If you look at your email list, you’ll find many unfamiliar names there. No, these are the names apart from the spam email addresses. Some names would be common for you because these are the loyal customers of your brand. Whereas, others are inactive users. So, you don’t know them very well. It’s to win these inactive users back, that you create a reactivation email. 

When you’re writing a re-engagement email, you’ve to be sure of the content you’re putting in the email. Let’s say that you promise 50% off to your customers just to win them back. They get back on your email list just to find out that there’s no such offer that you’re providing them.

The result of such a scenario may get you blocked by them. In addition to that, you’ll also risk losing your company name. This would be because these users would tell others about the recent experience they had with you. And well, you know the power of people on social media today. 

To avoid all these messy situations, all you’ve to do is just be honest with them. If you’re telling them that there’s a 50% offer for them, then give them that. 

With this honesty, you may have some humour as well. If your customers include Gen Z or millennials, then you know how to make them laugh. Make use of relevant memes, talk about relatable matters, use jokes, and so on. You should write exactly what they must be thinking, and exactly what you think when you get such emails. But do remember that you don’t have to be rude here. Make some light-hearted jokes, that may just do the trick for you. 

Throughout this article, we’ve included the best practices you may use to write these emails. 

What Is Reactivation EmailAn email (or electronic mail) is a method of exchanging communications through the internet. It is one of the most used features on the web and the number one mean...?  

A reactivation email or a re-engagement email is an email that you write to get your customers back. There are many reasons that customers stop engaging with you. When they stop engaging with you, it affects your business majorly. 

It affects your email marketing efforts. You start to notice that your emails aren’t making you any profits. Your return on investment starts to lower, and your sender scores become low as well. 

Talking about your business, well, if the customers don’t know anything anymore, how would you perform well. In the past 5 months, you may have launched 3 new products under your brand. But since some customers don’t know about them, you won’t have much success with these new launches. 

Therefore, if you want all these marketing and businesses efforts to be successful, you’ve to win your customers back. 

But who are these customers? Reactivation emails are sent to inactive customers. An inactive customer is the one who hasn’t engaged with you in some time. This time may differ from company to company. This means that the time period in which a user becomes inactive for you may not be the same for everyone else. Based on the time period for your company, you decide to write these emails.

It’s important to write such emails because you want your customers back. As a brand, you care about them and you want to provide them with helpful solutions. In order to do that, you have to make ways to engage with them again. 

There are other benefits of writing these emails. Firstly, re-engagement emails help in cleaning your email list. You can get those users who want to come back, and may remove those who want to unsubscribe. Second, you can also improve your deliverability stats by sending these emails.   

How To Reactivate Email?

When you’re planning to send a re-engagement email to your users, there are a few steps that you’ve to follow. If you want to see your email campaign’s success, then follow the below-mentioned steps. 

• Know Your Campaign Goal: Obviously, the main goal is to win back the inactive users. However, there must be some other goals apart from that one goal. What would you want once those users are back? Do you want to make more sales? Are you looking to have more brand awareness? When you know the answers to such questions, you’ll be able to define your goals. 

• Fix Deliverability Issues: Prior to creating your reactivation email, know even if the users are receiving your emails. It may happen that your emails are being sent to them, but not in their main inbox. Rather, in the spam folder. So, you should identify such issues before moving on. 

• Identify Your Target Audience: When you’re sending such an email, you’ve to know who it’s meant for. As mentioned earlier, you should identify who is an inactive user according to your company policies. Once you can differentiate between other users and inactive users, then you can go forward to the next step. 

• Fix the Root Cause: The root cause here means why did these people leave. It may be because they don’t check their emails often. Or it may be because they receive too many emails from other companies and yours. Here, you can fix only one thing. It’s the number of emails that you send to your users. 

• Optimize Your Email: Lastly, before you send that email, optimize it perfectly. Include a good subject line as well as interesting content. Talk about what’s really important, as you wouldn’t want to waste their time or yours. 

Tips and Best Practices 

To have a lasting impact on your customers, you’ll need a few best practices. In addition to that, you’ll also make effective emails that’ll show your dedication to the customers. 

Listed down below are some of the best practices that you’ve to remember when you’re writing your re-engagement emails. 

• When you’re sending these emails, you should send them in a sequence. Sending just a single email wouldn’t make an impact on the user. It’s recommended that you should at least send 3-4 emails. But, not one after the other. You’re trying to get them back, not to get blocked. Hence, send these emails with a gap in between. For instance, you may send one on Tuesday and another one on Thursday. 

• Using personalization is a good way to get their attention. In your reactivation email, writing the names of customers would make them feel visible. It’d tell them that you care about them. Besides their name, you should also include something that they like. Maybe it’ll be a meme or a reference from their favourite movie. 

• While you include their likes in the email, you should remind them why they signed up for your services in the beginning. There must’ve been some problem that they were facing all that time ago. So, jog their memory to tell them how you fixed that problem. 

• Provide them with an offer. Everyone loves offers and discounts. In your re-engagement email, you should mention a discount that they can avail of. It can offer any kind of offer. For instance, tell them that they can buy a new product with 60% off. Or mention in the email that with a new product they can buy one more product that costs $100, but for free. 

Top 4 Reactivation Email Examples

Even though all the brands and businesses have their own dynamics, you can benefit from using strategies that others have used. 

Here’s a list of a few brands that got their customers back after writing such emails. 

• Gap

The re-engagement email that Gap sent out to its customers included an offer for them. In the email, they mentioned that the customers can get 40% off on their products for a whole week. Besides the offer, they also allowed their customers to change their user preferences through that email. 

• Spy

Spy used the same strategy to get their customers back. They let the users know that their user preferences can be changed the way they want to. In addition to that, Spy also mentioned 10 reasons why the customers should engage with them again. All these reasons gave some value to these users, or it reminded them why they had first signed up with Spy. 

• BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed created their reactivation email the way you’d imagine they would. They targeted the emotions of their users with a cute cat picture. If you look at the cat, it really feels as if it’s saying, “Don’t go, please stay.” With this image, they directly asked their users if they’d still like to receive emails from them. Seeing such a cute image in their email, your users would obviously want to hear from you again. 

• Lowe’s

The re-engagement email created by Lowe’s caught the attention of their users. This was because, in the email, they told the customers that they’ve improved in ways since the customer has been away from them. They also mentioned how much they’ve grown in that time by telling the users that they’ve now 5 million subscribers. 

In Conclusion

Reactivation email refers to that email that’s written for the purpose of getting the customers back on your email list. These are the inactive customers who’ve not checked your emails in a long time. 

When you’re writing these emails, there are a few steps that you’ve to follow. First, you’ll need to think of the campaign goal. As an email marketer, you know that all your email campaigns have some goals. Just like that, re-engagement email campaigns have goals too. Your first goal is of course to get these customers back on the mailing list. 

But what comes after that, why did you desperately want them back. Maybe your company is looking forward to increasing their sales or they want more revenue. Once you set this goal in your mind, you’ll move on to the next steps. 

Here, you may want to identify these users. Then, you identify why they are inactive. After knowing about both these elements, you can begin creating the email. 

In that email, it’s important that you include all the true and relevant content. If your company doesn’t plan on providing an offer to the customers, then please refrain from promising that to the users. 

Relevant content means that they don’t want to know every little detail that they’ve missed. You may just provide them with some highlights. For instance, you can tell them that you’ve started writing newsletters now or that you ship your products globally. 

About the content that you’ll be including in the email, make sure that your subject line also follows that. You should also personalize your email. It’s another good practice that you should follow. 

What other strategies work for you? How do you create your reactivation emails? Did you like the examples we gave? Tell us in the comments below!