Re-engage unsubscribers

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone!
Have any of you ever tried to re-engage leads who unsubscribed? You'll say it's a dangerous trick, but the idea is really tempting and I also read about several cases when an honest "we-miss-you" letter brought back 25% of the unsubscribers. So, legal and ethical aspects aside, I'd just like to hear some stories about best / worst practices.
Thanks in advance!

[Josh_Hill13]

I'm sure if you invited some unsubscribed people to opt in, they might do that.

Keep in mind that once they are unsubscribed, you are required to abide by that request in nearly every jurisdiction. Depending on the size of the list, you could try having ISRs call them up or try retargeting to bring them back. I would only bother for Ex Clients and Unsubscribed AND actively visiting the site.

A way around this is to ensure your subscription center permits more than one option.

[Anonymous]

Hi Elena, 

We are looking to do some sort of "win back" campaign as well. Since you first posted this have you found any additional best practices on this subject? Did you end up sending a "we miss you" campaign to your unsubscribers? Thanks in advance!

Melissa

[Anonymous]

@Melissa, we decided not to send that kind of message out of legal reasons, as the consequences might be real bad. Reason #2 is, while investigating the issue with high % of unsubscribers, we discovered that a huge amount of leads were mistakenly unsubscribed by our website that was setting "Unsubscribed" to "true" by default when submitting any form. So basically we now have a different problem and must find a different solution. If you are thinking about re-engaging your leads, I believe Josh gave the best suggestion possible. Segmentation & targeting is everything!