You work so hard to gain email subscribers in order to build your business, but nobody initially tells you that once you gain them you have to work just as hard to keep them! Your email list contains the subscribers that will follow everything you say, the ones who open your emails sometimes and then the group that goes dead and rarely or NEVER opens your email campaigns. 

Believe it or not, it's actually better to have a smaller audience who engages than a large audience who hardly ever opens your emails. When it comes to your email subscriber list, quality over quantity is much more important. 

It’s time to get your email back to being the most exciting thing in your audience's inbox. Let's go over how to:

 Re-engage Email Subscribers and Increase your Open and Engagement Rates

1. Make emails relevant. 

It’s no secret that people love talking about themselves. As this may be true for you too, you must prioritize what your audience values over all else. Your audience follows along with you most likely because they have received VALUE from you at some point in your relationship! They might learn from your experience or knowledge, relate to your daily life, receive resources or services from you or maybe just enjoy coming along for the ride. 

Whatever the reason that brought your audience to you, make sure you work just as hard to keep them following you. The easiest way to see what is working is to watch your engagement. Both in your weekly emails and social media. Monthly review which emails received the most opens and clicks or which social media posts gained the most comments, and do more of that! By continuing to create relevant emails, your subscribers will be sure to stick around. 

2. Determine which subscribers are inactive. 

Depending on which email service provider (ESP) you use, you can narrow it down to who is opening up your emails and who isn’t. The group that has stopped engaging with your emails, do they have something in common? Are you shocked to see who has stopped opening? 

Finding out who exactly has stopped engaging with your emails will make your life so much easier when it comes to targeting that specific audience to encourage them to start opening your emails again. 

3. Series of engagement emails to inactive subscribers. 

Once you’ve declared who is guilty in not opening up your emails, you can target that audience directly. Show your inactive subscribers that you are here for them. Do this by getting your point across in more than one email. Again instead of talking about yourself or being too salesy, offer them a freebie or a discount to really show them that you are here to provide them with a service. 

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Make these emails as personalized as you can to turn your inactives to active subscribers. You won’t be able to turn all of your inactives to active, and that’s okay. Remember not everyone is meant for you.  Get inspired with re-engagement campaign emails here.

4. Don’t bombard email subscribers.

With the average person getting way too many emails a day, it can be exhausting to constantly be checking your inbox.

When you are sending an email, think to yourself how often you need to hear from one person? By sending emails multiple times a week, the content can become overwhelming. This can lead to even more of your audience becoming inactive. So please, do not do this. Shoot for maybe once a week or once every other week. 

Let your subscribers know that you are there but aren’t being over the top. 

5. Create catchy subject lines. 

Subject lines are the first part of your email that your audience sees. Make it stand out. Make the reader want to click to read more. This tip is just that simple. Be creative here! 

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After implementing engagement tactics, your open and engagement rates should increase. Sometimes it takes some housekeeping and hard work, but your business will thank you in the long run. 

Email marketing is a tricky game, on average a person receives around 120 emails in a day according to Campaign Monitor. It’s up  to you to figure out what it is that makes your audience choose to click on yours and open it. 

Neil Patel, is always sharing great tips to be a more successful digital marketer, check out his article about re-engaging subscribers, here. Re-engagement is one of the hardest things about email marketing, be sure to find resources that help you re-engage your email subscribers and increase your open and engagement rates.