The modern-day inbox is a battle ground! Email marketers and CRM managers face an ever-growing challenge keeping customers engaged and interested in opening their emails.

 
Here’s some tips on how you can boost the effectiveness of your re-engagement email campaigns to cut through the noise and win back your audience.
 
Over the past few years, brands have intensified their digital marketing efforts, making it crucial to maintain a strong digital presence. Email marketing has seen significant growth, with marketing emails rising 23% in 2023 alone.
 
While this creates opportunities, it also means competition for inbox space has never been fiercer. With just a click separating your customers from a competitor, brands must adapt to stay relevant.
 
Customer loyalty is harder to secure, as digital audiences are increasingly spoiled for choice, leading to a higher risk of disengagement. To make matters worse, 73% of customers now admit they wouldn’t care if most brands vanished from their lives.
 
The question is: how do you avoid becoming part of that forgotten majority?

The importance of a loyal, engaged email list

 
It’s no secret that retaining customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones, but the benefits extend beyond financial savings. Loyal customers are the lifeblood of any successful business, contributing more consistently to revenue over time.
 
Conversely, disengaged customers, those who stop opening emails or no longer make purchases, can signal significant long-term issues. Identifying disengagement is crucial for email marketers.
 
It typically manifests in two ways:
 

1. A drop in interaction: Customers stop opening or clicking on your email campaigns.
2. A drop in purchase behaviour: Customers are no longer completing purchases.

 
Both signs are equally important and need to be monitored carefully. Knowing how to spot these warning signals early can be the difference between keeping a customer or losing them forever.

Diagnosing the health of your email list

 
Many brands rely on a traffic light system to classify email subscribers based on their engagement levels:
 

Green: Highly engaged customers who frequently open emails.
Amber: Those who engage sporadically, requiring careful monitoring.
Red: Disengaged customers who are on the verge of opting out.

 
The frequency and content of your email marketing should be tailored to each of these segments.
 
Sending too many emails to red customers can result in unsubscribes or even worse – marked as spam. A kiss of death in the email marketing world, as winning these customers back is near impossible.
 
Leading brands are now using AI and machine learning to identify those at risk of unsubscribing before it’s too late.
 
Predictive models can flag customers who are likely to disengage, allowing marketers to take action early with tailored re-engagement campaigns, thus reducing churn rates. This is far more effective than relying on traditional engagement segments.

Timing is everything in re-engagement campaigns

 
In email marketing, timing is everything, especially when it comes to re-engagement campaigns. Many brands set a fixed window for when to re-engage customers based on purchase cycles, whether it’s a few weeks or a couple of months, depending on the product or service.
 
However, more advanced brands are using predictive analytics to identify the precise moment customers are most likely to disengage .
 
This forward thinking approach allows you to re-engage customers before they become fully inactive. By triggering personalised email marketing at the right time, you can prevent customers from drifting away and turning to competitors.
 
Take a read of this Travis Perkins or allbeauty customer churn stories to see just how good AI can be.

Personalisation: The key to effective re-engagement emails

 
Successful re-engagement email campaigns hinge on personalisation. Generic emails don’t work for today’s inboxes. Customers expect brands to understand their preferences, behaviour, and timing.
 
That’s why brands leading with email marketing and CRM strategies are using up-to-date customer data, from a single customer view, to personalise their communications.
 
Automation is a crucial tool here, enabling brands to send highly relevant re-engagement emails based on each customer’s behaviour.
 
For example, if a previously loyal customer stops interacting with your brand, once they hit the potential to churn segment an automated re-engagement email can be triggered to address this behavioural shift.
 
As they were a loyal customer with a high CLVT (Customer Lifetime Value), the personalised email sent to them will be much different than one sent to a single purchaser.
 
These personalised touchpoints, driven by AI and overlaid segmentation data, can help recapture customer attention before it’s too late.

How to successfully optimise your re-engagement emails

1. Customer behavioural data

Use customers’ browsing history, previous purchases, and engagement patterns to inform your email content. If a customer recently bought a product, a follow-up email recommending complementary items can be a great tactic.
 
Likewise, if a customer has shown interest in specific categories, highlight those in your email to draw them back in.
 

2. Tailor the timing

Customers interact with their inboxes at different times. Some open emails in the morning, while others prefer the evening.
 
By automating your email campaigns to send at the optimal time for each subscriber, you can improve open rates and engagement and reduce the need for a re-engagement campaign.
 

3. Showcase personalised recommendations

AI can help dynamically populate the content of your re-engagement emails, offering each customer personalised product recommendations or showcasing the items they’ve recently browsed.
 
The more relevant your email, the more likely it is generate interest and get opened.
 

4. Create urgency in your emails

Including time sensitive offers, such as discounts or exclusive deals, can incentivise disengaged customers to take immediate action.
 

Great examples of re-engagement emails

Duolingo

Why it works: It addresses the elephant in the room straight off the bat with its headline. The crying owl adds playfulness, but the core message is hard-hitting – do you still want to learn? That’s powerful. And it ends with a great CTA using encouraging words. It’s a very simple design, and works so well.
 

Surreal

Why it works: Super playful and slightly cheeky language that Surreal use throughout their marketing works great in this email. The Dive back in CTA is front and centre with stunning product visuals in the background. The rest of the email also contains customer reviews to further entice the lapsed reader.
 

Google Local Guides

Why it works: Another straight to the point re-engagement email creative with a strong headline. The copy is powerful and tugs on the heartstrings of community value by stating someone needs your help. But the star of the email is the dog hero image. Who could turn down that little face?! Dogs are email marketers secret weapons!

Strava

Why it works: Another play on community spirit here, and personal pride. Strava asking its members to dive back into the app and give some kudos works well to get a user back on track. The rest of this email also highlights the value of community and the ability to send a message to a friend. It’s a great softly, softly approach to re-engagement.
 

Exoh

Why it works: Striking visuals, who’s not going to scroll past a bright gold email with great product shots? Another brand that uses a playful headline message, using comedy for an email campaign that can come across pushy if not executed correctly. The CTA copy is also a joy and impossible to miss! The rest of the creative includes products and pricing plus customer reviews.
 

Netflix

Why it works: The art of data-driven personalisation all in one email. You’ve finished binge-watching your favourite series and haven’t logged back in for a while, so Netflix sends you the ideas direct to your inbox with a whole host of related shows.
 

YouTube

Why it works: Yet another, strongly designed creative that just pulls you in to scroll down. This email offers lapsing customers a special discount on tickets they have previously purchased. By highlighting a show/sports event that’s starting up again whilst re-promoting the benefits of the package is a sure-way to generate conversions.
 

Headspace

Why it works: Another brand utilising discounts in their campaigns. This is ideal for subscription based brands. This creative is simple, relaxing and warm. Just like Headspace. Clear visuals and concise text make it easy to understand the offer.
 

Apple Music

Why it works: Being able to offer a 3 month free trial is a powerful asset for customers who have lapsed. This email gets straight to the point in the top half of the email, whilst further down it introduces some benefits in an easy to digest format.
 

Foundation

Why it works: One of the most intriguing email designs I’ve ever seen. It’s beautiful and encourages further investigation. Sending a re-engagement campaign is perfect when you’ve changed the way your business or product operates as it’ll appeal to those that originally were no longer interested, in this case opening up auctions to everyone.
 

Halfdays

Why it works: This re-engagement email is a great tactic for those customers who don’t open or click on many of your emails. Try a different channel! In this case get customers to sign-up to SMS updates. Tying it into a new collection launching is a great hook.
 

Animoto

Why it works: And finally, if all else fails or if you don’t have discounts or new products to offer, sending a re-engagement campaign asking customers to update their preferences is always a good idea. It might get them back on track and reduces the risk of unsubscribing, especially if you offer pause sending functionality. I like that this creative is designed in the style of a letter.

Are you currently using re-engagement email campaigns?

 
If not, why? The success of re-engagement email campaigns will increasingly rely on data, automation, and personalisation. AI-driven insights and predictive analytics will become essential for CRM managers and email marketers to pre-empt customer disengagement and deliver highly tailored re-engagement strategies .
 
By using your customer behaviour data and automating re-engagement emails at the optimal time, you can not only win back your audience but also deepen customer loyalty.
 
In the battle for inbox attention, those who innovate will generate higher open and click rates.
 

Sources

• Email Marketing Benchmarks Report 2023 (Litmus)
• Meaningful Brands Report (Havas Group 2023)
• The State of AI in Email Marketing” (EmailMonday, 2024)
• AI and Predictive Analytics in Email Marketing” (HubSpot, 2024)
• How Personalisation Drives Email Re-engagement” (Forrester, 2023)
• Email Automation Report 2023″ (Campaign Monitor)
• The Future of Email Marketing: AI and Personalisation (Econsultancy, 2024)
• Really Good Emails

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