It’s fascinating to watch how commercial marketers deal with the same problems nonprofit marketers face.

Here’s a post from Email Insider dealing with what to do about inactive, or non-responding, email subscribers.

The author makes four points:

1. No matter how your company defines inactives, the problem typically is huge. He says commercial marketers typically have 30-40% inactives on their databases.

2. Inactives are not created equal … for any number of reasons — acquisition source, purchase history, tenure on list, demographics, etc. So don’t treat them all the same, he says.

3. Reactivation programs usually don’t work well. The author cites typical reactivation rates in the 1-2% range. He treats that as failure … a distraction from focusing resources on the actives! Write-off 30-40% of your list?! That’s the nuttiest advice I’ve ever read … unless of course your new donor acquisition cost is zilch. All of you finding it cheaper to find a brand new donor than it is to reactivate a lapsed one, raise your hands.

4. The focus should be on reducing the potential for new and existing subscribers to go inactive. Don’t lose your customers in the first place. Well, OK, that’s music to The Agitator’s donor retention-obsessed ears.

Here’s what the author says you should do to ‘minimize inactivity’ (i.e., not lose them):

1. Identify the commonalities and characteristics, if any, of your inactive subscribers and take corrective actions. I’m OK with that.

2. Launch a welcome and onboarding program or improve your current one. Get new subscribers engaged — and purchasing if possible — as quickly as possible. To fundraisers that means thank donors and re-solicit quickly.

3. Capture and use meaningful data to deploy targeted and segmented programs. His suggestions in this area are very consumer-oriented. But, in the fundraising context, they boil down to using whatever donor information you can capture  or infer (e.g., from acquisition source) to make your further engagement as relevant as it can possibly be. In other words, different strokes for different folks.

So, mixed reviews on this advice. But still plenty of food for thought.

Tom