In the modern business world, email marketing is an essential tool for promoting your products or services and growing your customer base.
But with so many businesses using email marketing, how can you ensure that your campaigns stand out in a crowded inbox?
The answer lies in understanding what email marketing is, why it’s important, and how to do it right. Keep reading to understand everything you need to know about email marketing so you can start growing your business today.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is sending promotional messages (known as emails) to a group of people to grow your customer base or drive sales.
Email marketing can promote anything from new products or services to special discounts or deals. And because it’s so personal—recipients receive your message directly in their inbox—it’s one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience.
Why Is Email Marketing Important?
There are various reasons why email marketing is such an important part of any business’s marketing strategy.
First, email is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools available.
With email marketing, you don’t have to spend money on advertising space or worry about production costs. You can also reach a large number of people with just a few clicks—something that would be much more difficult (and expensive) to do with traditional forms of marketing like TV or print ads.
In addition, email marketing allows you to track your results so you can see exactly how many individuals opened and clicked through your emails.
This makes it easy to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and make necessary adjustments to ensure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck.
Finally, email marketing allows you to nurture relationships with potential and current customers by providing them with valuable content on a regular basis. By regularly staying in touch with your audience, you’ll stay top-of-mind when they need what you have to offer—which means more sales for your business.
Email marketing is a powerful tool that can be used to achieve a variety of objectives for your business. But to be truly effective, you must take the time to learn how to do it right.
The Importance of Email Marketing List Clean Up
Your email list is one of the most important assets of your business.
The list directly connects your customers and potential customers and is a powerful marketing and sales tool. Though if your email list is full of inactive or unengaged subscribers, it’s not doing its job.
That’s why email list cleanup is so important.
What is an Email List Clean Up?
Email list cleanup is the process of removing invalid or inactive email addresses from your list.
There are several reasons why an email address might be invalid, including typos, bounced emails, and changed addresses. Inactive email addresses have not been used to open or click on an email in a long time.
Keeping your list clean ensures that you’re only sending emails to people who are actually interested in receiving them.
Why Ought You Clean Your Email List?
There are several reasons why email list cleanup is so important for your business.
First, it can help improve your deliverability rates.
When you have many invalid or inactive email addresses on your list, your emails are more likely to be marked as spam. This not only hurts your reputation with ISPs, but it also means that fewer people on your list will see your emails.
Second, cleaning up your email list can help improve engagement rates.
When you send emails to people no longer interested in what you have to say, they’re less likely to open or click on them. This can hurt your open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
Finally, keeping your list clean can save you money.
Most email service providers charge by email address stored, and communicated with, in their system. One way to think about this is you pay for each recipient on your list every time you send an email. If a large portion of those recipients are no longer interested in hearing from you, you’re wasting money by continuing to send them emails.
How Often Should I Clean My Email List?
Ideally, you should clean your email list every month or two.
However, if you have a significantly large list or have been using your current list for a long time without cleaning it up, you may want to consider doing a more thorough cleaning every three to six months.
Regardless of how often you decide to clean your list, the most important thing is that you do it regularly. Keeping your email lists clean and up-to-date ensures that your marketing efforts are as effective as possible as you comply with CAN-SPAM, CASL, and GDPR.
CAN-SPAM – Compliance with Email Marketing
The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that sets the rules for commercial email, establishes requirements for commercial messages, gives customers the right to have you stop emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.
To comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, you must:
- Avoid using false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
- Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in doing this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
- Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox registered with a commercial mail-receiving agency established according to Postal Service regulations.
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting emails from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand.
Creative use of type, size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt-out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
- Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within ten business days.
You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.
Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law applies to all commercial messages, which the Act defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites.
The rule applies to emails from a business to a consumer, regardless of whether the business has an existing relationship with the consumer. It also applies to emails from organizations such as charities and political parties.
Penalties for Violating the CAN-SPAM Act
If you violate the CAN-SPAM Act, you could be subject to civil penalties of up to $16,000 per email. The FTC has brought several cases against companies and organizations that have violated the Act and has obtained judgments against violators.
The FTC also accepts complaints about companies that send spam emails. For more information about the CAN-SPAM Act, visit the FTC’s website here.
CASL
In 2014, Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL) took effect. This law applies to any commercial electronic messages sent to Canadian customers, regardless of whether the sender is in Canada.
If you send commercial emails to Canadians, you must comply with CASL. This includes ensuring that your messages have a valid physical address, a clear and conspicuous explanation of how to avoid receiving future messages, and a way for recipients to opt-out of receiving future messages.
You can find more about CASL on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) website.
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a set of regulations that member states of the European Union must implement to protect digital data privacy. The GDPR applies to any company that processes or intends to process the personal data of individuals in the EU, regardless of whether the company is based inside or outside of the EU.
Under GDPR, companies must obtain explicit consent from individuals before collecting, using, or sharing their data. Companies must also provide individuals with clear and concise information about their rights under GDPR and ensure they can easily exercise their rights.
Failure to comply with GDPR can result in significant fines, including up to 4% of a company’s global annual revenue or €17 million (whichever is greater) and reputational damage.
You can find more information about GDPR on the European Commission’s website.
Why Reactivate Inactive Subscribers with an Email Marketing Campaign?
Like most entrepreneurs, you probably have a love-hate relationship with email marketing. You know it’s one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience, but it can also be a real pain to stay on top of.
Plus, over time, some of your subscribers will inevitably become inactive. Maybe they don’t need your product or service anymore or just got busy and forgot about you.
Whatever the reason, an inactive subscriber list can hurt your bottom line in the long run.
Fortunately, an easy way to reactivate those inactive subscribers is by sending them a targeted email marketing campaign. Reactivating these inactive subscribers can be challenging, but it’s worth it to put in the effort.
After all, these people have already shown an interest in your business by signing up for your email list. They just need a little nudge to get them interested again.
Segment Your List
The first step is to segment your list. This means separating the inactive subscribers from the active ones.
There are a couple of distinct ways you can do this. One is to look at when subscribers last opened one of your emails. If it’s been more than six months, they’re probably inactive.
Another way to segment your list is to look at click-through rates. If somebody hasn’t clicked on a link in one of your emails in six months, they’re probably not interested in what you have to say anymore, so you should consider them as inactive.
Once you’ve segmented your list, it’s time to start crafting your campaign.
Create a Compelling Subject Line
Your subject line is the first—and sometimes only—thing your subscribers will see, so it’s important to make it count.
Keep it short and sweet, and clearly state what’s inside the email. For example, “Reactivate Your Account for 20% Off!” or “We Miss You! Come Back and Get 10% Off.”
Something that offers a discount or incentive is always a good idea, as it gives people a reason to return to your site.
Personalize Your Email Content
Now it’s time to write the actual email content. The best way to reactivate inactive subscribers is by personalizing your content.
This means addressing them by name and tailored content based on their previous interactions with your brand. For example, if someone subscribes to your email list but has never bought anything from you, you may give them a discount on their first purchase.
Or, if someone has been a loyal customer for years but hasn’t interacted with you, you might want to give them an exclusive preview of a new product or service you’re launching soon.
Include A Call-To-Action
Last but definitely not the least, don’t forget to include a call-to-action (CTA). The CTA suggests to your subscribers what you want them to do next—usually, click on a link or buy a product.
Make your CTA clear and concise, and make sure it’s easy for people to follow through on. For example, “Click here to reactivate your account” or “Shop now for 20% off.”
Reactivating inactive subscribers is a great way to get more engagement from your email list.
Sending a targeted email marketing campaign can bring these people back into the fold and continue building relationships with them. So if you’ve got a list of inactive subscribers, don’t delete them!
Results take time
Like anything else worth doing, a reactivation campaign takes time to see results. You might not see an immediate uptick in sales or engagement, but over time, you should start to see your inactive subscribers become more active.
And yes, that’s good for business.
Email Campaign Reporting
One of the remarkable things about email marketing is that you can track and measure your results.
Most email marketing platforms will provide detailed reports on open, click-through, and unsubscribe rates. This data can be extremely helpful in understanding what’s working and what’s not.
And when it comes to reactivating inactive subscribers, it’s important to keep an eye on your results to adjust your strategy as needed.
If you do not see the desired results, don’t be afraid to experiment. Try different subject lines, send emails at different times of day, or offer different incentives. The objective is to find what works best for your business.
Learnings
Email marketing can be a great way to reach out to customers who haven’t interacted with you.
By segmenting your email list and personalizing your content, you can craft targeted email campaigns to get inactive or passive subscribers interested in what you have to say again—and maybe even convince them to buy something from you!
Don’t forget the call to action; without it, all your hard work will be for nothing.
Finally, keep an eye on your results and adjust your strategy as needed. With a little time and effort, you should be able to reactivate those inactive subscribers and get them interested in your brand again.
Are you ready to implement these tips and reactivate your inactive subscribers? Let us know in the comments below!
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