eBook - Silverpop

Waking Up Your Zombie
Subscribers
At least half of my email
Q: list is inactive, according
to my best guess. What should I
do with them?
If you want to start a fight among email
A: marketers, talk about how to handle
email inactives. (It’s almost as good a show as
the single-versus-double opt-in debate.)
The heated debate that usually ensues tends
to overlook some important considerations,
however:
1. No matter how your company defines
inactives, the problem typically is huge.
2. All inactives are not created equal.
3. Reactivation programs usually don’t work
well.
4. The focus should be on reducing the potential
for new and existing subscribers to
go inactive.
And that brings us back to engagement. Let’s
look at each of the above statements:
1. How big an Issue
is inactivity?
Inactives are typically 30
percent to 40 percent of
the database, but recently
I’ve been hearing from a
growing number of marketers
that they estimate their
inactivity rates are 50 percent
to 70 percent.
Most companies should be
deeply concerned that
a third or more of their email database is lifeless.
It doesn’t matter whether these inactives simply
haven’t unsubscribed or didn’t update their email
addresses, interests or preferences. Their presence
muddies your true email performance and might
affect deliverability.
Most important, their lack of engagement and
response represents significant lost potential
revenue.
2. All inactives are not created equal.
The inactives debate usually assumes that all the
inactives in your database are alike. Not so.
Some inactive segments are either more or less
likely to come back to life because of various attributes
and factors, including these:
• Acquisition source: Inactives who opted
in originally through transactional emails
probably are different from co-registration
subscribers.
• Database age/subscriber tenure: Someone
who hasn’t responded for three years
should be treated differently from a one-year
inactive.
• Purchase cycle: I might buy a new road
bicycle once every four years, but I’ll pick up
energy gel every few months.
• Purchasers vs. non-purchasers: Would you
treat someone who bought something 18
months ago but hasn’t clicked on your emails in
12 months the same as someone who neither
purchased nor clicked in the last 12 months?
• Multiple touch points (offline vs. online or
call centers): Some email inactives might
engage or purchase in your other channels.
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