It doesn’t matter if you call them re-engagement, re-activation, or lapsed-consumer emails, the bottom line is that crafting the best possible email copy is going to make the difference between a happily re-engaged subscriber, and one that becomes only a swiftly fading memory. Apply all seven of these strategies and watch your re-engagement metrics zoom!

1. CTA rules – There is no substitute for a clarion Call To Action (CTA) so you have to pay particular attention to being exquisitely clear and lucid about what it is that you want your subscriber to do. Don’t worry about being too forward, feel free to in a courteous and respectful tone inform your customer to do this now! Don’t beat around the bush or dilly-dally around the point… get to that point fast and make it count!

2. Motivate through incentives – One of the founding tenets of the internet is that everybody wants something for nothing and that’s why discount voucher incentive programs are so overwhelmingly popular and effective. There is absolutely no reason why your re-engagement campaign can’t be based on motivating your subscribers by offering them savings off another purchase. The best incentives are the ones which are clearly of significant value to the customer so don’t scrimp. In the famous words of an old Don, make them an offer they can’t refuse.

3. Short and sweet – Your customer will react best to a shorter and more direct approach, so use a fairly brief template and keep your subject line equally curt. Make sure that your subject line and preheader vary considerably from your run of the mill emails so that your subscriber is going to be immediately aware that this is a special message.

4. Take your time – There is no immediate need to remove subscribers from your list the instant that they do not respond to your re-engagement emails. After all, re-engagement is a far cry from an unsubscribe demand from your subscribers. You have to give your customers the opportunity and the time to re-engage with your brand so don’t be too much in a hurry and end up jumping the gun!

5. Tell them what’s going to happen – Even though you don’t have to drop the subscribers who don’t rush to re-engage right away, you should be extremely clear in informing them of what the next steps are going to be and, of course, you have to be true to your word. You must specify at what point in the future the very last email missive will be sent to them and then ensure that it is exactly as you stated, no matter what.

6. Testing, 1, 2, 3, Testing – You might have drafted the world’s greatest re-engagement email text but that still doesn’t mean that you can send it out to everybody willy-nilly. You’re going to be far better off by testing a wide range of differing content and CTAs in your attempts to re-engage your subscribers. You can custom-tailor these elements to the type of re-engagement you are trying to achieve, or base it on the subscriber’s previous behavior, demographics, or just about anything else you can think of. Remember the motto of the professional email tester: There isn’t an element in any email that you can’t improve through A/B Split testing (and let’s not even get into the massive advantages you can derive through Multivariate testing).

7. Work the stats – You are wise to study the studies in order to determine where you can get even the slightest advantage to work for you in the crafting of your re-engagement email copy. It has been shown that if you include the phrases “come back” and/or “miss you” in the subject line, the email will have close to a 13 percent read rate. Furthermore, your customers will react more favorably to discounts which are listed in actual dollar value than the ones which are just percentage off. Surprisingly the dollars-off re-engagement subject line emails derive a success rate of nearly double that of the percentage-off ones.

If you manage to give your lapsed customers a real reason to return, they will reward you with lasting loyalty!