Every retailer’s email list looks something like this:

Retailers need to do everything they can to engage and re-engage subscribers with every email deployment. It’s no longer enough to send the same message to everyone. It’s true that broadcast messages still work to a degree, but the real power of email is how easy it is to make each email relevant and personal to every recipient. It has been proven over and over again that personalizing messages and segmenting your audience works better than batch and blast messages do.

Simple segmentation will give you a 10-20% lift in revenue from your new and active subscribers alone. More impressively, you’ll re-engage your lapsed and inactive subscribers and get a 2-7% revenue boost from these groups.

This blog post is different from others as it doesn’t offer up tips and best practices for keeping your already engaged audience clicking and buying from you. There is plenty of info available on that topic, like here, and here, and here. Instead, this blog post discusses the often ignored and overlooked segment of your list – the subscribers who opted-in six months, one year, five years ago who never unsubscribed but have rarely opened or clicked on a message and have never purchased. All is not lost with these subscribers. They care enough to remain on your list and you are able to recapture their attentions every once in a while but you just can’t break through to these customers.

Until now.

Personalized product recommendations will re-engage your lapsed and inactive subscribers. We tested it time and time again and the results are always the same – lapsed subscribers who receive emails with merchandise that is customized to their needs not only click (re-engage) but also make the vital first purchase.

In the chart below, you can see a list of subscribers who have been on the client’s list for several years in some cases. These subscribers received hundreds of emails, only opening a small fraction of them and clicking on even fewer. Most importantly, these subscribers have never purchased.

Using Listrak’s Personalization Engine, emails were sent on 11/19 that included the last two specific items each subscriber browsed along with the top selling items in the same category.

As you can see, this tactic worked. Subscribers who rarely opened or clicked on an email placed their first purchases after receiving this personalized message.

We have proven this tactic over and over again. Want to see more? Contact us for more ideas and information.