Take a peek under the hood of any decent size email list and you’ll discover a BIG problem.
And typically, the bigger the list, the bigger this problem is….
I am talking about disengaged subscribers.
These people won’t unsubscribe themselves.
But they also won’t open a single email either.
Instead, they just hang out on your list, chewing up fees and tanking your deliverability.
The easy solution is to delete these people from your list…
... However, in doing so, you’ve gotta eat the cold hard truth that you’re flushing thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on lead generation down the email toilet.
What if there was an alternative to killing off your disengaged subscribers?
An alternative that would help you all of a sudden get action out of as many as half of them!
And possibly even turn lots of these folks into customers.
That would be a pretty valuable solution, wouldn’t it?
If you’re a list owner, it would turn your deadweight subscriber-costs into profits.
And, if you’re an email marketing manager…. hey now… that’s the kind of cost-saving/money-making solution you could package up and sell to big brands with gigantic lists for untold sums of cash
Well, jeesh, good thing you read Full Funnel Nudity!
Because in this addition, I am going to show you exactly how one savvy-marketing agency turned thousands of disengaged subscribers into active readers.. and... better yet, customers!
And it all started with four simple emails.
Now — before I show you those emails and break down why they worked and how you can mimic them, I have a couple of disclaimers to share.
First and foremost, in case you’re new around here…
How Full Funnel Nudity Works:
Every month, I break down a live advertising funnel. Sometimes these are ad funnels that have proven their effectiveness by standing the test of time. Other times, these are the latest ads that have caught my eye.
During these breakdowns, I delve into the copywriting and direct-response marketing intricacies that make the ad work. And I also go inside the advertiser's funnel to show their landing pages, email sequences, etc.
By following along with these detailed breakdowns, you’ll learn the latest advertising strategies and tactics that are winning over customers. Also, by simply reviewing my breakdowns, you’ll be able to gain unique, REAL-WORLD advertising knowledge you won't find anywhere else.
You can think of the Full Funnel Nudity as your ready-made swipe file… complete with crib notes.
BTW: if you happen to see an ad you love, but you don’t have time to dissect it, send it my way. You’ll help indulge my curiosity, feed my addiction, and benefit from my obsessive desire to understand how great ads convert.
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Why this edition is different
Usually, when I break down a funnel, I only know the brand responsible for publishing it.
And, I don’t know, or can’t say who the hard-working marketers are who built said funnel.
In this edition, things are flip-flopped.
I know exactly who the smart marketers are who crafted the re-engagement email campaign we’re going to dissect.
(I am more than happy to give credit where credit is due!)
And I ALSO know the numbers behind how this campaign performed.
I’ll share those results during our breakdown because they are truly impressive!
But, this time, I can’t disclose the brand. (Client confidentiality and such.)
Which means you don’t get to see everything.
Yet, you get to see more than everyone else.
It’s almost like a double top-secret version of Full Funnel Nudity.
The other way this issue is different is I am only dissecting the emails.
But keep in mind you can create a re-engagement funnel based on what I’ll show you. I’ll touch on that in our conclusion.
For now, let's dive into the mechanics behind the Best Re-Engagement Campaign I’ve ever seen!
Strategy First… unless you want this to blow up in your face!
One other thing to let you know is that I advised a bit on this campaign.
I didn’t do any of the “heavy lifting.”
But I did provide one critical strategic recommendation.
When you run re-engagement email campaigns… DO NOT email all your disengaged subscribers at once.
Here’s why…
Because of the nature of the audience, re-engagement emails produce a lot of unsubscribes, spam reports, and bounces.
In large volumes, those things are bad for your Sender Reputation,
A sudden and significant spike in those bad indicators can affect the deliverability of all your emails.
So to minimize the blowback from your re-engagement emails, you should divide your disengaged segment into smaller segments.
This allows you to spread out the campaigns over time so you don’t cause damage to your Sender Reputation.
And it also allows you to test your campaigns on small groups of disengaged subscribers.
Then, you can see how the campaigns perform.
And you can take the best emails and turn them into an automation that’s triggered every time a subscriber becomes “disengaged.”
Running this type of campaign as automation is the best way to do it in the long run once you have your re-engagement formula dialed in.
All right, with the technical stuff, warnings, and recommendation out of the way, let’s get into the emails themselves
Re-Engagement Bait
Let’s take a look at this email in this stellar re-engagement campaign.
Then I’ll break down why it worked and look at the numbers it pulled.
So why did this simple email rekindle the long-lost love of thousands of disengaged subscribers?
A few reasons:
It’s direct yet also personal. (Almost sounds like it’s coming from a friend you haven’t talked to in a while.)
The tone of voice is on-brand.
And it offers a “free gift,” but it doesn’t give away what the gift is. The subscriber has to click to find out!
This email went out to a group of almost 30,0000 disengaged subscribers.
Here are the numbers it produced:
14% Open rate
2.8% click-through rate (CTR)
That open rate is impressive for re-engagement campaigns.
But a 2.8% CTR is near bonkers.
That’s more action than I've ever seen for one of these campaigns.
The big thing to take away here is how well the email sets-up and positions the free gift offer.
It’s almost too intriguing not to click!
The other thing to notice is the tone and style of the email obviously inboxed well… otherwise the open rate would have been a lot lower.
On to re-engagement email #2…
Tease out the benefits
Here’s the second email in this campaign:
A few notes on how this email sparked the re-engagement magic:
Once again, it’s personal yet direct.
It builds the value of the free offer.
And it explains how the gift will benefit the subscriber.
Here are the numbers this email delivered:
9% open rate
And a 1.5% CTR
On to the third email…
Show them what they are missing out on
Here's a peek at Email #3:
This email keeps the re-engagement love fest going by:
- Staying personal, friendly, and brief.
- It gets a bit visual, showing the subscriber what’s included in their free gift. (I blurred it out. But there's a nice looking pic of the free gift the subscriber can get by clicking.)
- And it teases that these gifts won’t be available forever.
How did this email perform?
It resulted in a:
- 7.1% Open rate
- 1.2% CTR
- And thousands more subscribers re-engaged
On to the final email in this campaign…
Time to Say Goodbye
Eventually, you’ve got to cut your disengaged subscribers loose.
But not until you give ‘em one last chance to avoid breaking up.
Here’s email #4 in the campaign:
This email changes the dynamic.
Instead of hyping up the free gift, It puts the onus on the subscriber to choose to stay on the list.
And there’s an important lesson here…
If someone chooses to stay on your list just to get your updates, odds are they are going to start reading most of your emails.
Once again, this email inboxed well.
Likely because of its personal, casual, yet brief tone of voice.
It yielded:
- A 4.6% open rate. (Pretty amazing for the fourth email sent to the disengaged audience in 10 days.)
- And a whopping 1.7% CTR.
Nothing like a little FOMO to capture the attention of those stragglers.
All-in-all, this four-email campaign took a huge segment of email subscribers, subscribers who had tuned out and were just about to be deleted…
… and turned thousands of them into active readers and customers!
How can you do the same?
There are tons of “re-engagement” email templates out there. Some of them suck. Some of them are good.
But copy and paste templates won’t produce the results this campaign did.
What will is this:
And, remember, once you re-engage your subscribers…
Don’t rush the sale
After you’ve re-ignited your relationship, don’t rush it.
Let your re-engaged subscribers warm back up to your email content before you hit them with an offer.
Send them a sequence of “nurture emails” for a week or two.
Then, if you have an offer that builds on your “free gifts,” share it with them and watch hundreds to thousands of those once disengaged subscribers turn into new customers!
Are you not engaged?
Okay, so like I said earlier, this edition of Full Funnel Nudity is a bit different from the nine that preceded it.
We didn’t go “Full Funnel.”
Instead, we went “Full Email.”
But the way inbox filters and email algorithms are a changin’, re-engagement campaigns will only become more valuable.
That said…
I want to hear your opinion.
Was this helpful?
Do the examples show how you can do the same?
Love it or hate it or leave it… leave your feedback in the comments below
I loved reading this breakdown. Thanks Kyle.
Glad you enjoyed it. Was easy to cover. Your execution was flawless!