How To Write and Send Super Effective Re-Engagement Emails

This post was written by our friend Sujan Patel, VP of Marketing at WhenIWork.com.

You’ve fought hard. You’ve fought hard to get people on your email list. You’ve fought hard to get them to sign up for free trial. You’ve fought hard to get them to your website to make a purchase. Or you’ve fought hard to get them to make that first purchase.

So what do you do about those people who stop engaging with your business? Those who stop opening your emails, don’t upgrade to a paid account, don’t complete their first purchase, or don’t return to your website to make another purchase?

You re-engage them.

In this post, we’re going to look at some great examples of re-engagement emails and how you can craft your own.

Examples of Re-Engagement Emails

Pinterest is home to hundreds of examples of great re-engagement emails. Here are a few of my favorites and why they work so well.

Re-Engage Loyal Customers

There are three great things about this email. One, it reminds inactive customers how yummy their products are with great imagery. Two, it offers inactive customers a freebie to get them back into consuming their products again. Three, it adds urgency by making the offer last only seven days.

Re-Engage Customers

This email is perfect for the texting generation. It demonstrates how a finely-tuned, segmented list can help you craft re-engagement messages that really hit the mark.

Re-Engage Subscribers

For people who are not opening your emails anymore, this is the quintessential goodbye email. If subscribers don’t open it, they get removed from your list. If they open it months down the road (maybe when they start wondering why they haven’t received an email in a while), they have the option to re-subscriber. Including the latter option is key to re-engaging subscribers.

Re-Engage Users

If people stop using your app, this email is a great way to remind them that 1) you have their app and that 2) you need to use it.

Re-Engage Free Trial Users

Did someone not upgrade to a paid account? Instead of telling them to upgrade, use the re-engagement email to tell them to use a specific feature of your platform – one that requires upgrading to a paid account. If you can sell the free trial user on one great feature, you’ll get the upgrade.

How to Create a Re-Engagement Email

So now that you’ve seen some great examples of re-engagement emails, let’s look at how to you create them for your business.

1. Create an automation and/or list segment.

The first step depends on the type of re-engagement email you are creating. Most email services have powerful features that allow you to send the right series of re-engagement emails to the right people at the right time. For example, Vero offers both time-based autoresponders and action-based automations. Here are some common scenarios marketers can use autoresponders and automations with.

• To re-engage subscribers who are not opening your emails, you need to create a segment of your email list with subscribers that have not opened an email within the last 30, 60 or 90 days.
• To re-engage people who have not signed up for a paid account after completing a free trial, you need to start with an automation that moves people from your free trial email list to your customer list when they upgrade to a paid account. For anyone left on your free trial email list after the specified number of days have expired, you need to set up an autoresponder series to convert them to a paid account. This should include follow-ups for one day, three days, seven days, 14 days, and 30 days after their free trial has expired.
• To re-engage people that have come to your website, created an account, added an item to their shopping cart, but not made a purchase, you will need an automation to email the person about their abandoned shopping cart.
• To re-engage people who have made one purchase, but not another, you will need to create an automation that reaches out to customers that have not made a purchase within 30, 60, or 90 days.

2. Define your goal.

The second step is to define your re-engagement email goal. Your goals with a re-engagement email could be to remind them why they love opening your emails, why they love your software, why they wanted to make a purchase, or why they made a purchase in the past.

3. Create the re-engagement emails.

Depending on the purpose of your re-engagement email and your goals, you may need to create one re-engagement email or a re-engagement email series. You can stick with your standard email template or try something that focuses on a specific purpose. Look for ones that you can modify to focus on a simple “We miss you.” message or ones that highlight a special discount.

The goal is to make your re-engagement messages stand out as much as possible. That way, someone who is a little blinded to your newsletter may take notice of the personalized message.

4. Test several subject lines.

The subject line of any email is key. Your re-engagement email subject lines need to be different from your usual emails. Similar to the design, it needs to stand out in your subscriber’s inbox.

You can test different ones by brainstorming a few and using A/B testing within your email service to figure out which one leads to the most re-engagement with your business. You may want to try things like including the subscriber’s first name, saying you miss them, saying you want them back, and similar.

5. Tweak and test your emails.

If you notice that your emails aren’t getting the re-engagement you were expecting, you may want to do A/B testing on the design and the main message in the body of the email. Simply changing the dotted border from green to red around a discount or adding a survey that asks subscribers what they want may make the difference in getting the subscriber to complete a goal or ending up in their trash.

What other tips would you add to this list? Leave a comment for me below!