MAILING LIST LIFECYCLE YOUR HOW TO GUIDE

BACKGROUND

The Communicator Mailing List Lifecycle Guide discusses the following topics;

 Using mailing list filters to perform welcome campaigns

 Identifying and targeting your most active subscribers

 Re-engaging those subscribers who’ve become disinterested

 Increasing open rates

 Removing ‘Spam Traps’

 Removing inactive email accounts by suppressing any long-term ‘non-openers’

WHAT IS ‘LIST LIFECYCLE’ SEGMENTATION?

Subscribers pass through various phases whilst they’re in a mailing list. By intelligently targeting or suppressing these segments, a mailing list can become more effective and campaigns more successful.

LIST SEGMENTS

Although there are many ways to organise or categorise subscribers, the most effective segments to target or suppress are;

 New subscribers

 Recent openers

 Long-term non-openers

 Subscribers who used to open, but haven’t opened recently

The ‘List Lifecycle’ report (located within in the ‘Reports’ page, under the ‘Response’ tab) gives you an insight into how new and how active your mailing lists are.

This report breaks down your mailing list into List Lifecycle segments and is designed to help

you make an informed decision as to which segments you need to target or suppress.

The ‘Mailing List Insight’ dashboard provides a customer view of your mailing list, focusing upon customer activity trends and showing how many people are receiving emails; opening;

clicking and making purchases.

This information is designed to help you understand the impact and success of your overall

marketing strategy.

LIST LIFECYCLE - ACHIEVING THE MOST COMMON OBJECTIVES

1. SEND NEW SUBSCRIBERS WELCOME MESSAGES

Don’t just assume new subscribers know how to use your website. You should provide them with hints and tips, introducing them to the best bits of your site. Or just say hello.

 Segment to target - ‘New Subscribers’

 Filter to use - Behavioural Filters, Sent, ‘has not been sent anything’

Note: do not apply a date when using this filter. Adding a date changes the filter from ‘has not been sent anything ever’ to ‘has not been sent anything since <your date>’.

Behavioural data can sometime take up to one hour to appear in your filter, so please bear this in mind when considering using hourly recurring dispatches.

2. REMOVE NON-RESPONSIVE SUBSCRIBERS, EXPIRED EMAIL ACCOUNTS AND SPAM TRAPS

Maximise your campaign results by sending your most frequent mailings only to your recently active subscribers and your new subscribers your most frequent mailings.

Over time email accounts can become inactive. At best, these inactive and non-responsive recipients reduce your open rates. At worst, these inactive recipients are being used by ISPs as spam traps.

Sending to inactive email addresses provides little (if any) benefit and can stop you reaching the subscribers who want to receive your mailings.

 Segments to target - ‘Recent Openers’ and ‘Recently Subscribed’

3. SEND YOUR RECENTLY ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS YOUR BEST OFFERS

Those subscribers who are opening and clicking now are your most valuable. Keep them loyal, happy and interested by targeting them specifically with your best, limited availability offers.

 Segment to target - ‘Recent Openers’

 Filter to use - Behavioural Filters, Open, ‘has opened any email in last X days’

4. TARGET SUBSCRIBERS WHO HAVE NEVER OPENED ANYTHING AFTER A PERIOD OF TIME

Before permanently removing non-responsive subscribers from your list, provide them with a couple of chances to change their preferences or to confirm that they really are interested.

For this to be successful with those subscribers who haven’t opened anything yet, you must provide a compelling reason to open and click-through to your website.

Consider using these campaigns to advertise new features or products.

 Segment to target - ‘Long-term non openers’

 Filter to use - Behavioural Filters, Open, ‘has not opened any dispatch’

 2

filter to use (with the ‘AND’ condition) - Behavioural Filters, Sent, ‘has been sent anything’

Note: adding a date to this filter changes the meaning from ‘has been sent anything’ to ‘has been sent something since <your date>’

 3rd filter to use (with the ‘AND’ condition) - Dynamic Filters, CC_DateCreated, ‘date is

a number of days in the past’ > 180

5. RE-ENGAGEMENT

Targeting previous openers with campaigns to get them engaged once more can be more effective than trying to get new subscribers into your list.

Think of why they may no longer be opening...

 Do you personalise emails based on preference?

 Have you increased email frequency?

Also consider that the email address may no longer be in use.

If you’ve removed those people who’ve not recently opened from your main campaigns (as in step 2, above) you now have the opportunity to target this group of people with very specific campaigns (although not too frequently or repetitively).

From there, if none of your ideas work you should remove them permanently.

Examples of re-engagement campaigns include the chance to change any preferences, change the email address, provide the recipient with premium offers or to simply ask the recipient what they would like to see in the emails they receive.

We would always recommend providing the recipient with a couple of chances to open and interact, before permanently removing them from your list.

Remember: If the recipients have not opened any mailings for a while, you must provide a compelling reason to open and click-through to your website for this to be successful - a reasonable ‘call to action’.

 Segment to target - ‘Used to Open’

 Filter to use - Behavioural Filters, Open, ‘Inactive for last X days’