Time to say goodbye? How to manage your inactive recipients.

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Breaking up is not an easy thing. And often we find it difficult to be the one to make the first move. But sometimes, doing so is not only preferable but also profitable. Are you still not sure what to do with your inactive recipients? Read on and you will be able to decide.

Out of your entire mailing list, there is a good chance that a significant number of recipients are among those who simply no longer open your emails. They prefer to send them directly to spam, mark them as junk, delete them immediately or simply not open them if the content does not interest them. But be careful, just because one of your recipients has not unsubscribed, even though you know that they no longer read your emails, does not mean that you are not entitled to do so!

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Why shouldn't you keep a mailing list that includes inactive recipients?
A huge mailing list, most of whose contacts are inactive, will not bring you anything good, quite the contrary. It is not that in reality quality takes precedence over quantity, it is rather that in this area, quantity can deceive you greece telegram phone number list Even if you have a mailing list of 100,000 contacts, if only 10,000 of them open your emails during a specific period, your content will only reach 10,000 people; this will therefore be your real mailing list and this is the precise number of recipients who receive your messages.

On the side of that, if there are actually recipients who send you straight to spam, it can alter the deliverability rate of your emails and start automatically classifying you as a spammer for other recipients as well. You certainly don't want that to happen?

Finally, keep in mind that a huge list of recipients, most of whom are inactive, can sabotage the reliability of your statistics. To be able to get real data on the emails you send, those that work, those that don't, as well as other meaningful data, you need a mailing list that reflects real numbers. If your open rate is low and you don't understand why, there is a good chance that the cause lies in your mailing list.

Last month ActiveTrail started a recipient filtering operation that increased the opening rate of the emails we send you from 25% to 40-50%! Would you like to know how we did it?

We have gathered for you the best and most effective methods for managing inactive recipients:

A campaign of deregistration – gradual separation
Create a dynamic group of recipients who have not opened your campaigns during the past year/semester/quarter. You will send an email to this group, an automatic campaign sent to all those who are on this list (i.e. those who do not open your emails during the designated period), you will then be able to review the status of these inactive recipients.

What will this campaign consist of? You have all sorts of possibilities:

A feedback email and preference management

One of the options you have is to send a preference management campaign. The subject line of the email should be very catchy, intriguing and personal, so that recipients, who are not used to opening your emails, decide to do so this time. A line that could look like this: “Nicolas, what type of content would you like to receive?”

In the email itself, you can run a survey, using our dedicated survey software , that will ask the recipient about the reasons that lead them not to open your emails and thus, get feedback on their content. Alternatively, if you post on multiple topics and have different mailing lists to which you direct them, the email could direct to a preferences management page through which your recipients would check the topics about which they would like to receive your emails.

A special discount

If you run an online store, you can offer a special discount to your recipients to encourage them to continue receiving your emails. The subject line of the email should be personal and clear, so your email will receive the special attention you expect from it, so you should write something like: "Stephanie, it seems like we haven't communicated for a while. We would like to give you a gift" and attach a discount coupon to the email.

If you manage to “save” a few recipients through this campaign, there will be no doubt that your work has paid off. However, you understand that you probably can’t continue to involve recipients who didn’t even bother to look at your unsubscribe campaign. So it’s time to leave them behind. Once you’ve figured out why up front, you won’t find it so upsetting to tighten up your mailing list given how little consideration these recipients have had for your work. So don’t be shy about removing these inactive recipients.

Separation is painful, but effective
Sometimes all that's left is to cut the link, the bridges, in short, say goodbye. If you don't want to get into the business of managing dynamic groups and segmented mailing lists, this seems to be the best solution for you. If you have a significant number of recipients who have never opened your emails, or who haven't opened them for the year, semester or quarter (depending on what you've determined), it seems that it's really time to say goodbye and finally focus your efforts on new recipients.

Dynamic separation
It’s so good that there are smart and dynamic solutions that facilitate good and effective emailing. Do you remember the dynamic group created for the unsubscribe campaign? A dynamic group of recipients who have not opened your emails during the past semester?

All you have to do is create a list of recipients who have opened your emails in the last six months and keep sending them! This way, your emails are targeted precisely to those who open them and are interested in you, at least once every six months. The group is dynamic because it only keeps the recipients who continue to open your emails and moves the others to the second group (the one of those who do not open them).

If you have set up a special unsubscribe campaign like in the first option, and some recipients opened the message (and didn't unsubscribe), create a rule that puts them in the group of those who opened emails in the last six months, and then keep sending them emails. Isn't that cool? We think so too, and that's the option we chose, so our recipients will be happy and won't receive emails they're not interested in.

After you've chosen the best solution for managing your inactive recipients, there are a whole bunch of other things you can do to improve the quality of your mailing list:

Dive into autoresponders and automated dashboards Using autoresponders, you design a series of emails for new subscribers. If this series is well designed, your content and videos will appear in it and this will give your new subscribers a good opportunity to get to know you. Through the new automation system that ActiveTrail, you will be able to create an automated marketing dashboard that will act according to the behavior of your recipients. For example, a customer who does not open your email, will receive a text message, or perhaps a different email, that you have designed for those who did not want to open the email. The autoresponder gives you a great opportunity to turn your subscribers into raving fans, so do not ignore this feature.
If you don't want to permanently deprive your inactive recipients of your emails, consider lowering the sending frequency. Create a dynamic group with emails at different intervals; for example, for a group of recipients who have not opened your emails during the last six months, you will continue to send them emails, but only 50% less than for the other recipients.
Invest in pop-ups and sign-up forms . Review how you collect leads, make sure you write emails that are on topics you need to cover, and also, when your recipients sign up for your mailing list, they know what they are going to get from you.
And there you have it, we hope we have helped you in managing the inevitable “goodbyes” and remember that every parting is a new beginning. Cleaning and organizing your mailing list are great ways to improve the way you use emails, improve your open rate, deliverability and in short – be an email pro.

Want to know how to create a winning email marketing campaign? Here are the steps to creating a successful newsletter.