics. Open rate is not a slam-dunk metric. It’s not always accurate, because it won’t register opens from people who don’t download images. Clicks and conversions are more reliable metrics. You should also consider watching non-e-mail metrics like Web site activity, purchases, page visits, or customer review postings.

Test for accuracy; refine as needed. Test your inactivity criteria before going further. Create a segment of your mailing list and add any address to it that meets your criteria.

Send your next couple of messages as usual, but track action on your new segment. Move anyone who acts on the message back to your main list.

Launch Your Reactivation Campaign

Note the word “campaign.” Reactivation doesn’t mean sending a single e-mail implying “Come back and buy something or we kick you off the island.” Instead, you’ll create a series of e-mails, each with a different purpose.

Here’s a typical reactivation campaign:

Removing “good” but inactive addresses might seem like it will hurt, but a measurable improvement in metrics that matter — deliverability, conversions, and revenue — should help relieve the pain.

Until next time, keep on deliverin’!

Exit mobile version