Building programs to re-engage dormant leads is a necessity for many email marketers, particularly those that have not had buttoned-up strategy for segmentation and targeted communications in the past.  List re-engagement and "win-back" program strategy was the open forum discussion topic at the February meeting of the Email Experience Council's List Growth and Engagement Roundtable.

"If you need to do re-engagement after a long period of subscriber inactivity, that is a failure of strategy," suggested Stephanie Miller, VP, Return Path and Vice Chair of the eec.  "Marketers who are trying to catch up have a steep road.  Rather, win-backs should be a consistent part of your segmentation strategy."

Bottom line, Stephanie pointed out, effective email marketers reach out early in the cycle and "shouldn't have a situation in which someone hasn't responded in a long time."

Ultimately, the question of glass half-empty or half-full regarding re-engagement may boil down to the buyer. In BtoB, noted Bulldog Solutions' Amy Bills, list re-engagement can be an effective way to generate more ROI from an existing database. "A lot of time and money has probably been spent putting together that list.  Marketers are looking at making the most of it."

Yael Penn of i360 Marketing reframed the concept of re-engagement as an ongoing effort. "In BtoB we're always thinking about reengagement strategies. We're planning re-engagement from the start.  BtoB purchases are more complex and the sales cycle is much longer. Sometimes a company is only doing the research now and they are not ready to make the purchase decision for six months.  In BtoC,  the reason to buy is impulse; in BtoB, because the sales cycle is different, re-engagement can be more effective."

On the BtoC side, ExactTarget's Nate Romance said, "There is risk to carrying a lot of dead weight. We're hearing re-engagement as a drumbeat in reputation management and deliverability. If you're beating on 60% of your list that is not responding, it's costing you something." (Some more on low engagement concerns here.)
A discussion of specific re-engagement strategies included:

• Ideas for engagement tactics including changing the subject line format, adding interactive elements like polls or surveys, featuring a high-value offer and highlighting exclusive information.  Sometimes just asking straight out can work, too.  "We hate spam, too.  Let us know if you want to stay on the file," can be an effective approach, Stephanie noted.
• Nate described test findings regarding language used to confirm a prospect's interest and willingness to stay on a list. "We did some testing and found that inclusion of the 'No' option caused more 'Yes' responses," he said.
• The preference center tactic—asking people to "update their information" had not been found by the group to be a compelling re-engagement tool. "With a true re-engagement we typically encourage a strong call to action," Nate said. "Not enough people do a good job of explaining what's in it for the recipient to fill out preferences. It's perceived by subscribers as the marketer's tool, having little value to them, he said.   

We hear a lot about engagement being effective and necessary – but the pressing need for re-engagement  is a reminder that engagement must be earned with every message sent, Stephanie suggested.   Nate agreed, "If you want to optimize the value of your email marketing asset, you must keep the file engaged and fresh.  That is more than a one-time win back campaign, but an imperative for your content strategy."

Place your comments below to tell us what you are doing to engage – and re-engage; we'd love to feature your efforts in a future blog post or as part of the Roundtable's discussions.   Also, check out the List Growth & Engagement Roundtable's 2010 Benchmark Guide to see how your list growth efforts stack up.

During last month's meeting of the eec List Growth and Engagement Roundtable, the group members shared their thoughts and experiences on the concept of integrating email marketing and social strategies.

Luke Glasner of Glasner Consulting opened the discussion by highlighting a successful program that he implemented where his company created Facebook and LinkedIn groups that focused on the same topics as a specific email newsletter that his company sends out. After creating these social groups, newsletter subscribers were encouraged to join the recently-built social communities to interact with others who had similar interests. "The connection worked both ways" said Glasner. "In addition to growing our social communities with our email subscribers, we also encouraged our social fans to join our email newsletter list."

Stephanie Miller of Return Path asked the group about the value of having the same subscribers consuming your content from both email and social networks. Miller said "if the goal is to have multiple touchpoints with the same subscribers, then it's fine to cross-pollinate. If you see your social followers and email subscribers as unique audiences, then sending them the same content probably isn't the best strategy." Miller sees this as a real challenge that all marketers face. "Before jumping into a social community, it's important to think about the broader contact strategy and how these new channels will impact this. If your social followers are a fundamentally different group of customers than your email subscribers, then you should communicate with them differently, and not try a one size fits all message."

Luke mentioned that for publishers, the cross-pollination of email and social customers makes sense. "The goal of many publishers is to generate exposure for advertisers. While social can do an excellent job of building community, the monetization of advertising is not as straight forward as it is in traditional email marketing." Because of this, Glasner says "it's important to drive your social fans to become email subscribers, as this creates the exposure that publishers and their advertisers want."

Nate Romance of ExactTarget suggested that the various channels can have different value propositions for subscribers or fans, which makes subscriber overlap okay. "Consider a retailer who uses email to provide discounts and sales, uses Facebook as a way to get brand advocates to talk to one another and provide feedback on products, and uses Twitter to provide fast customer service responses."  Romance says that because these three channels all provide a different value to subscribers, the subscriber overlap simply means that the subscriber can use the channel that makes the most sense for their need.

"Instead of just pushing offers through these three mediums, they are communicating with the same core group of subscribers, but providing different services to the customer through each of these. Companies get into trouble if they just view Twitter and Facebook as cheap email and try to just push the same 'free shipping' offer. It can be redundant, and if the offer is better (or worse) on one of the channels, subscribers will notice and can voice their frustrations about this."

Adds Yael Penn of imagine 360, "People respond differently to different media. By reinforcing cross-channel, and making them play well together, having cross channel subscribers can increase the response rate of an integrated campaign.  Some people need the reinforcement of multiple channels before making a buying decision, and adding social media to an existing email marketing campaign can help accomplish this."

Romance adds that individual subscribers or fans might have different perceptions of how they want to interact with various channels. "Some people might want to get information on Facebook, but feel like purchasing through an email is 'safer' or more professional. Need to reach the right subscriber with the right message and in their preferred channel at the right time."

We want your feedback. Do you think it makes sense to have the same subscribers following you on social networks and on your email list? What are the pros and cons of this? We'd love to hear your feedback as comments on this post.