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How to win back subscribers who stopped reading

One reason to come back, then a tag so you can stop mailing the people who never do. Keeping dead addresses is what ruins a sender reputation.

The workflow

1. 1Send email: no campaign chosen yet
2. 2Delay: 7 days, held to 10:00 their time
3. 3Condition: splits the flow in two
4. 4Tag: "dormant"
5. 5Exit flow

Before you start

This is list hygiene wearing a marketing hat, and the hygiene is the point. People who never open are dead weight that quietly ruins your sender reputation: mailbox providers read persistent non-engagement as a signal that your mail is unwanted, and it affects delivery to the people who DO read you. One good reason to come back, then stop mailing the ones who do not.

You will need: a tag you apply to quiet contacts, one campaign.

How to set it up

1. 1Create a segment of contacts who have not opened anything in six months, and tag them.
2. 2Choose the Win back template and trigger on that tag.
3. 3Write one email that gives an actual reason to return. Not "we miss you": say what changed or what they missed.
4. 4Leave the condition at seven days. It branches on whether they engaged.
5. 5The no branch applies a dormant tag. Exclude that tag from your regular sends.
6. 6Activate.

What goes wrong

• Unsubscribing people automatically. The template tags instead, deliberately: an automatic unsubscribe is irreversible and you should look at the list before acting on it.
• Running it on people who signed up last month. Give a subscriber at least a few months of your actual sending rhythm before deciding they are inactive.
• Sending the win-back and then carrying on mailing the dormant group anyway, which is the step everybody forgets and which makes the whole exercise pointless.