Inactive subscribers (often called “sleepy subscribers”) are a common conundrum for email marketers. Should they stay on the email list? Are they still valuable? How do you know who to remove?
Dell EMC faced this problem when they found out that 70% of their B2B contacts were inactive, so they launched an omnichannel campaign to re-engage their subscriber base. The “Unfrozen” program, named after the popular Disney movie, was a two-fold strategy. Dell EMC sought to either re-engage the dormant audience with alternative tactics, cadence and messaging or simply “let them go.”
Their approach to re-activating those subscribers highlighted a few key takeaways that email marketers can apply to almost any campaign.
As Steve Hayman, Senior Business and Data Analyst at Dell, said at the Email Evolution Conference, “Data drives decisions.” A data-driven marketing approach helps you understand the issues that your subscribers face and determine what your program’s focus should be.
With the vast amount of data available to brands, it can be challenging to determine which data points you should prioritize. Here are a few tips to get started:
Take the crawl, walk, run approach. Audit where your organization is today and use that as a starting point to develop a data-centric marketing plan. For example, you could start by taking a deeper look into your email engagement behavior. As you become more sophisticated, you can learn how to supplement that data with other customer data, like browsing behavior, in-store purchases, or even mobile app activity.
People often disengage when companies focus on brand goals rather than the customers’ goals. To create better email campaigns, you need to think about your customers’ interests, motivators and overall customer journey.
To get subscribers interested in their emails, Dell EMC focused on solution driven content-oriented material rather than traditional marketing material. They provided interesting information and helpful tips, like customer stories and visual examples to show Dell EMC’s products in action. Instead of pushing their company agenda, they gave customers information that solved their technology problems.
Anticipating what your customer will engage with starts with knowing what they like. “How the consumer engages and doesn’t engage is really their way of voting,” explains Shannon Aronson, Senior Vice President, Strategic Consulting at Epsilon. “You need to change the way you communicate with consumers based on what they like. Try to put the customer, not your brand, at the center.”
By creating a dialog with your customers, you’ll get a better idea of what messaging will resonate with them.
“Email is considered a mature channel, but there is still so much innovation in email,” says Shannon. Re-activating email subscribers was Dell EMC’s goal, so email was the primary channel they used.
However, combining email with other touchpoints can be a great way to drive cross-channel results. Dell EMC’s direct mail pieces featured a fun scratch-off component and sweepstakes that actually helped increase engagement within their emails.
Omnichannel may sound daunting, but it all starts with mapping out the customer journey. Ask yourself these questions:
Inactive subscribers don’t have to be a drain on your email marketing programs. In fact, you can learn a lot from them when you have informative strategies in place. Organizations that take a data-driven, customer-centric approach to their email marketing, like Dell EMC, see better engagement and higher revenue by reaching the right subscribers.