In this post, Stefan Pollard talks about why subscribers go inactive and how to respond to that.
He lists 8 main reasons why subscribers stop responding:
- List age. As e-mail ages as a marketing channel, mailing lists themselves get older. If addresses on your list are five to 10 years old, they could be abandoned but not invalid yet.
- No welcome program to engage new subscribers immediately.
- Messages that don't meet subscriber expectations or match preferences.
- Weak inbox presence (unbranded sender line and/or generic or boilerplate subject line).
- Unsubscribe process that's hard to find, complicated, or untrustworthy.
- Large percentage of Web e-mail clients, like Yahoo or Gmail, with high mailbox storage capacity, allowing unopened e-mails to pile up.
- Mailing frequency - either too frequently for subscriber comfort and expectations or too seldom.
- Offer repetition, where you rotate through the same offers every week. Subscribers catch on and simply ignore your messages, waiting until they are finally in the mood to purchase.