What to do if you’ve ghosted your email list

If you haven’t emailed your list for a while, this will almost certainly have impacted the deliverability of your emails i.e. the likelihood your emails will actually hit peoples’ inboxes.

If you need to ‘wake up’ your email list, your priority should be to get people interested in your content again. So you don’t just want people to open your emails, you also want them to take action i.e. click the links in your emails.

This is why I recommend sending a series of 3 emails – over the course of a week or so – that are designed to get your subscribers to take action e.g. clicking or replying to you.

If you haven’t been emailing your list, it’s best not to ‘gloss over it’ or make excuses. In fact, acknowledging it can be a way to build a rapport with your audience. You can even joke about feeling like a ‘bad friend’ or being embarrassed about not getting in touch.

There is a template for a three-part email re-engagement sequence in my Courageous Launch Content Kit but here’s a summary.

In the first email, acknowledge that you haven’t been keeping in touch as regularly and explain that you want to change that and offer a free resource/download.

As with any email lead magnet, it needs to be something that solves a problem for your email subscribers e.g. a free template or checklist that will save them time or money.

Subscribers who download your freebie can be moved into a nurture sequence of emails – a specific set of follow up emails linked to that particular resource.

But remember you don’t need email automation to do any of this – the strategy is more important than having fancy email marketing software. So unless you have a large email list, you really don’t need to worry.

In your second email, try another strategy to get people to click. If you use email marketing software – and have the ‘know-how’ to set it up – you can list 3-5 topics you are thinking of covering and invite subscribers to share which they would find most useful. If not, you can simply ask people to email you back.

In your final email (for those who haven’t opened email 1 or 2 and/or have opened but haven’t taken action) invite people to unsubscribe. Share some of the topics you are planning to cover in the coming weeks/months and invite them to unsubscribe if they are no longer interested in hearing from you.