Wake up your email base after the crisis
Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2024 7:05 am
As we discussed during our 4th Actito Workout hosted with Octelio, the number of inactive email subscribers is often significant. Sometimes half of the members of an email base may not have opened or clicked on your emails for more than six months. This inactivity may have increased even more during the period of confinement and pause in your activities. Deliverability problems, decrease in your sales performance, impact on your business... inactive people can quickly be harmful. But let's remember that recruiting a new address costs more than reactivating an existing address! Discover the secrets of successful reactivation!
Wake up your email base after the crisis
From Customer Relationship Management to Customer Care Management
The covid 19 health crisis required us to adapt . Many players had to list of bahamas whatsapp phone numbers stop their activity: Retail closed its stores, Travel saw airports close... As a result, email communication plans were reduced or even stopped .
Marketers have notably reviewed their communications to adopt a new approach that places emphasis on more contextualized content and focuses on relationships, “customer care management”.
At the beginning of the lockdown, nearly 80% of the communications sent concerned "usual" content and 20% of the content was "lockdown/covid" oriented. Very quickly this trend was reversed, and the content sent largely focused on themes related to the "lockdown/covid" news.
Promotional emails, which used to account for nearly 75% of regular communications, have gradually given way to relational emails. As of March 17, these transaction-related emails accounted for only 35% of all emails received.
3 phases of communication were thus observed. The first consisted of informing and reassuring customers about whether or not activities would continue, and under what new conditions: health measures, deferred deliveries, new click and collect systems, etc. The second sought to maintain customer relations by offering more editorial content, support on various everyday topics. We have thus seen the proliferation of cooking classes, sports classes, Do It Yourself workshops, good advice for keeping your children busy at home, etc. Finally, the third phase put the spotlight on support/solidarity initiatives : for caregivers, frontline staff, etc.
From classic Customer Relationship Management, marketers have moved to Customer Care Management to take care of their customers and put meaning back at the heart of the relationship.
From Customer Relationship Management to Customer Care Management
ISPs even more vigilant
ISPs even more vigilant
During the lockdown, we witnessed the unexpected and exponential increase in full-base campaigns. This resulted in saturating servers and networks. ISPs therefore had to manage both this peak in traffic and the increase in the number of their users .
This was the case, for example, with homeschooling. Some teachers and students had to create addresses on French ISPs in order to communicate.
This sudden growth has increased the vigilance of ISP managers regarding compliance with best practices (particularly when resuming activity). Marketers must ensure:
control the volume of their shipments
gradually increase their volume
avoid spamwords
limit the risk of complaints
To prioritize gradual reactivation, first target your assets.
What is the (re)activity of your base?
An inactive is a contact who receives your emails but no longer has click behavior on your communications.
4 key figures (Source SNCD 2019) on e-mail activity:
78% of your subscribers have at least two email addresses
88% check their inbox at least once a day
5 seconds: that’s the average time it takes to read an email. It’s extremely short!
¼ of subscribers who are not interested in your newsletters do not unsubscribe.
These reasons explain the significant number of inactive people that may be present in your databases.
You would think that the larger the email database, the better. This is completely wrong! It is better to favor a smaller but better quality database, with truly engaged contacts.
What is the (re)activity of your base?
The impacts of an inactive database on your deliverability
The impacts of an inactive database on your deliverability
Sending your campaigns to inactive people is not without consequences for your deliverability. The most rigorous ISPs penalize this practice and block your sendings. For example , Gmail or Hotmail base their filter on the behavior of their users and their reactivity.
The more your emails are opened, clicked, and responded to, the better your reputation will be. On the other hand, if they are never opened (or deleted without opening), this will send a signal that your messages do not seem to interest your recipients. If you do not set aside your inactive ones, you risk sending your messages to email addresses that no longer exist or are not valid (hard bounces).
In your assets can hide spamtraps. These are trap addresses created by webmails. Webmails use them to detect senders with a lot of inactives.
There is therefore every interest in:
- target your most active customers
- and send them relevant messages , in line with their expectations to ensure that they continue to arrive in their inbox.
When you reactivate your inactives, do it gradually to dilute the risks. For example, if you send a campaign to inactives, send a campaign to your actives at the same time. We recommend a percentage of 5% inactives for 95% actives. The webmail will thus be less aware of your strategy for contacting inactives. You can also dedicate an IP (and a sending domain) for these risky communications in order to preserve the reputation of your usual marketing mailings.
To find out all about our best Deliverability tips, take a look at our dedicated ebook!
The impacts of an inactive base on your business performance
If you send non-targeted mailings to your assets, you will notice:
A significant decrease in your open rates and click-through rates
A significant drop in qualified traffic to your site
Which will have consequences on the deterioration of your commercial indicators and your ROI (drop in potential revenue, etc.)
It is therefore essential to re-engage your inactive people through specific strategies.
All the more so when we know that the conversion rate of an inactive person is up to 10 times higher than that of a prospect. Why? Because an inactive person is a contact who has had relations with your brand, who already knows you and who has been interested in your products.
What is the ideal duration to set the inactivity threshold?
3 months? 6 months? 1 year?
There are no hard and fast rules or general answers to this question. It depends on your industry and marketing strategy.
A Travel player who has longer sales times will have higher inactivity thresholds for example (more around 8-12 months).
On the other hand, an e-retailer who sends emails daily will have shorter inactivity thresholds (3-4 months).
Inactivity thresholds also depend on ISPs. Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail have stricter rules and require setting much lower inactivity thresholds.
The impacts of an inactive base on your business performance
Why is your base inactive?
There are several reasons why your database may be inactive. We have listed some of them below. Note that the health crisis has also had an impact on inactivity. Stopping sending your newsletters may have naturally created inactivity in your database. The challenge will then be to identify your inactive members to better reactivate them.
The contentThe Background Content
The content
that you send is no longer attractive to your target
the needs of your subscribersthe needs of your subscribers Background
the needs of your subscribers
have changed. This questioning may be all the more valid in the aftermath of May 11, when consumer habits have changed.
The sending rateBackground sending rate
The sending rate
does not meet your subscribers' expectations
The email addressEmail address Background
The email address
of your subscribers is not/no longer valid
spam alert!spam alert! Background
spam alert!
your emails are considered spam
Identify your inactive employees, requalify your base
Identifying your inactive people will allow you to carry out the appropriate targeting. Identify your inactive people according to several criteria:
Are there any predominant sources of recruitment among your inactive workers ?
Distinguish your customers from your prospects
Do they have a particular seniority ? For example, is there a median number of days before inactivity?
Has there been a change in responsiveness to your communications?
What is their purchase history ? Do they have any loyalty program behavior ?
Do they have a specific navigation on your website?
Asking yourself these questions will help you draw up a typology of your inactive people.
Also, don't hesitate to clean your inactive database. There are several treatments available to continually update your data:
Estocade treatment : detection and elimination of NPAI (moved)
Charade processing : search for new addresses of those who move (customer file only)
The RNVP: restructuring, standardization, postal validation
Curative treatment on e-mails: allows you to clean your database by checking the syntax, domain name, user name, spamtraps, disposable e-mails, full boxes, etc.
Preventative treatment : real-time email monitoring
These treatments are all the more relevant following the health crisis which has led to natural inactivity .
Once this step is done, requalify your contacts. This is why you can do data appending (to cross-reference your inactive database with megabases of service providers). This will allow you to identify in your inactive those who have activity elsewhere (with other advertisers, on other databases) and requalify them with another email address (or SMS or other data) for example.
Identify your inactive employees, requalify your base
Adapt your reactivation strategies according to your segments
Adapt your reactivation strategies according to your segments
Depending on the inactive segments you are going to create, you will adopt different strategies. In your email database, distinguish between openers and non-openers.
Among the openers, separate buyers from non-buyers. When they are non-buyers, identify those who click/navigate from the others.
If there are clicks and browsing without a purchase, you may have conversion issues with your landing pages , which you could optimize. If you don’t have clicks, it may be the content of your emails that is no longer as interesting to your subscribers.
Among the non-openers, distinguish the inactive from the active.
If your non-openers are active on other channels, this may mean that the email channel is not their preference. Then review your communications on other channels. If your non-openers browse your site, you can set up a reactivation trigger "following your visit..." which will have every chance of performing. On all your inactive non-openers, it will be a question of implementing a wake-up strategy.
In wake-up strategies , timing plays a key role: identify the right moments in advance to act according to the key stages of the customer lifecycle. Shake up traditional methods and be creative : dare to use punchy, offbeat emails, direct and personal subjects, a challenging tone, verbs and expressions related to attachment: "where are you?"; "we're looking for you everywhere..."
Wake up your email base after the crisis
From Customer Relationship Management to Customer Care Management
The covid 19 health crisis required us to adapt . Many players had to list of bahamas whatsapp phone numbers stop their activity: Retail closed its stores, Travel saw airports close... As a result, email communication plans were reduced or even stopped .
Marketers have notably reviewed their communications to adopt a new approach that places emphasis on more contextualized content and focuses on relationships, “customer care management”.
At the beginning of the lockdown, nearly 80% of the communications sent concerned "usual" content and 20% of the content was "lockdown/covid" oriented. Very quickly this trend was reversed, and the content sent largely focused on themes related to the "lockdown/covid" news.
Promotional emails, which used to account for nearly 75% of regular communications, have gradually given way to relational emails. As of March 17, these transaction-related emails accounted for only 35% of all emails received.
3 phases of communication were thus observed. The first consisted of informing and reassuring customers about whether or not activities would continue, and under what new conditions: health measures, deferred deliveries, new click and collect systems, etc. The second sought to maintain customer relations by offering more editorial content, support on various everyday topics. We have thus seen the proliferation of cooking classes, sports classes, Do It Yourself workshops, good advice for keeping your children busy at home, etc. Finally, the third phase put the spotlight on support/solidarity initiatives : for caregivers, frontline staff, etc.
From classic Customer Relationship Management, marketers have moved to Customer Care Management to take care of their customers and put meaning back at the heart of the relationship.
From Customer Relationship Management to Customer Care Management
ISPs even more vigilant
ISPs even more vigilant
During the lockdown, we witnessed the unexpected and exponential increase in full-base campaigns. This resulted in saturating servers and networks. ISPs therefore had to manage both this peak in traffic and the increase in the number of their users .
This was the case, for example, with homeschooling. Some teachers and students had to create addresses on French ISPs in order to communicate.
This sudden growth has increased the vigilance of ISP managers regarding compliance with best practices (particularly when resuming activity). Marketers must ensure:
control the volume of their shipments
gradually increase their volume
avoid spamwords
limit the risk of complaints
To prioritize gradual reactivation, first target your assets.
What is the (re)activity of your base?
An inactive is a contact who receives your emails but no longer has click behavior on your communications.
4 key figures (Source SNCD 2019) on e-mail activity:
78% of your subscribers have at least two email addresses
88% check their inbox at least once a day
5 seconds: that’s the average time it takes to read an email. It’s extremely short!
¼ of subscribers who are not interested in your newsletters do not unsubscribe.
These reasons explain the significant number of inactive people that may be present in your databases.
You would think that the larger the email database, the better. This is completely wrong! It is better to favor a smaller but better quality database, with truly engaged contacts.
What is the (re)activity of your base?
The impacts of an inactive database on your deliverability
The impacts of an inactive database on your deliverability
Sending your campaigns to inactive people is not without consequences for your deliverability. The most rigorous ISPs penalize this practice and block your sendings. For example , Gmail or Hotmail base their filter on the behavior of their users and their reactivity.
The more your emails are opened, clicked, and responded to, the better your reputation will be. On the other hand, if they are never opened (or deleted without opening), this will send a signal that your messages do not seem to interest your recipients. If you do not set aside your inactive ones, you risk sending your messages to email addresses that no longer exist or are not valid (hard bounces).
In your assets can hide spamtraps. These are trap addresses created by webmails. Webmails use them to detect senders with a lot of inactives.
There is therefore every interest in:
- target your most active customers
- and send them relevant messages , in line with their expectations to ensure that they continue to arrive in their inbox.
When you reactivate your inactives, do it gradually to dilute the risks. For example, if you send a campaign to inactives, send a campaign to your actives at the same time. We recommend a percentage of 5% inactives for 95% actives. The webmail will thus be less aware of your strategy for contacting inactives. You can also dedicate an IP (and a sending domain) for these risky communications in order to preserve the reputation of your usual marketing mailings.
To find out all about our best Deliverability tips, take a look at our dedicated ebook!
The impacts of an inactive base on your business performance
If you send non-targeted mailings to your assets, you will notice:
A significant decrease in your open rates and click-through rates
A significant drop in qualified traffic to your site
Which will have consequences on the deterioration of your commercial indicators and your ROI (drop in potential revenue, etc.)
It is therefore essential to re-engage your inactive people through specific strategies.
All the more so when we know that the conversion rate of an inactive person is up to 10 times higher than that of a prospect. Why? Because an inactive person is a contact who has had relations with your brand, who already knows you and who has been interested in your products.
What is the ideal duration to set the inactivity threshold?
3 months? 6 months? 1 year?
There are no hard and fast rules or general answers to this question. It depends on your industry and marketing strategy.
A Travel player who has longer sales times will have higher inactivity thresholds for example (more around 8-12 months).
On the other hand, an e-retailer who sends emails daily will have shorter inactivity thresholds (3-4 months).
Inactivity thresholds also depend on ISPs. Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail have stricter rules and require setting much lower inactivity thresholds.
The impacts of an inactive base on your business performance
Why is your base inactive?
There are several reasons why your database may be inactive. We have listed some of them below. Note that the health crisis has also had an impact on inactivity. Stopping sending your newsletters may have naturally created inactivity in your database. The challenge will then be to identify your inactive members to better reactivate them.
The contentThe Background Content
The content
that you send is no longer attractive to your target
the needs of your subscribersthe needs of your subscribers Background
the needs of your subscribers
have changed. This questioning may be all the more valid in the aftermath of May 11, when consumer habits have changed.
The sending rateBackground sending rate
The sending rate
does not meet your subscribers' expectations
The email addressEmail address Background
The email address
of your subscribers is not/no longer valid
spam alert!spam alert! Background
spam alert!
your emails are considered spam
Identify your inactive employees, requalify your base
Identifying your inactive people will allow you to carry out the appropriate targeting. Identify your inactive people according to several criteria:
Are there any predominant sources of recruitment among your inactive workers ?
Distinguish your customers from your prospects
Do they have a particular seniority ? For example, is there a median number of days before inactivity?
Has there been a change in responsiveness to your communications?
What is their purchase history ? Do they have any loyalty program behavior ?
Do they have a specific navigation on your website?
Asking yourself these questions will help you draw up a typology of your inactive people.
Also, don't hesitate to clean your inactive database. There are several treatments available to continually update your data:
Estocade treatment : detection and elimination of NPAI (moved)
Charade processing : search for new addresses of those who move (customer file only)
The RNVP: restructuring, standardization, postal validation
Curative treatment on e-mails: allows you to clean your database by checking the syntax, domain name, user name, spamtraps, disposable e-mails, full boxes, etc.
Preventative treatment : real-time email monitoring
These treatments are all the more relevant following the health crisis which has led to natural inactivity .
Once this step is done, requalify your contacts. This is why you can do data appending (to cross-reference your inactive database with megabases of service providers). This will allow you to identify in your inactive those who have activity elsewhere (with other advertisers, on other databases) and requalify them with another email address (or SMS or other data) for example.
Identify your inactive employees, requalify your base
Adapt your reactivation strategies according to your segments
Adapt your reactivation strategies according to your segments
Depending on the inactive segments you are going to create, you will adopt different strategies. In your email database, distinguish between openers and non-openers.
Among the openers, separate buyers from non-buyers. When they are non-buyers, identify those who click/navigate from the others.
If there are clicks and browsing without a purchase, you may have conversion issues with your landing pages , which you could optimize. If you don’t have clicks, it may be the content of your emails that is no longer as interesting to your subscribers.
Among the non-openers, distinguish the inactive from the active.
If your non-openers are active on other channels, this may mean that the email channel is not their preference. Then review your communications on other channels. If your non-openers browse your site, you can set up a reactivation trigger "following your visit..." which will have every chance of performing. On all your inactive non-openers, it will be a question of implementing a wake-up strategy.
In wake-up strategies , timing plays a key role: identify the right moments in advance to act according to the key stages of the customer lifecycle. Shake up traditional methods and be creative : dare to use punchy, offbeat emails, direct and personal subjects, a challenging tone, verbs and expressions related to attachment: "where are you?"; "we're looking for you everywhere..."