Best practice for re-engagement for existing customers and prospects

[AdamLPW]

Hi HubSpotters,

Within my database, I have around 1,500 unengaged contacts.  Of these, c. 500 are customers; c.1,000 are prospects. 

I've recently discovered some of my customers who DO want to hear from me aren't receiving my emails.  In their HS records, they just show as unengaged but, in reality, the emails are in some case never hitting their inboxes.   

There are two separate but related issues, here.  Firstly: my database is full of prospects who are unengaged whom I might want to re-engage.  Secondly, some of my customers aren't getting my emails.  

I've drafted a really brief re-engagement email with a "manage subscription" link, but my concern is that this isn't ever going to reach my customers (like the other emails they're currently missing out on!)...

I'm thinking the re-engagement email would potentially be a solution for the first issue.  I send to 1,000 prospects who will either a) ignore my email and remain unengaged; b) re-engage; or c) unsubscribe.  Either way, my database is cleaned up a bit.  

The issue is what to do about issue 2 - customers not receiving my emails.  It's possible that they're just ignoring my regular emails (which may be an indicator I need to work on the quality of these... a question for another day!), in which case this email might prompt an open and hence re-engagement.  But if some are genuinely NOT receiving our emails, how do I address this in bulk?  

Let's say, for argument's sake, after emailing my re-engagement campaign to 500 customers 100 have re-engaged.  Before I just stop emailing the other 400 forever, I want to send them an email outside HubSpot to ask if they want to hear from us, but also with some troubleshooting steps (such as adding us to safe sender lists in Outlook/Gmail).  The problem is, for those who HAVE successfully received the re-engagement email in HubSpot (but perhaps chose to ignore it), this might mean they get two emails from me!  If they already feel harassed, this won't help much!

I'm thinking I should email prospects from within HubSpot and customers I'll run a mail merge from outside HubSpot (I don't have Workflows, so please don't suggest that!!).  I don't believe there's any way of including a Manage HubSpot Subscriptions link in an email sent outside HubSpot, so then am I back in a position where these contacts are still considered unengaged next time I come to send a marketing email to my customers in HubSpot.  Feels a bit catch-22! 

Would be grateful for some best practice guidance.  

Many thanks

Adam

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @AdamLPW,

As a first step, I'd explore why some contacts are not receiving your emails. You're probably aware of most of these but I'll list all of the ones I can think of:

Are you using the marketing contacts functionality? If yes, are all recipients marked as marketing contacts? (HubSpot will not send emails to non-marketing contacts.)

Are you suppressing unengaged contacts in the Recipients tab of the email? If yes, you could uncheck the box. Otherwise HubSpot will exclude these contacts.

Are you using an exclusion / suppression list in the Recipients tab of the email? (Do not send to dropdown)

Do you have the GDPR settings enabled? If yes, you might have restricted email sends to contacts who have a legal basis for communication only. In that case, you would have to update your contact subscriptions.

Have some of the contacts previously bounced? You can check by filtering your recipient list by "Email hard bounce reason is known".

Did you already hit your monthly email send limit? (5X marketing contact tier)

Have some of the contacts previously unsubscribed? You can check by filtering your recipient list by "Unsubscribed from all email is equal to True"

Before you think about re-engaging contacts, I would try to figure out the cause of some contacts simply not receiving your emails. Otherwise you might be trying to re-engage contacts who are not receiving your emails because of a technicality.

Once you have a good grasp on the cause, it's time to think about re-engaging those contacts – those who have a legal basis for marketing communication and are simply unengaged in the sense that they haven't interacted with 10 emails or more (contact property Sends since last engagement).

For the re-engagement campaign itself, there are a lot of different approaches, HubSpot has some great examples here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/10-examples-of-effective-re-engagement-emails

The campaigns that I usually run are designed in a way that the email is a goodbye with the option to stay subscribed. You'll lose a lot of contacts this way, however (unless you come up with the subject line of the century).

An alternative ro re-engagement would be simply zooming out a bit and re-thinking segmentation. If you have customers who are not interacting with your emails, maybe rethink your customer email strategy. Soft re-launch your regular emails and try to win your recipients back.

Hope this clarifies some points for you, let me know if I left anything unanswered.

[AdamLPW]

Hi Karsten,

Thanks for your response.  Quick bullet-point response:

Are you using the marketing contacts - nope, spoke with my HS rep about this last year, would cost us too much to move from our legacy pricing.

Are you suppressing unengaged contacts in the Recipients tab of the email? I normally use this option, but the contacts who've told me they aren't receiving my emails don't get my emails regardless of the setting

Are you using an exclusion / suppression list in the Recipients tab of the email? (Do not send to dropdown) - Not as standard.  

Do you have the GDPR settings enabled? Yes, but I ran a double opt-in campaign a year or so back and all my subscription settings are correct.  

Have some of the contacts previously bounced? No, none of the contacts I'm concerned with here have any bounce history.

Did you already hit your monthly email send limit? No

Have some of the contacts previously unsubscribed? No

Per my previous, I'm wondering if I need to do something OUTSIDE HubSpot here to fix the customers not receiving issue.  I think it's likely there IS a technical issue, here - whether it's overly-stringent email security blocking emails with links, etc., or something else... my thinking is a 2-pronged attack strategy:

1)  I draft an email outside HS to all my customers not receiving my HS mail.  This includes instructions to fix a range of basic technical issues such as allow-listing and checking junk/spam folders.

2) For the prospects, I use a traditional re-engagement campaign.  I'm comfortable with losing a big chunk of contacts, if they genuinely don't want to hear from me!

Does this sound sensible?  I'd imagine I could do something cool using Sales Emails and Workflows if I were a Professional/Enterprise user but, failing that, I think I'm looking at an old-school mail merge?!