Clients often come to us with questions about how to deal with low performing email audiences; no matter what tactics they try, they just can’t seem to increase the open or click rates. When you’ve tried everything from emojis to prize giveaways, what do you try next? 

The answer is segmentation. It is perfectly okay (and advisable!) to segment those disengaged people into their own segment of your email list and send them completely separate campaigns from your engaged subscribers. 

Think about it. If you have 100,000 unengaged people on your list of 250,000, and you're trying to tell what the best subject line is, it’s going to be very difficult to get a clear read on what works. When more than ⅓ of your list won’t open anything, no matter what you do, you can’t elevate that open rate. That’s going to skew your data because they won’t open anything, regardless of the factors you’re testing.  

Push the unengaged subscribers into a separate segment, email them separately. Then you can test and see what works best with the people who DO engage with your list, and focus on elevating that rate separately. For the unengaged group, work on specific campaigns to reactivate them based on their past data and interests. Lifting that engagement rate might take a while, and some names may not be salvageable, but at least you’ll be able to know what tactics are working in the places you can control. 

Looking for better performance from your list? We’re Mailchimp Pro Partners and email experts. Contact us to find out how we can help.