Summary
Re-engaging inactive email subscribers presents a significant challenge for email marketers, as it directly impacts email deliverability and sender reputation. While the desire to reactivate a large segment of dormant subscribers is understandable for business goals, the process must be handled with extreme caution to avoid detrimental effects, such as increased spam complaints, bounces, and even blocklisting. A sudden influx of emails to unengaged recipients can signal problematic sending behavior to internet service providers (ISPs), leading to reduced inbox placement for all subsequent campaigns.
Key findings
- Deliverability risk: Re-engaging large, inactive segments without proper strategy significantly risks email deliverability, potentially leading to lower inbox placement and blacklisting.
- Engagement impact: ISPs heavily track subscriber engagement (opens, clicks), and sending to unengaged lists can negatively impact your sender reputation, making it harder for all your emails to reach the inbox.
- Segmentation importance: Segmenting inactive subscribers allows for targeted re-engagement campaigns and helps isolate potential deliverability issues before they affect your entire list.
- Data-driven decisions: Monitoring performance metrics after re-engagement attempts is crucial to understand the impact on deliverability and overall list health.
- List hygiene: Regular list cleaning and removing persistently inactive subscribers are fundamental for maintaining good sender reputation and avoiding spam traps.
Key considerations
- Gradual re-introduction: Avoid adding large batches of inactive subscribers back into your main mailing list all at once. Consider a phased re-introduction, similar to an IP warming strategy, to mitigate risk.
- Pre-validation: Before sending to inactive subscribers, run the list through a reputable email validation service to remove invalid or risky addresses, which can include spam traps. This proactive step can significantly reduce bounce rates.
- Targeted campaigns: Develop specific re-engagement campaigns with compelling offers or exclusive content designed to entice a response from dormant users. Provide multiple clear opportunities for engagement within these emails.
- Sunset policy: Implement a clear sunset policy for subscribers who remain unengaged after re-engagement efforts. This involves removing them from your active mailing list to protect your sender reputation. For more details, see our guide on when to stop sending. An article by Mailgun also suggests implementing a sunset policy to prevent further damage to deliverability, a practice we strongly endorse to maintain a healthy email program.
- Documentation: Document all decisions and the impact of re-engagement campaigns on your deliverability metrics. This data is invaluable for demonstrating trends and justifying future list management strategies.
What email marketers say
Email marketers often face pressure to reactivate inactive subscriber segments, driven by perceived lost revenue opportunities. However, those on the front lines of email operations understand the inherent risks this poses to deliverability. Their primary concern revolves around maintaining sender reputation and ensuring that active subscribers continue to receive emails in their inboxes, unhindered by the negative impact of sending to disengaged contacts. Marketers emphasize the importance of data, segmentation, and controlled re-engagement strategies to minimize adverse effects.
Key opinions
- Negative impact: Releasing large inactive segments back into the main mailing list is generally viewed as a risky move that can harm deliverability.
- Managerial pressure: Marketers frequently advise against aggressive re-engagement tactics, but often have to execute decisions made by higher management despite their concerns.
- Performance decline: A common belief is that adding inactive users back will cause performance metrics, such as open rates and click-through rates, to decline.
- Deliverability is not 'smoke and mirrors': There is frustration with the perception that deliverability issues are not real or significant until they directly impact sales and revenue.
- Segmentation for success: Defining activity levels through customer segmentation is a key strategy for understanding and managing list health effectively.
Key considerations
- Gradual integration: If forced to re-engage, marketers suggest adding inactive segments back slowly over time, rather than all at once, to observe the impact incrementally.
- Strategic segmentation: Inactive subscribers should be segmented from the main list so their performance can be clearly tracked and compared to active audiences. For instance, consider how managing inactive subscribers improves Gmail deliverability.
- Data snapshots: Maintain daily snapshots of key metrics before and after re-engagement to provide concrete evidence of any decline in performance. This helps demonstrate the connection between deliverability and business outcomes.
- List validation: Prior to re-engagement, validate the list to identify and remove problematic email addresses. This proactive measure minimizes bounces and reduces the risk of hitting spam traps.
- Documentation: Documenting every decision and its observed impact is crucial, especially when deliverability strategies are mandated against expert advice, providing a clear record of cause and effect.
Email marketer from Email Geeks warns that reintegrating a large segment of inactive subscribers, particularly those over 200,000, is a significant concern for deliverability. They feel it will likely lead to negative outcomes.
Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests exploring options to add inactive subscribers back slowly over time, if possible, rather than a single large release, to minimize the impact on sender reputation.
What the experts say
Deliverability experts consistently warn against the risks associated with re-engaging dormant email lists. Their insights highlight the critical role of sender reputation, the potential for increased spam complaints, and the long-term damage that can result from aggressive re-engagement tactics. They advocate for a data-driven approach, emphasizing the need to monitor performance closely and make informed decisions that prioritize long-term deliverability over short-term list size goals.
Key opinions
- Reputation is paramount: Maintaining a good sender reputation is more important than the size of your mailing list, as poor reputation can lead to emails landing in spam folders.
- Deliverability impacts bottom line: The direct correlation between email deliverability and sales or business revenue is often underestimated until significant declines occur.
- Risks of large re-engagement: Experts are wary of campaigns that re-integrate hundreds of thousands of inactive subscribers without strict controls, predicting a negative impact on overall email performance.
- Engagement drives inboxing: ISPs prioritize sending emails to inboxes based on positive engagement signals. Sending to unengaged users dilutes these signals.
- Proactive hygiene: Regularly cleaning and updating email lists by removing inactive and unengaged subscribers helps maintain higher deliverability rates.
Key considerations
- Monitor performance: Implement robust monitoring and charting of email performance metrics to quickly identify any decline after re-engagement efforts.
- Segment by activity: Create clear delineations within your subscriber list based on activity levels to isolate the impact of re-engaging specific segments. This helps in understanding how ISPs track engagement.
- Documentation is key: Maintain thorough documentation of all decisions and their observed consequences to provide a clear audit trail and support future strategic adjustments.
- Validate and cleanse lists: Before attempting to reactivate any inactive segments, validate the entire list to remove invalid or risky addresses and avoid hitting spam traps or being added to a blocklist.
- Prioritize long-term health: Understand that short-term gains from re-engaging inactive users are often outweighed by long-term damage to sender reputation and deliverability. Word to the Wise, a recognized authority on email deliverability, often publishes content stressing the importance of prioritizing long-term list health over short-term list size, a principle directly applicable here.
Deliverability expert from Email Geeks stresses that if a re-engagement campaign is necessary, marketers should implement a clear delineation strategy. This helps them observe precisely when and where any decline in email performance begins due to the re-introduction of inactive subscribers.
Deliverability expert from Spam Resource frequently asserts that a healthy email list, characterized by high engagement, is crucial for strong sender reputation. Re-engaging inactive subscribers indiscriminately can dilute engagement metrics and lead to reputation damage.
What the documentation says
Official documentation and research often underscore the importance of list hygiene and engagement for overall email deliverability. While specific guidelines on re-engaging inactive subscribers may vary, the overarching theme is that maintaining a healthy, responsive list is paramount. These sources typically highlight how recipient engagement, or lack thereof, directly influences sender reputation and inbox placement. They provide a data-backed perspective on the mechanisms by which ISPs assess email sending practices and the consequences of deviating from best practices.
Key findings
- Engagement signals: ISPs monitor positive (opens, clicks, replies) and negative (spam complaints, unsubscribes, bounces) engagement signals to determine inbox placement.
- Sender reputation impact: A low engagement rate from inactive subscribers can signal poor list quality, which negatively impacts your sender reputation.
- Bounce rate thresholds: High bounce rates, often caused by sending to old, inactive addresses, can severely tank email deliverability. A bounce rate higher than 2% is typically considered problematic.
- Spam trap risk: Inactive lists are more likely to contain spam traps, hitting which can lead to immediate blacklisting and severe reputation damage.
- List cleaning benefits: Regularly cleaning and updating email lists helps maintain higher deliverability rates and improves overall engagement metrics by focusing on responsive subscribers.
Key considerations
- Email validation: Before attempting to re-engage, utilize email validation services to filter out invalid, risky, or spam trap addresses. This is a critical step to avoid deliverability pitfalls.
- Segmentation by activity: Segment inactive subscribers based on their last engagement to tailor re-engagement campaigns and manage risk, preventing widespread deliverability issues. This aligns with improving inbox placement through segmentation.
- Re-engagement campaign structure: Design re-engagement campaigns to be short (3-5 touches), offer clear value, and provide multiple opportunities for subscribers to opt back into active engagement. Iterative, controlled sending is advised.
- Sunset strategy: Implement a sunset policy to remove subscribers who remain unresponsive after re-engagement attempts. This practice, advocated by deliverability documentation, maintains the overall health and engagement of your mailing list, helping you to diagnose and prevent spam placement.
Documentation from Mailgun states that regularly cleaning and updating email lists is essential for maintaining a higher deliverability rate and improving overall engagement metrics, preventing issues related to inactive subscribers.
Documentation from Iterable emphasizes that email marketers should limit re-engagement efforts to 3-5 touches per inactive subscriber, providing multiple opportunities for engagement actions such as opens, clicks, or visits within those limited interactions.
