The first interaction with a business is when potential customers are the most engaged. For example, if a lead subscribes to your newsletter, that is the critical moment when you have the best chance to get them to try your service. Unfortunately, many leads tend to forget about a business they connected with very quickly because of the wide variety of options and inundation of other marketing emails in their inbox. So, quickly after the initial contact, if there is no tangible connection made with the first contact, it's easy for leads to ignore or forget about further attempts.

That’s why welcome emails – the emails that are sent to people shortly after they've subscribed to a newsletter or marketing emails – have the highest open rate. In fact, Business 2 Community claims that these emails generate 5x more clicks and 4x more opens than regular ones. Unsurprisingly, welcome emails generate up to 33% more engagement compared to customers who don’t receive them.

One way to try and re-engage passive subscribers is win-back campaigns. Simply explained, these are email campaigns designed specifically for the purpose of enticing them to return and take one more look at what you have to offer them. For coworking businesses, a win-back campaign is also an excellent opportunity to reengage leads, so we’re going to share what you need to know in order to do it properly.

What To Know Before You Start

Your list of subscribers probably contains thousands of addresses, so how do you define the users who need to be re-engaged? While the amount of time that someone’s been inactive and falls in the “passive subscribers” category depends on the type of business and industry, it’s recommended that you send re-engagement campaigns to those who haven’t visited your website or visited your space in the past 90 days.

Identify these subscribers and create a special category for them. Now let’s review the best practices for win-back campaigns so you can create emails that can wake up sleepy leads.

1. Write a Compelling Subject Line

Without a doubt, a subject line is the most important element when it comes to making your emails stand out in an overfilled inbox. Remember: the problem of grabbing the attention of a “sleepy” subscriber isn’t the only one you have to deal with here; there’s also a fierce competition to handle.

With the number of emails that consumers receive every day is rapidly increasing (in fact, Radicati Group claims that the number of consumer and business emails will grow to more than 333 billion by the end of 2022), investing a lot of thoughts into subject lines is something you should definitely consider.

So, how to make a subject line compelling enough for your passive subscribers?

2. Describe the Benefits of Opening the Email

Chances are that a lot of people subscribed to your newsletter to receive exclusive offers and discounts, so give them that.

Here are some examples of inspiration:

“A Discount Just For You, Inside…”

“20 Percent Off Discount Code”

“Use This Promo Code to get 20 Percent Off + Free Shipping”

These sound like good deals, right? That’s because they provide that incentive needed to motivate a lead to return.

Here are a few options for coworking businesses:

“A Complimentary Day Pass to Our Space Inside”

“Reply to Get a 50 Percent Discount for a Private Office”

“When Would You Like to Use Your Free Dedicated Desk?”

3. Use the Name of the Subscriber in the Subject Line

This is basic personalization technique that has become a must in email marketing. People appreciate relevance and personalization, so by using their name in subject lines, you have a better chance to attract their attention.

4. Create a Sense of Urgency

This is another popular marketing technique. When people feel a sense of urgency in emails, they’re more likely to act because they don’t want to miss an opportunity to take advantage of a good offer. For example, we can add urgent words like “today” or a specific timeframe, e.g. “offer ends in 20 hours” to motivate subscribers to check out what we have for them.

For example, health retailer Holland & Barrett shows how to use the time and price components to encourage subscribers to go to the website and buy their products.

Pro Tip: Avoid using the actual word “Urgent,” it can trigger spam filters.

5. Reduce the Price for the Preferred Service

Learn something about passive leads that could be useful for re-engaging them, e.g. the service they used the most (or the service they browsed the most on your website), and try to reduce the price for it. Such an incentive could play a very important role in making the final decision on whether to visit your space again.

For example, let’s assume that the lead lives in Portland, Oregon, and used a private office for teams up to 20 people. To try and get that lead to check out your offers once again, why not make a 10 or 20% discount for this specific type of office in Portland? This would be the best offer you could possibly make for them, so if it doesn’t work, nothing will.

6. Copy: Get Straight to the Point

Your subscribers don’t have all day to read your emails so you should describe your offer as concisely as possible in the copy. Quickly give them the most important details of the offer and describe how to take advantage of it. For example, if your offer is a complimentary day pass to your coworking space, the copy might look something like this example from Los Angeles-based IgnitedSpaces:

As you can see, the writer managed to deliver the message in just four sentences, which is pretty good because it doesn’t take a lot of time to read and discover the details of the offer. Another good thing about this copy is that the brand made it really easy to connect with them, as the subscriber just needs to forward this email with the day and time when it’s convenient for them to visit the site.

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7. Use Emotion

A lot of businesses use emotions to try and get the attention of passive subscribers. For example, a well-known online learning platform Duolingo begins this re-engagement message with an emotional subject line ‘You Made Duo Sad’ and continues with a concise copy letting the subscriber know that they should come back.

To reinforce the message, the brand uses Duolingo Owl to show how difficult it is for them to see that the subscriber has not been visiting the website for a long time. The message drives the viewer to a well-designed CTA (or call-to-action) to get them “back on track.”

As a coworking business, you can also use emotions to re-engage your passive subscribers. For example, you can say how much you miss them and you’re willing to give them a discount if they return. The best way to show that you really miss your customers is to save them some money or give them some perks.

It’s recommended you play the emotion card if the first re-engagement email fails because if it doesn’t work, chances are nothing will, and you shouldn’t waste your time.

Wrapping Up

Re-engaging passive subscribers with a win-back campaign could be hard because of the fierce competition, but this is something that you should do if you have a lead list. Take some time to segment your passive leads to find out what offers could be relevant to them, and create targeted emails that can help you to wake them up and get them back.

It’s possible that you’ll need to send two emails to each passive subscriber to cover all bases, but if they don’t respond after that, don’t hesitate to stop and focus on those you haven’t contacted yet. Knowing when to stop is also important, but hopefully, you’ll use the knowledge you gained from this article to create irresistible re-engagement offers.