In this article, we’ll show you how to create an automation that uses “Split” actions and sends a win-back email to subscribed contacts who haven’t engaged with your campaigns in the last 90 days. Contacts who do not engage with your email are unsubscribed from all lists. You need a minimum of 90 days' worth of data to use this option.
This solution is ideal for customers on Professional and Enterprise plans looking for a quick and easy way to reach out to unengaged contacts before unsubscribing them from all list(s).
With this automation, we recommend carefully winning back unengaged contacts to avoid eroding your sender reputation.
Take note
- You must have permission to access custom contact fields and the Automation feature
- To use this option, you must create a new custom contact date field that captures the last engaged date for contacts. For this article, we’ll call this custom field “Last engaged date”
How it works
This win-back automation is a 3-step process. First, you create an advanced search for subscribed contacts who have not engaged with your campaigns.
Then, create an automation with no start trigger. In addition, this automation uses a series of even “Split” actions, timed “Wait” actions, “Send Email” actions, “If/Else” actions, “Add a tag” actions, and “Unsubscribe” actions.
With the even “Split” actions, you set them up so that 5,000 contacts are sent a "Win back" email at a time. Doing so means that your sender reputation will remain intact and you can avoid negatively impacting your domain reputation.
In the third step, you will use the Bulk Edit tool to add identified contacts to your Win-back automation.
In addition to performing this list cleanup, we also recommend setting up three additional automations that will help you track contacts’ last engaged dates, unsubscribe unengaged contacts within the first 90 days that they were added to your account, and unsubscribe unengaged contacts from the last 6 months.
Visit "Use automation to track contacts' last engaged dates and perform ongoing list cleanup" to learn more.
Build the automation
- Go to Automations and click “Create an automation.”
- Click “Start from Scratch” > “Continue” in the modal pop-up.
- Click the “Start without a trigger” option.
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Drag the “Split” action to your automation:
- Select the “Conditional” option
- Update “300” to “5000 total contacts have been sent to Path A”
- Click the “Apply” button
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Add the “Send an email” action to your automation:
- This email is a win-back email. Use this opportunity to reach out to contacts who haven’t engaged with you and see if they still want to be subscribed to your list
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Add an If/Else action to your automation to create two segments with the following conditions:
- Has opened Campaign Win back email (this is the email you created in step 5 above) ever OR
- Has clicked on a link Campaign Win back email (this is the email you created in step 5 above) ever OR
- Has replied to Campaign Win-back email (this is the email you created in step 5 above)
- Click “Save”
- Under the “Yes” path, drag the “Add a Tag” action to your automation. Create a new tag called [Re-Engaged] Winback (note that you can use any tag here)
- Drag the “End this automation” action to the bottom of the “Yes” path.
- Under the “No” path, drag the “Add a Tag” action to your automation. Create a new tag called [Re-Engaged] Manual Winback Unsubscribe.
- Drag the “Unsubscribe” action to your automation and select the “Unsubscribe from all lists” option.
- Drag the “End this automation” action to the bottom of the “No” path.
- Under Path B of the "Split" action, drag the “Wait” action to the workflow and set it to wait for 1 week.
- Under this timed wait, repeat steps 4-10 above.
- If you need to add more “Split” actions, follow the steps outlined above until you have the desired amount in your automation so that all identified contacts flow through.
Create an advanced search
- Go to Contacts > Search bar> Advanced Search.
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Use the following conditions for your advanced search:
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Is subscribed to list (active) - At least one list AND
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Has been sent - Campaign - Any campaign - In the last - 90 - Days AND
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Has not opened - Campaign - Any campaign - In the last - 90 - days AND
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Has not clicked on a link - Campaign - Any link - In the last - 90- Days AND
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Has not replied - Campaign - Any campaign - In the last - 90 - Days
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- Click the “Search” button.
- Bulk add the contacts to your automation (steps below)
Bulk add your contacts to the automation
- From the advanced search, click the “Edit all” button to select all contacts rendered in the search.
- A modal window will appear. Click the “Add to an automation” option and select the automation you created to unsubscribe contacts.
- Click the “Add” button, then click the “Apply” button.
- A modal window will appear. Click the “Apply changes” button to confirm the bulk update action.
- Click “OK” to close the modal window.