Reengage your subscribers (even if you haven't emailed them for ages): 14 easy-to-execute ideas

You shouldn’t be waiting for coffee shops to reopen to reach out to your leads. Here’s what to do instead

Even if all you’ve been doing with email marketing for lead generation is a “Sign up for our news and updates” subscription form, this is not a reason to give up on your list, especially now that all of our marketing efforts are by necessity online-first.

Here’s why: people who signed up indicated at least some interest in hearing from you — even if you’ve only been reaching out to share “We’re growing” news with them.

Of course, this is not the time to send out one of the top 3 crisis comms hits of this pandemic: “This is how we’re responding to the COVID-19 crisis,” “We’re here for you, whoever you are” or “Hey, buy our stuff.” But with a little planning, you can start building relationships with your list subscribers that’ll last past lockdown.

Some general ideas on how to do that:

• Segment your list (friends, colleagues, current clients, past clients, current leads, general subscribers… you get the idea)

• Find ways to engage each segment based on their interests, stage of awareness, and needs at this time

• Consider upgrading your email newsletter game by making your email newsletter part of your sales strategy: what are some possible lead magnets that’ll attract your ideal customers and help you nurture them until they’re ready to meet up with your sales team — online or in a coffee shop?

• Use your sales team’s intelligence to see what it takes to move your existing leads from “tell me more” to “sign me up” and see if there’s a way to use this information to create a nurturing sequence for your priority leads

As is always the case with generic advice, it’s not always clear how exactly to implement all that.

Read on for some ideas on how to reengage your list subscribers based on how you’ve been interacting with them in the past. We’ll go through 3 common “under-engaged list” scenarios:

1. You’ve been ghosting your list for ages (and have no idea who they are)

2. You’ve been sending out updates all about your company — but have no idea who’s been receiving them

3. You have a mix of “general interest” subscribers and subscribers who’ve downloaded your lead magnet(s) but didn’t convert

Reengaging vs selling: all the reasons to not rush into your pitch

Here’s why we’re going for reengagement instead of asking for demo signups, sales calls, or any other similar asks.

First of all, HubSpot data shows that this is not the right time for sales emails:

Sales teams are sending about 50% more email to prospects than they were pre-COVID, but responses continue to drop. Last week, sales response rates hit an all-time low for 2020 at 2.1%, a lower response rate than Christmas week 2019.

Especially if you haven’t been engaging with your list, a more pressing question at this point is: how do you get back to your subscribers’ inboxes in a way that doesn’t come across as self-serving or insensitive?

Don’t forget: marketing email sends are much higher (20% at the time of writing, but keep watching the HubSpot report) than pre-COVID levels, so you’re competing with a lot of background noise.

More than that, both you and your list subscribers are frustrated, distracted, balancing working from home with childcare, and are generally trying to stay sane and productive in times of stress, layoffs, and social distancing.

Yes, empathy is key.

And part of the challenge is figuring how to be empathetic when you don’t have answers to such questions as:

• Who are these people?

• What are they doing on my list?

• Are they ready to buy?

• What do they want to hear from me?

• What should I tell them to get closer to a sale, assuming this is the right time for it?

This is how you can find this info, and use it to make email marketing work for you.

Scenario 1: you’ve been ghosting your list for ages (and have no idea who they are)

That’s a tough one. First, you haven’t spoken to your list for a long, long time, so they’re not likely to remember you — or why they signed up to be on your list in the first place.

Second, you don’t know who they are — or how to start the conversation.

Lastly, given the timing, it’s going to be extra hard to cut through the noise. In this case, the first step is figuring out who’s on the list and segmenting it, so that you can send out relevant emails and nurture those segments.

Some ideas:

1. Offer a free consultation that you believe is going to be helpful for your list subscribers now

2. Send out free content that you believe is going to be relevant for your list subscribers now (and is not a “Top 10 tips from our team on how to work remotely”)

3. Offer a free webinar (yes, you guessed it — one that’s going to be aligned with your list’s interests)

4. Send out a “Do you (still) want to be on our list?” email.
   In this case you’ll have to convince your list subscribers that it’s worth staying on your list. What will make it worth their time?
   You can also add a request to update preferences for easy sorting into interest groups.

5. Send out a warm-up email + a survey on “How can we help you / What should we write about?”

6. Give away stuff (if you can), run a contest, or find a different way to bring some WFH cheer into the lives of your subscribers (will not work for every brand)

Really Good Emails, as always, has some lovely retention / reactivation emails — check them out if you need some inspiration. I like this one from Unstuck.

Scenario 2: you’ve been sending out updates all about your company — but have no idea who’s been receiving them

Even if you didn’t have a strategy behind your email newsletter beyond sending out news and updates every once in a while, there’s probably *some* data you can use, like:

• Level of engagement of different list subscribers

• Last email opened

• Subscription source (lead magnet vs “Sign up for our newsletter” vs signed up during an event vs invited as a possible lead / past client and decided to sign up)

If your outreach and leadgen were driven by in-person events and in-person outreach, it’s very likely that you’ll be able to figure out who at least some of the people on your list are.

Tag them and think of reengagement strategies that are applicable to those specific groups. Based on different levels of engagement by your “unknown” list subscribers, you can think of different ways to reengage them — or decide to go with one of the “ghosted list” ideas from above.

Some ideas on what to do with your different groups, now that you’ve identified them:

1. Highly engaged: will probably remember you. Very probably. But you still need a hook to stand out in their inbox

2. Unengaged: go back to scenario 1

3. Past clients — you’re already talking to them, right?

4. Event attendees who did not become clients — you won’t be able to meet IRL any time soon, but what about continuing the conversation online?

Scenario 3: you have a mix of “general interest” subscribers and subscribers who’ve downloaded your lead magnet(s) but didn’t convert

1. Leads that you’d normally invite for a nice coffee chat: how can you get them to have a virtual coffee chat with you? Send a card? Send some pizza? A care package?

2. Previously neglected lead magnet downloaders: talk to your sales team, find an angle to get them interested in opening your emails again, and run a nurturing campaign to get to the point when they might be ready for an online coffee chat (or a demo).
   It might seem that translating your sales team’s “this is how our coffee chats go as a rule” insights into an email drip is a waste of time. After all, we’re going to be able to go back to our favorite coffee shops soon-ish.
   I don’t think it’s a waste of time. Instead, I think of this as building stronger foundations for your post-lockdown email marketing.
   Run sequences now, optimize them later, use them for lead magnet nurturing sequences and meet up with your prospects when they’re ready to talk.
   Hot tip: before starting the sequence, run an opt-in email to sort into “interested” and “people just not into it right now.” Tag “people just not into it right now” to exclude them from the drip. Bonus points if you schedule an email to reach out later (with something useful, of course).

3. Alternative approach for lead magnet downloaders, when you’re not quite certain what to say in the drip: reach out and offer a high-value-but-free-no-strings-attached freebie relevant to the offer.
   Use this opportunity to gather more information on the challenges they’re facing right now and create content to drive engagement for the list based on that. You’ll also be able to learn what’s going on with budgets and priorities — is there an opportunity to sell in these uncertain times? If yes, good for you!

4. Signed up for your general newsletter + not identifiable: go back to scenario 1

Yes, in-person meetings and events are one of the most powerful ways to connect with your prospects. But sheltering in place should not stop you from engaging with the people who already gave you their email address and are interested in hearing from you.

Continue building personal relationships with your list online, and make your sales team more efficient by developing automated content that’ll pre-sell your leads on heading over to a meeting — on Zoom or in real life.

I help B2B SaaS startup founders and marketers get more traction with research-driven conversion copy — without slowing down their growth initiatives.

Hire me for:

• Customer research to ramp up your growth

• Website audit to find & fix conversion blockers

• Day rates to optimize your landing pages, web copy, or email sequences for more clicks and signups