Inactive leads: Reactivation campaign ideas for B2B

[Leanne_Persang]

Looking for some ideas on how to reawaken sleepy email subscribers with reactivation campaigns. Any examples of ones used for B2B (we do not use coupons or offer discounts)? How many emails (best practice) should be in a reactivation campaign?

Thanks for the help!

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Leanne,

We usually use Top of Funnel content in nurturing streams. We have tried an email every 2 weeks, but it did not work that well. Better send once a week. We usually set a stream of 3-1-pause-3-1-pause... contents:

• 3 free access content
• 1 gated content
• 3 free access content
• 1 gated content

After each gated content we pause the lead in the stream for a couple of months and "unpause" them to continue later.

The same content can be used in multiple emails, usually after a couple of months, people do not remember having receiving them. Just change the way the email is written.

As soon as the lead fills out a form (from the stream or any other form in the system), they are moved to another, nurturing, stream.

-Greg

[Leanne_Persang]

Thanks, Greg! What do you do if the user takes no action (no open email, no clicks) after the first 3-1-pause or second 3-1 send? Do you send an email with the option to unsubscribe from emails or change subscription frequency?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Yes, we do send and email saying "do you want to stop receiving our content? If Yes, click here". But very few people in fact click it, so they continue. though 3-1-Pause cycles as we continue to add content to the programs.

-Greg

[Leanne_Persang]

Thanks! At what point do you say the lead is inactive and make him/her un-emailable and stop all marketing communications?

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Leanne,

We usually don't delete them in B2B there is most of the time no reason to do it. What we tend to do is make the pause longer and longer. This requires some technique to count the number of pauses (with a dedicated field, score type, to which we add +1 each time we pause the lead).

Now, what may happen is that if a lead has been a database for very long a time and we need to reduce the number of leads in the DB for license control, we will consider deleting very old and always inactive leads.

-Greg

[Lauren_Beth]

Hi Leanne - we use these campaigns to clean our database usually once or twice a year to stay size compliant.  We resend our most interesting and/or highest performing white papers - usually 2/3 in a series over the course of several weeks.  Top performing piece of content goes first, followed by different slices (video, blog post, etc) of this content in future emails.  If they re-engage they can either be removed from the steam and are again a viable lead or we may sometimes put them into a new stream just for them. 

[Leanne_Persang]

Thanks, Lauren! At the end of the campaign if no action is taken, do you mark these leads as non-emailable and no longer send communications?

[Lauren_Beth]

We delete these leads (though if they marked themselves as unsubscribed in the past they stay) to keep under our max allowed database size.