Creating a specific campaign to confirm that your contacts have opted-in to receive email communications from you can also be referred to as an opt-in confirmation mailing or permission pass. Essentially, it’s a tool that email marketers can use to refocus their efforts, improve response rates, and develop a deeper, more trusted relationship with their subscribers. The idea is to remove subscribers who aren’t responding to your messages while also garnering a detailed list of the people who are engaged with your content and therefore should be the foundation of your email marketing efforts.
There are a few things you need for a good opt-in confirmation mailing.
- A great subject line
- Content that compels action from the recipients
- A segment of your audience to target
How to create a subscriber re-engagement campaign
When you’re sending an opt-in confirmation message, you’re primarily going to be looking for contacts who aren’t currently opening your emails and who have not been doing so for an extended period of time. For some segments, that period of time might be as short as six months. More often, you’ll be looking at people who have not opened your emails in the last 12 months.
Step 1: Segment your audience
You’ll first want to create a segment containing a list of the contacts whose subscription you’d like to reconfirm.
Types of lists that could need a re-engagement campaign might include:
- Lists collected through contests — if a person doesn’t win, they may not be interested anymore.
- Lists of merged entities — if you buy another business, their subscribers should be notified and given an opportunity to alter their subscription.
- Lists you collected 6-12 months ago, but haven’t used — keep in mind that lists older than 12 months are not allowed by our privacy policy.
Step 2: Craft compelling content
Naturally, you always want content that effectively conveys your message and engages your contacts, creating a lasting impression that your mailings are valuable to your readership. For an effective re-engagement campaign, you will certainly need all of those aspects but more importantly, you will need to give them a clear call to action. You don’t just want these people to confirm their subscription and remain on your list, but you also want them to feel like they can leave if they want to — and that you’ll respect their wishes.
Positive practices to use:
- Accentuate the value of your messages, whether that’s in the advice you dish out, or the exclusive information about events you host, or deals only available to your readers.
- Set expectations for the type and frequency of future messages.
- Remember to include the opt-in confirmation URL or personalize the mailing.
Negative practices to avoid:
- Over incentivize, or give away things like products or money.
- Coerce them into confirming their opt-in subscription.
- Forget to give them a timeline. Three business days is a good rule of thumb.
You’ll want to craft content that incites your contacts to act (click the opt-in link) in order to continue receiving your mailings. Then create segments around the contacts who do not act within x-days, so that they will be removed from the list.
Here’s an example of what your content might look like:
Step 3: Send the mailing, wait, then resegment the results
When you have designed the mailing to your liking and everything is ready, it’s time to send your campaign. Then after it has been sent, you’ll just need to wait a few business days before you can remove anyone who hasn’t confirmed. Because of this, we recommend sending the re-engagement campaign early in the week to avoid it stretching over the weekend, when your contacts may be less attentive to your message.
After a few days to a week pass, you can then create a segment for the contacts *in* your re-confirmation group who have not confirmed their subscription so you can remove them from the list. To create this segment, navigate to the Audience tab of your account and select Segments from the lefthand menu. Click on the blue Create a segment button and select Confirmed opt-in as the “segment type” and choose Is empty for “Condition”.
Once the prescribed re-opt-in window that you had originally set for the segment has passed, open that segment up and select all of the contacts who have not confirmed. You can then choose to opt them out manually by clicking on the Actions button and selecting Change status of all. Then be sure to delete this segment. Now when you go back to your original list, it will be a list of people who have reconfirmed that they definitely want to receive your emails; so be sure to rename it appropriately.