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.

To get a better understanding of who those contacts are and where your campaign metrics are, you’ll want to take a look at the response data from a previous email campaign to determine your average email open rate and what your email benchmark should be.

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 to create a list of the contacts whose subscription you’d like to reconfirm. Types of contacts that could need a re-engagement campaign might include:

• Contacts from lists collected through contests — if a person doesn’t win, they may not be interested anymore.
• Contacts from lists of merged entities — if you buy another business, their subscribers should be notified and given an opportunity to alter their subscription.
• Contacts from 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 Permission & Privacy Policy.
• Contacts who have been in your audience for 6-12 months, but have not interacted with your mailings. This is a sign that they are unengaged and may not be interested in receiving your emails anymore.

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 readers. 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, the exclusive information about events you host, or the deals that are only available to your readers.
• Set expectations for the type and frequency of future messages.
• Remember to include the opt-in confirmation URL and personalize the mailing.

Negative practices to avoid:

• Over incentivize, or give away things, such as 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:

Over the past 12 months, you’ve received many emails from me about my products and services. There’s just one problem: It looks like you haven’t opened any of them! That’s okay. I understand that people get busy, or maybe just aren’t interested anymore. That’s why I’m asking you to reconfirm your subscription to my newsletter.

Please click here to opt in and continue receiving information from me.

If you do not wish to receive any further communication from me, simply do nothing and you will be removed from my list within 3 business days. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Step 3: Send the mailing, wait, then re-segment the results

When you’re ready, it’s time to send your campaign. Once 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 to look for the contacts *in* your re-confirmation group who have not confirmed their subscription so that you can remove them from the list. To create this segment:

1. Navigate to your Audience tab.
2. Click on the Segments section in the panel on the left.
3. Click on the Create a segment button on the right.
4. Click on the Segment type dropdown menu and select Confirmed opt-in from the list.
5. Click on the Condition dropdown menu and select Is empty from the list.

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.