Reactivation: A Blue pill for your product's audience?

Reactivation

In any client base, contacts gradually turn into “dormant” and even “dead” leads over time. Reactivation aims to bring back to the conversation those with whom contact has been lost. It helps generate leads from your existing base and avoids wasting time on those who can no longer be recovered.

If your goal is to create an infinite customer lifecycle or re-engage 100% of your database, this article is not for you—we don’t have magic. However, we will explain the mechanics that can help bring a “dormant” user back into the dialogue.

What is Reactivation?

Reactivation in email marketing is a process where a company sends messages to inactive clients. These are individuals who have not opened emails for a long time, have not clicked on links, or have stopped using the company's services.

The goal of reactivation is to bring subscribers back to activity. They start performing targeted actions again, either within emails or on the website. Another goal of reactivation is to clean up the database of inactive users, so as not to waste resources on them.

To better understand the goals of reactivation, it’s essential to define what “dead” and “dormant” contacts mean.

- Dead: These are people who subscribed but never opened any emails or have stopped using their inbox.

- Dormant: These are subscribers who engaged with emails and campaigns for the first 2-3 months after subscribing, but then stopped.

Reactivation messages are almost always triggered—they are sent in response to a specific action or inactivity of the user. For example, when someone hasn’t been active for 3-9 months. The exact period varies for each company and depends on the product category and email frequency.

3 Reasons to Reactivate Subscribers

1. Increase company revenue

Building long-term relationships with a new client is 16 times more expensive than bringing back old ones. Re-engaging just 5% of “dormant” clients increases profits by 25-95%.

New clients need to be attracted with bonuses and nudged towards making a purchase. You also need to collect information about them for personalized offers. This takes time and money, and the likelihood of a sale is only 5-20%. In contrast, the likelihood of selling to an existing client is 60-70%, and their average check is 33% higher than new clients’. You can encourage existing clients to buy again not with discounts, but with care, for example, by offering them a selection of related products.

2. Save on marketing budget

Reactivation allows you to clean up your database by removing inactive subscribers. This is cost-effective since the price of marketing automation platforms, CRM, or CDP systems depends on the number of clients in the database. Paying for inactive clients is not beneficial.

3. Improve company reputation with email services

The company’s reputation depends on the open rates of emails. The higher it is, the better the ranking. If clients don’t open emails, the reputation declines. A low reputation increases the risk of being blacklisted as a spam domain, meaning emails won’t be delivered even to those clients who previously read them.

Services like postmasters, offered by email providers, help monitor the reputation of a domain and IP address. They track email delivery and spam complaints.

How to Understand When Your Database Needs Reactivation

Reactivation should begin when clients stop performing targeted actions for a certain period of time. This could include making a purchase, visiting the website, logging into their account, or reading newsletters.

The time to start reactivation varies between seven days and a year. Companies set these indicators based on their purchase frequency and business model.

Some business models don’t expect customer returns. For example, a payment solution provider might not expect a buyer to come back for a new purchase within a month or even a year.

Which Clients Should Not Be Reactivated

In reality, almost any client can be reactivated. Even if someone has deleted their email account or unsubscribed, they can be "recaptured" with a personalized message. The question is whether it's worth investing the resources.

However, there are some clients that are harder to reactivate:

1. Those who have clearly stated they are not interested in receiving emails or using the brand’s services. In the B2C segment, these users should be removed from the database. In B2B, it’s worth clarifying what they didn’t like. Perhaps the person didn’t understand the complex product. By offering help, they may return.

The client may find the product lacking in features or struggle with the interface. Address the problem based on the client's needs: Do they really need the feature? What usage scenarios are relevant? How will the effect be measured? What are their expectations? Often, the needed task can be solved another way, and interface inconveniences can be worked around. If feature changes are critical, add them to the product roadmap.

2. Those who have “outgrown” the brand’s offerings. For example, a centralized exchange (CEX) aimed at beginners for fund storage might lose customers once they become familiar with DeFi and start using crypto wallets, causing them to leave.

How to Reactivate Your Database: A Step-by-Step Guide

Data Collection and Exit Reason Analysis

Before segmentation begins, you need to gather all customer data in one place and define the reactivation goals. This will help properly segment your database.

Understand Why Subscribers “Went Dormant”

Here are the most common reasons:

1. Too many emails. Customers’ inboxes often contain hundreds of emails from various brands, and yours can get lost in the flood.

2. Irrelevant content. Your emails may no longer align with the subscriber’s interests. Or, they may be too focused on sales and lack useful content. For instance, a customer may have subscribed for discount news but is only receiving promotional offers without valuable information.

3. Display issues. Emails might not display correctly on mobile devices or could be landing in the spam folder. For example, emails with many images may not load on mobile devices, or your domain might have been blacklisted.

Database Segmentation

Segmentation can be based on your reactivation goals. These goals may include:

- Increasing sales from current users;

- Improving email open rates;

- Growing newsletter subscriptions;

- Increasing CTR for retargeting ads (Twitter, Telegram, etc.).

- Increasing Linkedin open rates (for B2B)

Each goal requires motivating clients towards a specific action. For sales, it might mean signing a lead, while for website conversion, it’s a click on a link from an email.

Start by determining the goal and the desired action from the user, then proceed with segmentation. Select clients from the database who have not performed the desired action for a while.

Here are a few examples of segmentation depending on the goal:

- To improve email open rates, segment clients who haven’t opened emails for longer than most. Whether they made purchases or not is irrelevant. The criterion could be "hasn’t opened a newsletter for more than N days."

- To increase sales, focus on clients who haven’t purchased for a long time. They may be reading emails, visiting the site, or even adding items to their cart. The criterion could be "hasn’t made a purchase in over N days."

Use RFM analysis (Recency, Frequency, Monetary value) for segmentation based on purchase history, considering the time since their last order, purchase frequency, and total order value.

Sometimes, reactivation goals can be targeted, such as regaining high-value clients with above-average check sizes. This is crucial for a company’s revenue. From the general “no purchase” segment, highlight those with higher-than-average check sizes.

Conduct this analysis regularly to timely activate subscribers and clean inactive addresses from the database. This will keep your database relevant and effective.

Reactivation Strategy

A reactivation strategy is your approach to revitalizing your database. There are two main methods:

1. Temporarily excluding inactive clients from email lists. This method prevents spam and avoids overwhelming clients. By sending only relevant offers no more than once a month, the chances of them reading your emails increase.

2. Reactivation email campaigns. The primary goal is to regain the client’s attention. It's crucial to understand why they lost interest, make assumptions, and test these through various email campaigns:

- NPS survey. According to SAS, most clients leave after several bad service experiences. Asking customers about their dissatisfaction through an NPS survey can help improve your service and products. The survey can offer multiple choice answers or an option to leave comments. Incentives participation with a gift or discount.

- Discount or promo code. If you suspect clients leave due to high prices, you can test this by sending a discount or promo code. If they return, the hypothesis is confirmed. The email can feature increasing discounts until a purchase is made.

- Product recommendations. Periodic emails offering suggestions on what else to buy can stimulate sales. For example, to a cohort of NFT users, you could suggest similar collections they've previously viewed. The email could include related items, popular products among other customers, or items similar to those the customer has bought or viewed.

- Long-term relationships with clients. For companies selling expensive or complex products, building long-term communication with clients is key. A single reactivation email may not be enough in this case.

Setting Up Mechanisms

Once you’ve selected triggers and mapped out the email sequence, it’s time to focus on the content of each email. Although the details of the messages will differ, here are some key rules for reactivation campaigns:

- Conciseness: Long emails can reinforce a subscriber’s disinterest. Aim for brevity and clear structure. Place important information in the first part of the email (above the fold).

- Emotional Appeal: "Sleeping" subscribers might have forgotten about you or become skeptical of your emails. To overcome this, your emails need to evoke emotion through unconventional design or interactivity. They should stand out and be more engaging than previous communications since this may be your last chance to capture their attention.

- Personalization: Addressing subscribers by name increases the likelihood of the email being opened. Statistics show that personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened than non-personalized ones. For deeper personalization, consider their behavior in previous email campaigns or on your site, and craft emails accordingly.

- Focus on Subject Line and Preheader: The subject line and preheader need to encourage the recipient to open the email. This is especially important in reactivation campaigns.

Reactivation Mechanics

In Email Campaigns

Email remains the most popular channel for reactivation. It’s cost-effective but doesn’t always reach every customer. For example, a crypto wallet increased transactions by 7% with a trigger email campaign . Users who had intended to make transactions but didn’t complete them received an automated email after three hours, encouraging them to return to the site and finish their purchase by reminding them that their selected items were still in the cart and could sell out soon.

On Websites

One case study reported the following results for a lead bot implementation:

- 8% conversion rate from conversation start to contact,

- 26 consultation requests,

- 1 sale,

- $5,000 revenue.

In Telegram

Compared to email, the use of messengers for business communication is growing rapidly. According to a Databox study, 63% of companies have reduced email campaigns in favor of messengers . This is easy to understand—people use messengers more frequently for personal interactions and tend to open messages more readily in this channel. Mediascope reports that by March 2023, Telegram had become the fifth most popular internet resource in Russia , with over 40% of the population using it daily and more than 60% at least once a month.

One case study shows that:

- Registrations on the platform increased by 140%,

- 70 new leads were obtained through a chatbot,

- The cost per lead was $80,

- A "evergreen" funnel was automated.

In Apps

Push notifications are another effective tool for reactivation . A 2021 report by Airships showed that 81% of Android users and 51% of iOS users are willing to receive such notifications. With open rates reaching 90%, push notifications can attract highly engaged users. Their main goal is to inform subscribers about useful content, updates, services, and promotions. Pushes help establish contact with new subscribers and maintain the interest of existing ones, boosting site or app visits.

An example of a bad reactivation push is one from a crypto exchange reminding users of a missed trade, which failed to engage. Another tool to draw attention to your mobile app is changing the app icon or widget.

How to Motivate Customers to Return

- Offer a New Format: If subscribers are tired of promotional emails, try a survey to learn what formats they prefer.

- Suggest a Different Communication Channel: Some customers may prefer to follow updates on social media. Ask about this in your survey.

- Include a Survey: A bright, engaging survey in your email can grab attention and gather subscriber preferences.

- Test Gamification: Games like quizzes or picking a discount card can increase engagement.

- Send an Email from a Team Member: A personal letter from the CEO, written in a friendly tone, can strengthen the connection with subscribers. A great example is SuperHuman’s emails, where the CEO narrates the content personally.

- Make a Special Offer: Surprise dormant customers with a special offer, such as an increased discount.

- Change Email Format: Let customers know about positive changes, like switching from promotional content to valuable material.

- Send a Farewell Email: As a final step, offer the subscriber the chance to unsubscribe, explaining how it benefits both parties.

- Invite Them to an Event: This is a great way to maintain relationships with those who are interested in your product.

If you need advice on lead generation for your site, feel free to contact our experts. They’ll offer a free audit of your lead generation funnel, show you where leads are lost, and suggest improvements.

How to Evaluate the Effectiveness of a Reactivation Strategy

To assess the strategy's effectiveness, run A/B tests. They will help you choose the best message content and determine the optimal discount size to win back customers.

Start by testing on a control group of “dormant” subscribers before launching the full campaign.

The Importance of Timing

Experiment to find the perfect time to send messages to your audience. Use split testing by dividing your test group into segments and sending identical emails at different times. Analyze the results—open rates and click-throughs—to identify the most active hours for your audience. This will increase the chances of success for your reactivation campaign.

Once you've developed and tested your reactivation strategy, set it on “autopilot.” Regular, automated reactivation will help maintain a high level of engagement in your subscriber base.

How to Retain Subscribers

To effectively retain subscribers, it's important to keep working on increasing their interest. Here are some tips to help reduce subscriber churn:

1. Welcome Series of Emails

One welcome email isn’t enough. Create a series of emails to strengthen engagement with new customers when their interest is at its peak.

2. Provide Value

Regularly analyze customer needs. Study their problems and challenges, offering solutions and information that will be useful to them.

3. Pay Attention to Statistics

Track key metrics: spam complaints, unsubscribe rates, and subscriber activity. This will allow you to respond promptly to changes and prevent subscriber loss.

Where to Start with Customer Reactivation

1. Consolidate all customer data in one place

This will help you avoid sending redundant messages to customers who are already active in other sales channels.

2. Segment your customers for reactivation

Use RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary) analysis to identify the right segment for your reactivation efforts.

3. Select the best reactivation method for the chosen segment

Base your approach on the reasons why customers became inactive in the first place.