The success of your email marketing is dependent on how good your list of contacts is. Email marketing industry research has revealed that three months after signing on to your mailing list your contacts begin to disappear off of your radar. This reduction in contacts’ interest should be anticipated with any contact list, however there are a few methods to ensure that this downsizing is kept to a minimum, subsequently making sure that the size of your high quality contacts is far larger. The following will provide you with four useful tactics that will assist your email marketing efforts.

“Valued Customer” Specials:

As a retailer, using incentives can attract subscribers to continue their interest in your emails and services. Providing a simple promotion or discount for subscribers that haven’t opened recently can reactivate a dormant user. In addition, you can send these kinds of offers to in-active users so that they have the chance to update their contact information and preferences etc. This will help gather information on their continuing needs as a customer, as well as give you current contact information.

Send an Email Asking Their Opinion:

The best way to discover why a customer hasn’t been opening your emails is to ask them. Using email marketing software you can create a survey (that is quick and easy to fill out) so that in-actives can provide you with feedback. This is valuable information on things to avoid, but more importantly will tell you EXACTLY what particular users need from you so that you maintain them as active contacts. The survey will have questions relevant to your services, but be sure to also include things like a “preferred kind of message” section, or “best time to contact by email” section and of course a “comments and suggestions” section.

Go Over Your Contacts with a Fine Tooth Comb:

By looking a little closer at your contact list you will notice some similarities with certain of them. By identifying the commonality you might discern what it takes to get through to them. You might find they all belong to a specific demographic previously un-targeted through your past email marketing campaigns. They might all be in a different time zone, or all older males, or teenage girls. Scrutinizing more closely may trigger an idea of how to get through to this previously unresponsive group, and give you an easy solution for getting them back.

Change Your Emailing Strategy:

Spending time to experiment with your email marketing solutions strategy might teach you how to bring your ‘ghost contacts’ back to life.

If you’ve always sent out email on the same day or time of day, try a few varied distribution times; see if it produces a different response. You can also change how often you’re sending your emails. If you’re accustomed to sending once a month, you may want to try sending twice a month, or once every two months.

Another way to go about changing things up would be to change your content a bit. In your analysis of your contacts, some of the similarities that you notice might require that you redesign your campaigns so that they are geared to those particular user. You can also re-work the kind of structure of your email marketing emails. Experiment with sending out differing versions of the same email: send out a more dynamic email, with links, images etc vs. a totally text based email.

Another important factor is you subject line. Sometimes all it takes to attract a subscriber back to the active list is changing the subject line. A subscriber might not open the email because the subject line is the same or similar to previous messages sent. For these subscribers the assumption is that if the subject line is the same or similar, so is the content.

Experimenting with alternative methods of sending out emails will recharge your dormant contacts, and more importantly will provide crucial information on what that user needs as a customer.

Experienced email marketers put the time in to work on their contact list. Now is your opportunity to ensure that you are getting the most out of your email marketing campaigns by putting in that added elbow grease so that your subscribers are aware of and listening to your messages.

Rudy Barell is a Senior Development Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing software used by businesses around the globe. Create eye-catching emails and track your success with detailed reports for your email marketingTry it free!