Email subscriber management in my org has never been anyone’s job, so it has been “neglected” for ………. 10 years? Not anymore.
One part of my email marketing project is to clean our email subscriber database of unengaged subscribers. I estimate we will save 20% on our cost to send email just by “breaking up” with users who don’t engage with us.
Even though we haven’t “proactively” managed the data, we do follow the rules. The data is secure, we don’t spam, we don’t sell user data, etc… But one problem is the bulk of our user data was collected between 5-7 years ago, when our largest site was registration/subscription-based. Since that business model was changed, we haven’t required registration or login for regular, day-to-day users. Lists have slowly declined throughout the years.
So, where does that leave us? Registrant numbers in the six-figures, but thousands who have long since forgotten about us and our email. Our messages are just ignored or hitting their spam folder, never opened. But, we’re still sending them emails day and night if they’ve never clicked an unsubscribe link.
That’s where I come in. Over the past two months, I’ve worked on a re-engagement plan to reach out to the users ignoring our email with a simple, “Are you in or are you out?”
First, we determined the criteria for what we considered “unengaged.” We chose: Past 90 days, 11 emails sent, 0 opens, 0 clicks. I was able to pull this report in Exact Target, our email sending software provider.
Then, with the help of our marketing department, I crafted an email to send to those users to ask them if they still want to receive email from us. The users had 3 weeks to respond. Less than 2% responded at all, and only half of those said they still wanted our emails.
Today, I used link-click tracking in the email to sort all of the responses into two tables: no action and unsubscribe. Then, I will provide the “unsubscribe” list to our web development team and have them unsubscribe all of those users from all emails we send.
The expected result?
The negatives:
– List decline. Large declines for our biggest lists, I’m sure. But if they aren’t ever reading, who cares?
– Possibility of user complaints for being unsubscribed unknowingly.
The positives:
-I already mentioned the operational cost savings, up to 20%.
– Higher open and clickthrough rates. Only the engaged will remain, making our emails more sellable to advertisers.
– The start of true subscriber management. I plan to perform this re-engagement effort every three months.
This is the first time my email product management has had a direct, measurable financial impact this year. There are plenty more things to come with this project, but I’m crossing my fingers that everything first goes well with the unsubscribes.
Product Roadmap 