A common problem faced with email marketing is the problem of Nonresponders. What is a “Nonresponder?” A Nonresponder is a potential customer, who doesn't actively engage with your emails. They won't open, click, or respond to anything you send them! Popular advice has told email marketers to drop their nonresponders, however there are a few techniques you can employ to try to actively engage your email nonresponders before you clean out your lists.
Provide Value - Make sure your content is not just meeting, but exceeding your subscribers expectations. What did you promise when they signed up for your emails? Blow those expectations out of the water!
Survey Says - Do you know what your subscribers expectations are? Ask. Send a short survey to your subscribers and ask what type of content they are looking for. You may find that what you are providing and what your subscribers have been looking for are not the same.
Segment Your Email List - If you find that your subscribers are all looking for different content you may need to divide your subscribers into different lists. Providing different email lists to meet different subscriber needs could re-engage nonresponder interest.
Experiment – Take the results of your last email marketing campaign with a great click-through rate and try a test. Experiment with the email by only changing one element of the email such as the subject line. When you send the email a second time, only send it to your list of nonresponders! How did your results differ?
New Channels – When competing with so many other emails, you may need to reach your nonresponders in other ways. Direct mail and social media marketing are two other fantastic ways to reach subscribers. Reaching out on Facebook and Twitter for subscribers to update their email addresses can be a great way to engage subscribers. It's not uncommon for 30% of your email list to go bad in a single year! Direct mail postcards can also be a inexpensive and refreshing way to reach out to your nonresponders.
Sometimes it's hard to determine exactly why subscribers become nonresponders, however with a little bit of work you can engage subscribers and bring back subscriber interest.
