How to Build a Re-Engagement Campaign for Inactive Contacts
Why Re-Engagement Matters
Every email and SMS list naturally loses engagement over time. People change email addresses, lose interest, or get buried under other messages. If you keep sending to contacts who never open, two things happen: your open rate drops (making ISPs more likely to filter you to spam), and you waste money sending to people who will never convert. A re-engagement campaign addresses both problems by either winning back interested contacts or identifying dead weight to remove.
On the email side, ISPs like Gmail and Outlook watch how recipients interact with your messages. If a large percentage of your list ignores your emails, the ISPs start routing your messages to spam for everyone, including your engaged contacts. Cleaning inactive contacts through re-engagement campaigns directly protects your sender reputation. See What Is Sender Reputation and How to Maintain a Clean Email List for more on this.
Step-by-Step Setup
Decide what qualifies a contact as inactive. Common thresholds: no email opens in the last 90 days, no link clicks in the last 60 days, no purchases in the last 6 months, or no SMS replies in the last 90 days. The right threshold depends on your sending frequency. If you email weekly, 90 days of no opens means they missed about 12 messages in a row, which is a clear signal.
Create a new contact list and move or copy inactive contacts into it. You can identify inactive contacts by reviewing your engagement data and filtering for contacts with zero opens or clicks within your defined window. See How to Segment Your Audience for techniques on building targeted segments.
The first message should be personal and direct. Acknowledge that it has been a while, remind them why they signed up, and offer something valuable to re-engage. Subject line examples: "Are you still interested in [topic]?", "We have not heard from you in a while", or "Here is what you have been missing." Avoid guilt-tripping. Focus on value: "We have added some great new features since we last connected."
If the first message did not get a response, offer something concrete: an exclusive discount, a free resource, early access to a new feature, or a piece of premium content they have not seen. "We would love to have you back. Here is a 20% discount just for returning customers." The incentive should be strong enough to cut through the noise.
This is the final attempt. Be direct about what will happen: "If we do not hear from you, we will remove you from our list to keep things relevant for everyone." Include a clear "Keep me subscribed" button or link. This creates light urgency without being threatening. Many contacts will click the keep-subscribed link simply because they do not want to miss out, even if they have been ignoring previous messages.
After the full re-engagement sequence runs, anyone who did not open, click, or respond to any of the three messages should be moved to a suppression list or removed from your active sending lists. This is not about punishing them. It is about protecting your deliverability and focusing your resources on contacts who actually want to hear from you. See What Is a Suppression List.
Re-Engagement With SMS
If you have phone numbers for your inactive contacts and they gave SMS consent, a text message can be highly effective for re-engagement. SMS has much higher open rates than email, so a contact who has been ignoring emails might respond to a text. Keep it short and personal: "Hi [Name], we have not connected in a while. We have some new [products/features] we think you will love. Want to stay in the loop? Reply YES." See Re-Engage Inactive SMS Subscribers.
How Often to Run Re-Engagement Campaigns
Run a re-engagement campaign quarterly or twice a year, depending on your list size and growth rate. If you add hundreds of contacts monthly, quarterly cleanups keep your list healthy. If your list grows slowly, every 6 months is sufficient. Set a calendar reminder so this does not get forgotten, as it is easy to skip and it has a direct impact on your deliverability.
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