Warming Up A Cold List

Freebies is always a good idea I think - I get my highest clickthrus from freebies... but I would probably recommend being honest with them, being down to earth, and letting them in a little on your life - tell them youve neglected them and been traveling, tell them your experiences and what you want to do with the business, apologize, offer a freebie

We are only human and they will probably understand, maybe even warm to you a little more, we are all busy and let things slip from time to time and they will be able to relate to that.

Hope that helps, good luck! Dan

Well, this is late for you Nathan concerning this list, but I've been there and have lost some great lists and this is what I learned...

Never build a list that you don't automate at least part of the content for at least one year...

You see, if you think ahead and add just a once monthly automated email to all your lists, if for any reason you have to leave for extended periods, your autoresponder will keep working sending content to your list and keeping it warm or hot as the case may be.

If you set automation to go out at one month intervals, you can even have automated emails go out easily up to 5 years or longer...

12 automations for 1 year means if you package 60 automated messages you could easily have 5 years of peace of mind in case you have to leave your manual updates for any reason... I wish I'd had this idea years ago, so definitely pick up on this.

As to your question...

It is very difficult to achieve what you want, in many cases it's impossible.

Many of the people on your list may no longer check their email inboxes where they used to get frequent emails from you which they used to check and since you stopped emailing them for a while, they just stopped checking so nothing you send to them will make a difference.

You can get creative though. Use any of the ideas you already posted yourself, but what I would suggest is get to setting up automated emails now and focus on keeping the 20% interested, if you keep your focus on just continuing to provide value you may find that some of those who are still getting your emails and not bothering to open them just might notice you're back on track and start following your emails again (getting your clicks up).

Sometimes you don't need special strategies to get the best responses, just keep providing value the way you have been doing and people will start to react again (the old ones may even start to forward your emails and build your list for you based on that).

You can also consider offering special limited time deals (but be careful with this and definitely don't over do it). I don't think the latter is necessary but it's an idea you might want to use.

Cheers

Kunle Olomofe

I totally agree on Kunle. You should pre written your emails
before you go somewhere else

Free quality SEXY freebies. Nothing wakes up a list like a few sexy gimmicks.

Honestly, I'd say just a quick e-mail apologising for not being in touch, thanking the list for their patience, and asking saying that you'll be in contact more frequently from now on. You can use the e-mail to link to your blog or personal profile in case the list have forgotten who you are.

Freebies can be useful, so long as they're a rarity and not something that your list comes to expect. Just a free video (which can lead into a future sale) can be enough of an incentive. You can always use the first e-mail to tell the list that you're back, then the second e-mail to send the video.

Thanks a lot for the great replies guys!

The action plan seems to be: Automation to prevent this from happening again, personal stories to add the human touch, and some *very* good freebies to pump up the excitement.

I'll let you know how it goes!
Cheers,
Nathan.