We previously published an article about the pros and cons of resending emails, but what should you do when your subscribers are simply not reacting? If you are choosing to not mail them you could be leaving money on the table. Yet if you are continuing to mail them you may be able to increase their profitability by cutting back on mailing frequency.

Inactive email addresses are a dilemma for most email marketers. Whilst trying not to be offended that they are not interested in your emails anymore, you will be pondering whether you should remove them from your list and reduce your send total whilst admitting defeat? Or should you keep mailing them until they burst into life and realise how much they have missed you?

Continuing to mail them does increase your risk of deliverability issues but this doesn’t mean you should stop altogether. Providing you have a clear plan and are taking precautions you can still benefit from these email addresses without impacting deliverability.

Reviving Your Inactives Whilst Protecting Your Deliverability

• You should firstly decide whether or not mailing your inactives is something worth doing for your business and what the incremental cost is. Think about the costs for a dedicated IP address, sending the emails and time and resource for set up and handling. You may decide that any return you get from this group will not be enough to recuperate the cost, in which case you should wave the white flag and cease all emails to this list.

• If you decide there is a benefit in mailing this list you need to then separate your inactive email addresses from the rest of your database. The inactive list is more likely to generate spam complaints, hitting spam traps and generally not engage your audience – subsequently damaging your email reputation. Therefore, you should create a separate IP address for these sends so that they do not impact on other accounts.

• Reduce the amount of emails you are sending to inactive addresses. These recipients should now be treated completely separately from your other addresses and should not be receiving the same frequency of emails as active addresses. Perhaps try sending only during peak times if you are a seasonal business, or just send them every other email that you send to your active list.

Inactive subscribers will not respond at the same rate as active ones, so don’t expect the same success rates. Chances are the open, click thru and conversion rates will be lower, but that does not mean this list will not generate any revenue that would otherwise have been lost.