Re-engagement series

A re-engagement series gives contacts who have stopped opening one last set of chances, and then removes the ones who do not take them. When you finish this page you will have a threshold for inactivity, a three-email sequence, and a rule for what happens to the people who ignore all three.

The removal is the point. A re-engagement series that does not end in removal is a re-engagement series that made things worse.

Why this matters more than it looks#

Mailbox providers decide where your mail lands partly by watching how recipients treat it. Consistently sending to people who never open teaches them that your mail is ignorable. That judgment is applied to your sending domain, not to the individual contact, so the 6,000 people who never open are actively pushing your emails away from the inbox for the 1,200 who do.

This is the same reasoning as List hygiene, applied as a sequence rather than a cleanup. Deliverability overview covers the rest of what affects inbox placement.

There is a second cost. Inactive contacts consume your monthly sending allowance every time you mail them. A list where 40 percent never open is a list where 40 percent of your allowance produces nothing.

Define inactive with a real number#

Pick a threshold and write it down. A defensible default for a list mailed weekly:

No open and no click in the last 90 days, and at least 6 emails delivered in that window.

Both halves matter. The time window on its own would sweep in someone who subscribed three weeks ago and has received two emails. The minimum delivered count means the contact has had real chances to engage.

Adjust the window to how often you send:

Do not use a window shorter than 60 days. People take holidays, change jobs, and ignore an inbox for a month without having lost interest.

Build this definition as a segment first, so you can see how many people it captures before you mail any of them. Segments covers building the definition. If the number is a large share of your list, you have a list quality problem that a sequence will not fix on its own, and List hygiene is the better starting point.

The sequence#

Three emails over about two weeks. Every one of them is short.

Email 1: ask directly

Plain text, three sentences, from a person. Say that you noticed they have not opened anything recently, that you would rather send nothing than send noise, and ask whether they want to keep receiving your emails.

Give two obvious responses: a link that means yes, keep me, and the unsubscribe link that means no. Someone who unsubscribes here is doing you a favor.

Subject lines that work are literal. "Do you still want these?" beats anything clever, because clever reads as marketing and this email needs to read as a question.

Email 2: show what the value is

Delay 5 days.

If they did not answer a question, show them a reason. One link to your single best piece from the last few months, with two sentences on why it is worth their time. No product pitch and no discount. The purpose is one click, and a click is the signal that keeps them.

If your emails have changed since they last engaged, say so in one line. Plenty of inactivity is people who signed up for something you no longer send.

Email 3: say what happens next

Delay 6 days, arriving on day 11.

Tell them plainly that this is the last email unless they act, and that you will stop sending after it. Give the same two options as email 1, one link to stay and the unsubscribe link to leave.

This email usually gets the highest response of the three, because the consequence is real. It only works if you follow through.

Removing the ones who did not respond#

At the end of the automation, contacts who clicked nothing across all three emails come off your regular sending. Add a step at the end of the non-responder path that either removes them from the list or writes a field marking them as unengaged, which your regular campaign segments then exclude.

Removing is cleaner. Marking with a field keeps the history. Pick one and be consistent, because a half-applied rule is worse than no rule.

Expect to keep somewhere between 5 and 15 percent of the people who enter. That is what a re-engagement series is for. The other 85 percent were already gone, and the sequence only made it official.

Do not do this#

Do not send a discount as email 1. It teaches everyone who reads your mail that going quiet earns a coupon, and it recovers buyers rather than readers.

Do not run it on people who never confirmed. Contacts who have never opened anything at all, from the very first email, are more likely a bad address or a bad import than a lapsed reader. Those belong in List hygiene, not here.

Do not run it more than twice a year. Once your threshold is enforced, the pool of newly inactive contacts is small. Running it monthly means mailing the same reluctant people over and over.

Do not send all three emails in one week. Compressing the sequence makes it feel like pressure, and it gives someone on holiday no chance to see any of it.

If something goes wrong#

Almost nobody enters. Check the segment definition against a contact you know is inactive. A window measured from the wrong field is the usual cause.

Complaints spike on email 1. Your unsubscribe link is too hard to find, or the sender name does not match what people signed up to. Both are fixable before you run the sequence again.

Inbox placement does not improve after removal. Removal helps, and it is not the only factor. Work through Deliverability overview next, starting with domain authentication.