A re-engagement campaign, sometimes called a win-back campaign, is a short series of emails sent to subscribers who have stopped interacting. The aim is to find out who still wants to hear from you and who doesn’t. Some people come back; the rest are removed or suppressed, which protects your sender reputation.
Defining “inactive” is the first decision. A daily-deals brand might treat 60 days without a click as inactive; a B2B newsletter sent monthly might wait 6 to 12 months. Because opens are inflated by privacy features, base the definition on clicks, purchases and other actions where you can, with opens as a secondary signal. Exclude people who joined recently, since they haven’t had a fair chance to engage.
A typical series has two or three emails over one to two weeks. The first is friendly and reminds people what they signed up for, perhaps with your best recent content or an offer. The second asks directly: “Do you still want these emails?” with a single button to stay. The last is a clear goodbye that tells people they’ll be removed unless they click.
The crucial part is acting on the result. Many businesses run a re-engagement series and then keep emailing everyone anyway, which defeats the purpose. People who respond should be marked as active again; those who don’t should be unsubscribed or suppressed under your sunset policy. A slightly smaller list that actually reads your emails is worth more than a large one that doesn’t.
A Kolkata saree retailer finds 7,000 subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked in 90 days. Email one shows new handloom arrivals; email two, a week later, asks “Should we keep writing to you?”. 900 click to stay and are tagged as reactivated. The other 6,100 are unsubscribed.
MailNesto includes a Win back inactive recipe that starts when someone enters a “not opened in 90 days” segment, sends two emails over about ten days, tags people who come back and unsubscribes those who don’t.