Just as the conditions for visibility on social networks and search engines have changed over the last decade, so have the rules for email deliverability. Increasing the number of contacts addressed is no longer automatically good for your visibility. If you choose quantity over quality, you run the risk of tarnishing the reputation of your domain name and drastically reducing the deliverability of your e-mails.
In this practical guide, Data Enso looks back at the Sunset Policy, which defines the company's approach to disinterested subscribers.
#1 What is the Sunset Policy?
Sunset" refers to the non-renewal of an expiring contract, the scheduled end of a product or service, or the epilogue of a policy or program. The expression is common in the world of business and law (contracts coming to an end), technology (production and marketing of a model coming to an end) and politics (epilogue to a mandate).
In a marketing context, the Sunset Policy describes a company's strategy and/or action plan for managing "disinterested" subscribers to its email campaigns. The Sunset Policy generally involves three steps:
- Identify disengaged contacts: low or zero open rate, no clicks, no responses, unsubscribes, spam reports... ;
- Triggering a re-engagement process: with campaigns that target disengaged contacts;
- Removing contacts who have remained disengaged: at the end of your re-engagement campaign.
#2 Sunset Policy: why remove disengaged contacts?
It's a legitimate question. Why take away contacts that have been hard-won through targeting, nurturing and the creation of quality content?
To decide whether your emails should land in your contacts' inboxes, email providers rely on engagement signals such as open, click and response rates, forwards, opt-outs and spam reports. When a contact systematically refuses to open your e-mails, their e-mail provider reacts by filtering subsequent communications into the spam folder or placing them in quarantine.
Then, when several contacts within the same organization or operating with the same mailbox unsubscribe, your emails will most likely be filtered and diverted to the spam folder for all recipients in the organization, including those who engage with your emails. This is known as Graymail. Ultimately, it's your domain name's reputation that's tarnished, with the risk of penalizing all mailings, including engaged and future subscribers. As we explained in our article on Hard Bounce, a blacklisted domain name will be (very) difficult to rehabilitate. Our EnsoEmail solution helps you make your databases more reliable, so you can preserve your domain name and the performance of your email campaigns.
#3 How to identify disengaged subscribers
In other words, how do you determine the target audience for your Sunset campaign? A number of criteria come into play, such as the characteristics of your target, the length of your sales cycle, the frequency of your email campaigns, and so on. In any case, subscribers can be considered disengaged after a certain number of consecutive unopened emails. In its CRM, HubSpot considers a subscriber to be "disengaged" if they meet one of the following two conditions:
- The subscriber has never opened your emails since their opt-in. They are then considered "disengaged" after the 10th opt-in.
- If the subscriber has already opened your emails in the past, they are considered "disengaged" if they have not opened one of your last 16 mailings.
Of course, if your campaigns are monthly or quarterly, these thresholds will have to be revised downwards. In fact, if you follow a quarterly frequency, 16 mailings correspond to 4 years!
Other criteria can be integrated, such as your target's interaction with your website, your publications on social networks and so on. Finally, if a large proportion of your subscribers appear to be disengaged, you'll probably need to review the content of your campaigns and/or ensure the health of your domain name.
#4 How do you re-engage disengaged subscribers?
Once you've identified disengaged subscribers according to criteria relevant to your business, you'll then need to target them with a re-engagement campaign. The content of this campaign deserves your full attention, because you won't get a second chance, by definition. The Sunset Policy is generally supported by two successive campaigns:
- The "Wake the Dead" campaign, your ultimate re-engagement effort;
- The "Goodbye" campaign, which is a sort of farewell to subscribers who didn't re-engage after the "Wake the Dead" campaign. Note: it's not uncommon for subscribers to re-engage after the Goodbye campaign, no doubt for emotional reasons or simply out of a FOMO(Fear of missing out) reflex.
#5 What content for a "Wake the Dead" campaign?
To conclude, here are some ideas for your "Wake the Dead" campaign:
- The honesty and integrity card. Ask disengaged subscribers a simple question: " Would you like to continue receiving our communications?", with a CTA that allows them to change their email preferences.
- The small incentive to re-engage, with a free sample, promo code, etc. Warning: this technique will not prevent disinterested subscribers from disengaging in the short term.
- The ultimatum. You can integrate a dynamic countdown into your emailing, explaining to the recipient that they will be removed from the mailing list after a certain period of inactivity.
- Embedded preferences. You can embed the emailing preferences menu directly into the body of the email for the recipient's convenience.
- Emotion. Some brands send an email with two buttons: "I'm staying", with a smiling emoji, and "I'm leaving", with a sad emoji. Others send simple communications with the subject line: " We miss you".
- Remind them of their original interest. Remind disengaged subscribers why they subscribed to your mailing list in the first place.
