Creating a Re-Engagement Email Campaign that Works

Ever wonder why members don’t renew? 50% of associations say the main reason is lack of engagement. And members themselves agree: when we surveyed them for the Association Member Experience Report, lack of engagement was the top reason they consider leaving their association. This underscores a real concern for associations    

Losing member engagement is riskier than ever when there’s so much competition for members’ time and attention. Engaging with their associations can become a lower priority and that reduced activity disconnects them and eventually can lead to them seeing your organization as expendable. 

So what do you do about it?

Why Use Re-engagement Email Campaigns?

Some members are self-driven when it comes to getting the most out of their association memberships. They actively look for value from your association, and usually find it! But for others, you need to put in the effort and have a strategy to keep them in the fold.

That starts with a good member onboarding campaign and plan to make sure members know how to leverage their member benefits – but what about after that? Do you have an effective way to fire member enthusiasm back up if they begin to lose interest? As with many things related to association communication, re-engaging members who are drifting calls for effective targeting and messaging. If the technology you’re using doesn’t facilitate that, then it becomes a time-consuming manual task for your team. 

 This is one of the areas where marketing automation can really shine!  Automated re-engagement email campaigns can save you a lot of time and effort – and they’re remarkably effective because they automatically reach out to members based on their behavior (if you had to do that individually, you’d likely miss many of the signs of a disengaged member because there are so many to keep up with). Associations who put automated re-engagement email campaigns into effect often see double-digit increases in engagement and retention, without wasting time with inefficient processes.  

So how do you create an effective email re-engagement campaign? Let’s take a look at how replacing generic interactions with a targeted member engagement strategy can keep members active and connected — and keep them renewing their memberships.  

How to Build an Automated Re-Engagement Email Campaign

If you’re counting on members to reach out and volunteer the fact that they’re feeling unengaged and losing interest in their membership, that’s not going to happen. Disenchantment happens quietly – the trick is to leverage the systems you have to catch signs of disengagement and not let it develop to the point that membership renewal hopeless.  

Marketing Automation software, like Higher Logic Thrive Marketing, gives you tools that make it easier to monitor member engagement continuously, and trigger communication in a focused, strategic way that continually reinforces the value of your association. For example:

• You could set up engagement scoring to split members into engaged and disengaged groups based on markers you have seen that indicate whether members are engaging. These might include whether or not someone is opening an clicking on links in your emails. If your online community is connected to your marketing system (like in Higher Logic Thrive Platform) you might also base engagement scores on community engagement. And if your AMS is integrated with your email system you might also consider including whether or not someone has registered for something in a certain time period.
• You could then set up an automated email campaign based on these engagement scores. The engagement threshold you choose (because you have total control) can trigger a message encouraging someone to reconnect. Let’s say your threshold is that a member is regarded as unengaged if they have an email open rate below 5% for 30 days. You could then automate another message if they’re still below 5% at 60 days. Making sure to incorporate earlier thresholds give you plenty of time to swing members back to being involved before they land on a permanent decision to leave. 

With this tech and this method, you can plan well in advance which members should get value-reinforcing emails, and when they should get them. 

And how, you ask, do you write these value-enforcing emails?

5 Tips for Writing a Great Re-Engagement Email

Generic messages aren’t going to do much for you once a member’s engagement drops. The emails they get need to feel personal and very relevant. These five email copywriting suggestions should help you write email content that will serve your re-engagement email campaign well. 

1. Make it clear you’ve noticed they aren’t engaging, and care. Don’t just tell them you noticed they aren’t engaging. Show them you’re doing something with that knowledge. You genuinely want to know why the member isn’t interacting and how you can make the membership more valuable to them. 
2. Provide an easy path to resources. Since the problem at least partially involves a member’s lack of time, respect that. Don’t send them on a hunt to find your association’s resources. Give them a clear, direct link and call to action.  
3. Keep it short and sweet. Even engaged members don’t want to be pestered with emails. So for a re-engagement strategy, keep it to no more than a couple of messages. You’re making a valid point, so get to it, and don’t scare them away with big blocks of text. 
4. Stick with what members care about. If you’ve put in the work to make your association’s value proposition clear and relevant, this should just involve reminding members of it. Why do members join? What parts of the site or community did they engage with? The key is to remind members their association deals with the issues most pressing to them. 
5. Leverage social proof. Give them testimonials from members who are actively involved and getting a lot out of the association. What are the specific ways they’ve benefited? Peer testimony is a valid and powerful force. Unengaged members can’t write off authentic member testimonies as a marketing tactic. 

Tips for Writing the Best Re-Engagement Email Subject Lines

Not much happens if members won’t even go further than the email’s subject line – so definitely spend time and thought on these. Subject lines can’t be generic or dull. The best ones will use words that tap into emotions, provoke your reader’s curiosity, and demonstrate what value members will get from opening the email.

For example: you likely want to avoid the subject line, “We Miss You.” It’s written from the association’s point of view and it’s primarily about how the association feels and what YOU want. Make the subject line about THEM. Things like:

• Let’s Catch Up – Exciting Updates from [Association Name]
  • Share your association’s newest benefits that someone who hasn’t been engaging might have missed
• [Name], can we help you find something?
  • Send this “from” someone at the organization, acknowledging that they haven’t been engaging and offering to help them make the most of membership. You can pointing out a few top benefits and ask for feedback.
• Here’s what you missed: [top conversation in online community, resource, or other high-value item]
  • Take an opportunity to point members to a really engaging thread on your online community, new and popular resource, or educational program related to their interests.

Tips for Timing Your Re-Engagement Campaign

Keep in mind, although re-engagement campaigns are intended to drive higher member renewal rates when renewal season rolls around, if you wait to engage members until renewal time, it’s already too late. Trying to convince drifting members the association has many valuable things to offer right when you’re asking them to renew is not a good look. No matter how awesome your membership renewal letter is, the retention effort needs to start long before that. 

Personalized Re-engagement for Better Member Retention

The deeper and more detailed your member tracking, the more your association can identify and create member-centric emails for members in danger of leaving. As you might imagine, trying to do this manually, while not impossible, is hard to sustain. Automated email campaigns bring the kind of refinement to your re-engagement campaigns that make true member-centricity possible. The reward for that: higher renewal rates.  

The Florida Association of Insurance Agents (FAIA), for example, switched from outdated email marketing strategies to automated email campaigns and saw a 201% increase in email engagement and a 40% online renewal conversion rate.

You too can highlight your association’s value with personalized emails and maintain closer relationships with members through automation so that they always know and understand how their investment in membership pays off. 

This blog post was originally published July 2022, but has since been updated to bring you the latest and greatest.