One-Page Re-Engagement Checklist
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Checklist Item
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What to Confirm
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Define inactivity
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Confirm the criteria for inactive contacts, such as no opens in 90 to 120 days, no recent purchase, or no messages sent in the past year.
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Remove risky contacts
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Suppress contacts with excessive soft bounces, hard bounces, spam complaints, or other negative deliverability signals.
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Segment the audience
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Separate contacts by recent purchase behavior, email engagement, time since last contact, and deliverability risk.
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Select the campaign type
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Use a win-back flow for higher-value lapsed customers and a single re-engagement email for broader inactive audiences.
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Create a clear reason to respond
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Offer a relevant incentive, preference update option, useful content, or final confirmation message.
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Start small
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Test with a limited audience before expanding to larger inactive segments.
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Coordinate send volume
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Avoid sudden spikes by aligning re-engagement sends with the broader campaign calendar.
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Monitor closely
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Review opens, clicks, conversions, unsubscribes, complaints, bounces, and spam trap indicators after every send.
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Act on the results
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Continue messaging contacts who re-engage and suppress those who remain inactive.
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Document learnings
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Capture what worked, what underperformed, and how future re-engagement campaigns should be adjusted.
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Step-by-Step Re-Engagement Campaign Playbook
Use this playbook as a practical planning framework for building, launching, and improving a re-engagement campaign. Each step is designed to help marketers balance opportunity with deliverability risk.
Step 1: Set the Campaign Objective
Decide what success should look like before selecting the audience. Common goals include recovering lapsed customers, confirming subscriber interest, improving list quality, or identifying contacts who should be suppressed from future marketing.
Step 2: Define the Inactive Audience
Create a clear inactivity rule using engagement and business behavior. For example, include contacts with no opens in 90 to 120 days, no purchase or booking in the past year, or no email activity after a long period without being contacted. Can also have a deliverability-based signal too – i.e. contacts that have never engaged since signing up.
Step 3: Clean and Suppress High-Risk Contacts
Before sending, remove contacts that are likely to create deliverability issues. Suppress hard bounces, repeat soft bounces, recent complainers, known invalid addresses, and contacts with a history of negative engagement signals.
Step 4: Build Priority Segments
Group contacts by expected value and level of risk. Prioritize contacts with recent purchases or bookings first, then evaluate broader inactive audiences. Avoid treating all inactive subscribers the same.
Step 5: Choose the Message Strategy
Select the campaign format based on the audience. Use a win-back flow when the audience has meaningful past value and may need multiple reminders. Use a single re-engagement email when the goal is to confirm interest, offer a simple incentive, or decide whether to suppress inactive contacts.
Step 6: Create the Offer and Call to Action
Give recipients a clear reason to act. The call to action should be direct and easy to complete, such as returning to shop, booking again, updating preferences, confirming interest, or claiming a limited-time offer.
Step 7: Start with a Controlled Send
Launch to a smaller, lower-risk segment before expanding. This gives the team an early read on engagement, complaints, bounces, and deliverability signals without exposing the full inactive audience at once.
Step 8: Monitor Performance Immediately
Review both marketing performance and deliverability health after each send. Watch opens, clicks, conversions, unsubscribes, spam complaints, bounces, and spam trap indicators. Do not expand volume if warning signs appear.
Step 9: Decide Who Stays and Who Is Suppressed
Use results to determine next steps. Contacts who open, click, purchase, book, or confirm interest can remain eligible for future marketing. Contacts who do not respond after the re-engagement effort should be suppressed or moved to a lower-frequency strategy.
Step 10: Capture Learnings for the Next Campaign
Document the audience definition, segment performance, offer, creative approach, deliverability outcomes, and suppression decisions. Use these learnings to refine the next re-engagement campaign and improve the overall lifecycle marketing strategy.
