How To Revitalise An Old Email List

I would start sending them valuable content. You don't have to say anything about the absence. Just start emailing them again.

You cannot bring an inactive list to life if you last time you wrote them was long ago.

The amount of spam complaint you will receive will be so high that it will ensure your ban with any autoresponder service.

It just not worth the trouble.

One coaching client of mine actually hadn't emailed his list for around a year when we started working together.

I told him to send an email to his list where he was just completely honest, along the lines of: "I've been lazy when it comes to emailing you, but now I'm going to be emailing you a lot more with really valuable and entertaining content which you'll really benefit from.

If you don't want this, please unsubscribe."

Obviously it was a lot more in depth than that. But it worked a treat and he actually made a lot of sales in just the first week of emailing his list again. (A lot of people unsubscribed as well, of course. But that didn't matter. It "cleaned up" his list so to speak.)

Anyway, this strategy worked because the email made him sound very humble and honest.

Though for it to work, you have to give a reason as to why you haven't emailed them in so long, and why you're going to start again now. If you don't do this, then like fulfilledlife says... you'll just receive a looooad of spam complaints.

Tom

I'd look at this as a re-engagement campaign rather than a sales pitch. It would be a bit weird contacting your list out of the blue and launching straight into it, ease into it and re-introduce your offering rather than being too in your face.

The steps you might consider:

Firstly, acknowledge that you haven't been in touch and apologise for not having contacted them in a while; say something along the lines of how busy you've been working on a new product (or tell the truth if it's appropriate!)

If you're approaching them with something new, give the run down on what it is but avoid trying to make a sale at this point as the key focus is engagement rather than sales.

Before sending out your first email, create a series of four or five emails so that from that point on, your list will receive a steady and consistent stream of correspondence from you to warm them back up. It'll be the last email where you pitch your product, not before.

Finally, give them the offer to unsubscribe or change their preferences but perhaps do it in a jokey, tongue-in-cheek manner and add boxes that say something such as 'I'd forgotten who you were, but now I know, I'm not interested'

My key points are to definitely acknowledge your absence and focus on warming them up to you again.

Of course you'll get some unsubscribes, but it's never bad to have a clear-out anyway.

I'd echo the thoughts of the two above posts.

Apologise, give them something to 'make up' for your absence (a discounted deal or free eBook), then send one or two more emails apologising again.

After that, proceed as you would an active list. :-)

I agree with all said above.
Don't worry about inactivity, and just start sending e-mails.
But start with some valuable content, something that will spike the interest.
They need to remember you as good friend they didn't "seen" for years.

Also, you can use some good self-ridicule like TomAndrews suggested,
and say that you've been lazy.

First send out a re engagement series of emails, so you can see who is still opening and clicking your links, then you can send out a win back series to further establish the same purpose.

All the ones that have open and clicked, should be re segmented to a new list and the rest should be deleted if they are in-active, because remember your list can hurt your deliverability rates, so keep an eye on that.

Do not let them know of your absence in recent years. Then please se valuable information to them.

I would create some helpful and useful content and send it to them, in the form of video
so you can build a relationship faster. If you have not sent to your subscribers for over 90 days you may get some spam complaints cos they forgot who you are or how they joined you list. If your list is over 4000 subscribers then the few spam complaints you do get should not hurt your email account but if your list is really small and get a few complaints then your account could get suspended. If that was the case I would add some more leads to your list before sending emails out again to this old list. I hope this helps

I think there is no problem about bringing an old list back to life. So long as you have the right strategy otherwise you are just going to receive a lot of spam complaints that will not do you any justice. I think you should just be straight with your list and tell them why you have been so silent and let them know that they can easily unsubscribe if they are not happy. Then go on to deliver quality content.

Emailing an old list is never going to be a good idea.
You can use a service like sift logic in order to revalidate and rescore the data.
They are going to be the most cost effective and best way if you want to go down this road.
You are likely still going to run into some spam traps and other issues with your data due to its age, so you might want to consider also using a hygeine company like Impression Wise to also clean your data.
Using fresh data is always going to yield you the best results when doing email marketing.

As others are saying, send valuable content.

Deliverability is also important . . . basically you need to remove any members that don't open emails, so your list deliverability goes up. I've just written the details about that, so please see my post in this thread :

http://www.warriorforum.com/email-ma...marketing.html

Chris

Well this is what I did basically on how I check and clean my list and make money while doing it.

Send out an initial email that .

You're very apologetic and make them feel that you will be sending them good content. Make them realize that they're going to be into a lot of good suprises from you it will depend on what kind of niche the emails you have are into.


Then what I do is I get a email submit offer then I will send them that as a freebie.
Like discount deals or coupon codes from a site and etc and I make money for every sign up and clean up my list

Listen to what ProducerK said, he is spot on.

I buy large quantities of aged data for dirt cheap (data that most users would look at as crap), so I add an additional step. I segment it against known social media users, as then the addresses are highly likely to be their main email (they check frequently) and are extremely unlikely to be a trap. Then clean as PK described.