Today, marketers have access to more customer data than ever before. At the same time, low active subscriber rates suggest that brands are missing out on the opportunity to consistently engage their customers. Savvy marketers are putting subscriber data to work and executing activation campaigns to boost engagement across the board. Activation programs aim to engage new subscribers from the get-go and wake up inactive customers with tempting offers and personalized content. In this whitepaper, you’ll learn: -How to identify key subscriber segments -The three different types of activation programs -Where email activation campaigns fit in your marketing portfolio

2. What’s Inside?
This paper addresses why activation programs are important
and how a marketer should approach developing them.
Specific topics include:
• Industry trends that uncover an increasing need for
activation programs
• Goals and components of a successful email
activation program
• Types of activation campaigns top brands are creating
to wake up their sleeping subscribers
• Performance metrics for activation campaigns and
how they stack up against base communications
1
Activate &
Engage
2
Types of
Campaigns
Activation Programs: Using Email
Behavioral Data to Engage and
Reactivate your Customers
Most marketers are well aware that using consumer
behavioral data to create personalized marketing
programs will net a significant increase in marketing
ROI. But you may be surprised by just how much
more effective these programs are - according to
MarketingSherpa, targeted content is outperforming
status quo messaging by 200% to 300% on both
engagement and conversion metrics.1 In the field of
email marketing, activation programs, in particular,
have become a critical vehicle to drive engagement and
revenue for top-performing marketing teams.
The beauty of activation campaigns is that they empower
marketers to be proactive, instead of sitting idly by
as their customers drift away. Savvy marketers who
implement activation programs can welcome recurring
revenue and engagement from customers that might
have otherwise become inactive (or from customers who
are about to become inactive). Activation campaigns
can also help identify the truly lapsed customers, so
you can weed-out the ‘zombies’ that hurt your email
deliverability. The less engaged subscribers are with
your emails, the lower your sending reputation and the
higher the likelihood of deliverability issues. This is why
more and more brands are implementing activation
campaigns as part of a profitable email marketing
strategy.
3
Using the
Data
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pg. 2

3. Industry Trends
90%
of media interactions
are screen-based
It is a fascinating time to be an interactive marketer.
Change continues to accelerate and consumers are
adopting new technologies at a mind-blowing rate. A
recent study from Google indicates that 90% of all media
interactions today are screen-based.2 And because of the
rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets, consumer
attention is often split between multiple screens.
Yesmail’s Email Marketing Compass report affirmed
this finding by establishing that, on average, 30% of
consumers view emails in a combination of mobile
and desktop devices instead of exhibiting a consistent
preference of one over the other.3 This trend has
changed the way consumers interact with brands. It has
changed their expectations about how they want to be
reached, as well as how they research and buy products.
For the interactive marketer, new channels and the
variety of screens provide access to more information
about customers than ever before. Consumer behavioral
data is more readily available - marketers can access
transactional and point-of-sale (POS) data, engagement
behavior data like site visits and social activity, email
behavior data like opens and clicks, as well as multiscreen behavioral data on the web, mobile, social, and
email.
Knowing your customers and how active they are, is
a critical component of creating informed activation
programs that cater to the composition of your unique
database.
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pg. 3

4. Industry Trends
20%
Engaged by marketers
40%
60%
A recent report from Chief Marketer estimates that
marketers engage with less than 20% of their overall
database.4 Consequently, it comes as no surprise, that the
average active subscriber rate across all industries is 7.4%,
as per Yesmail’s Q2 Email Marketing Compass report.3
Marketers know they get the most value by identifying
and targeting their highly engaged segments, but that
doesn’t mean they can’t influence and “bring back”
those customers who have become inactive (or the new
subscribers who haven’t yet purchased). This is where
activation campaigns can really impact a brand’s email
programs and bottom line.
Advances in technology are making it far easier for
marketers to understand email behavioral data and build
activation campaigns. Several of the top ESPs (email
service providers) now have tools that help marketers
continually analyze and segment subscribers, automate
lifecycle marketing, and enable targeting based on
activity level and customer tenure. As technology
improvements continue to lessen the manpower needed
to analyze email behavioral data and segment users, we’ll
begin to see more brands harness the power of activation
programs.
80%
100%
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pg. 4

5. ers
rib
40
Inactive
Up
There is no benefit to wearing rose-colored glasses when
it comes to understanding your database. You might
find the number of inactive subscribers on your list to be
frightening, but you are not alone. Depending on your
industry, even an 80% inactive population is not unheard
of. Before developing your activation strategy, you need to
accept some of the bad news before developing a solution
to the problem.
%
Active
Su
bs
c
The Inconvenient Truth about Your
Audience
to 7
•
The average retailer has 40-70% inactive subscribers
(not opened/clicked in over 6/8/12 months).
Confirming this stat, Yesmail’s Q2 benchmark report
determined that almost 90% of the retail industry’s
mailable subscribers have not been active within 3
months.3
•
The first 90 days after you get a new subscriber are
absolutely critical. If they are new to your list and
they aren’t responding you need to immediately react
because response and activity will drop over time.
• The number of inactive subscribers in your list will
grow. As subscribers get used to hearing from you,
their engagement will typically decrease over time.
•
0%
1.877.937.6245 |
When you consistently mail to an inactive population
it brings down your overall performance, conversion,
AND deliverability rates (for more information
on deliverability, download Yesmail’s deliverability
whitepaper, 10 Email Deliverability Myths Debunked).5
The good news is that activation campaigns can and do
drive customers to the next level of engagement.
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pg. 5

6. Reasons Subscribers Become Inactive
Irrelevant
content
There are many reasons customers become inactive. As a
marketer, you have control over some while others…not
so much. Why do customers become inactive?
1. They don’t need or want the product/service at
this time – Are they not buying because they are not
interested in the product or because they are not
ready to buy at this time (seasonal purchase
behavior)? You can get a sense of their need by
looking through behavioral and past purchase data.
2. Your content is irrelevant – Research shared by
Social Barrel and Skadeedle indicates that 25% of
recipients find content irrelevant.6
Too many
messages
Too busy
3. You send too many messages – At a certain point,
the customer gets so used to getting stuff from you
that they begin ignoring your messages. Anyone with
an email account has opened it in the morning to
find it overflowing with messages. Inboxes are
flooded and sometimes subscribers just get
overwhelmed and tune out. According to research
shared by Social Barrel and Skadeedle, 47% of
consumers say they receive too many emails.6
4. They are too busy – Whether it is because Bobby is
home from school with the flu, they have a deadline
at work, or they don’t want to miss the finale of Game
of Thrones, sometimes consumers are too busy to
bother with your emails. Once they get used to
ignoring your emails, engagement can drop off.
5. They don’t see it – Your messages may be getting
caught in the junk folder due to deliverability
issues. Also, email providers like Gmail have
instituted separate folders for promotions that might
not be viewed as often as the main inbox.
Multiple
mailboxes
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6. They have multiple email accounts – Whether it
is because the customer got a new account and didn’t
close the old one, or because they have separate
emails for work and personal, or they have a separate
account for only marketing messages, most
consumers have multiple accounts. In fact, 43% of
voters in a Lifehacker poll said that they deal with 4-6
inboxes.7
marketing@yesmail.com | www.yesmail.com
pg. 6

7. An Introduction to Activation Programs
Goals and Strategies of Activation
Programs
Most marketers track opens and clicks, but too few of us
are digging deep enough and using behavioral data to
segment our customer base and create behavior-based
email campaigns. According to the 2013 Marketing
Sherpa email benchmark survey, only 37% of all surveyed
marketers are segmenting email campaigns based on
behavior to improve email relevance and engagement.8
And when you look at those marketers who ARE
personalizing content, 55% are segmenting based on
email engagement behavior and 53% do so based on
purchase history.
1. Drive customers to the next level of engagement (for
example, drive to first or repeat purchase)
2. Bring back customers who are inactive (it is much
more expensive to gain new customers than it is to
re-engage existing, right?)
3.
Help with list management (track segments and
develop optimal content and contact strategies; like
knowing when to remove inactive subscribers to
protect deliverability)
Inactive
Subscribers
Active
Openers &
Clickers
Activation campaigns are unique in that they are
specifically tailored to where your subscribers are
interacting with your email and whether they are
converting (typically to purchase) or not. If you can track
email behavioral data to understand subscribers – Are
they opening? Clicking? Buying? What products are
they buying? Which devices are they using? When did
they become inactive and why? – you can create trigger
messages to engage them and bring them closer to your
‘best customer’ segment.
First
Time Buyers
Repeat
Customers
Best
Customers
Bring inactive customers back
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pg. 7

8. Inactive Portion of Database
Elements of an Email Activation Strategy
Before developing your activation campaigns, you
want to make sure you have defined objectives so you
can create targeted campaigns by segment. Start with
an analysis to understand how much of your database
is active and how much is inactive. Your Email Service
Provider should have technology solutions to help with
this process, so don’t forget to reach out to them.
43%
Reasons for Inactivity
6%
23%
14%
Didn’t see it
Too busy
Not interested
1. Analyze your behavioral data to understand the
different levels of inactivity and create segments
based on these levels. How you define these segments
will depend on your database and specific business
model.
2. Once you have done some initial analysis to define
segments and identify counts per segment, you will
want to track the counts and movement by activation
segment. This will help you assess how your database
is changing and what the churn is.
• Analyze who is active, who is inactive, and how
inactive they are (duration).
• How frequently do they interact with your email
campaigns?
Time of Inactivity
• How recently have they done so?
• Track how the counts of each segment change
over time and understand where they are headed.
Mar.
Apr.
May
Jun.
Jul.
Aug.
Sept.
Oct.
For insight on potential database segments, see the Key
Segments section on the next page.
Activation Campaigns
Early
1.877.937.6245 |
Mid
Late
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pg. 8

9. Segment
Purchaser
One-time
Purchaser
Inactive
How you define your key activation segments will depend
on your business and industry. For example, you may
segment by buyers, repeat buyers, one-time purchasers
(those who bought only once), and inactive segments by
length of time since their last interaction.
Find out as much as you can about these audiences
and WHEN they become inactive so you can time your
activation programs appropriately. The more you know
about your customer, the more relevant your activation
campaigns will be. You can further divide early, mid, and
late segments based on product interest. For instance, if
you know a customer hasn’t interacted in a long while but
in the past they had purchased science fiction books, you
could send them the top science fiction books of 2013 in
your “We want you back” message. You have more to offer
than just a discount. Talk about what they have missed that
they might care about.
Purchases
Repeat
Purchaser
Key Segments
Types of Activation Campaigns
There are three different categories of activation
campaigns:
1. Early activation programs – designed to engage
subscribers who are NEW to your database (joined
within 0-90 days).
2. Mid activation programs – designed to engage
subscribers who have been inactive between
3 - 12 months.
3. Late activation programs – designed to engage
subscribers who have been inactive for over 12
months.
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pg. 9

10. Early
Mid
Late
Early Activation Programs
(aimed at subscribers with database tenure
of 0-90 days)
This is typically your highest performing category as
it consists of your newest subscribers. This is also the
category that you want to keep the closest eye on. When
you start to see an early drop-off in activity, you need
to immediately react, which is why it is important to
continually track email behavior and create appropriate
triggers.
Examples of early activation campaigns can include:
• First purchase offers – Special offers to get
subscribers to make that critical first buy.
•
Next purchase offers – These triggered campaigns
allow you to thank customers for their order and
provide a follow-up discount for their next purchase
to encourage repeat buys.
•
“Get more from your emails” (Update preferences) –
These campaigns ask the customer to tell you what
they want and provides the added benefit of
improving your knowledge of the customer so you
can provide more relevant content.
•
Multi-message ‘best offer’ campaign – As the
customer begins to approach 90 days of inactivity
you can consider sending a multi-message best offer
campaign with increasingly improved offers. If they
don’t respond to ‘10% off’, send ‘15% off’ a couple of
days later, etc. This gives you the opportunity to find
the sweet spot or special incentive that gets them to
act in the next message.
• VIP/Loyalty recognition – Don’t forget to continue to
reward your best customers and nudge them towards
the next purchase.
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pg. 10

11. Early
Mid
Late
Mid Activation Programs
(aimed at subscribers who have been inactive
for 3-12 months)
These programs are designed to bring back subscribers
who have been inactive for more than 3 months days,
but less than a year. Some of the campaigns from above,
like ‘update preferences’ and multi-message best offer
emails, also work well for this category.
Some additional campaign examples for this category:
a. Survey – Surveys can provide a compelling reason
for customers to engage and also provide you with
valuable insight when you analyze their answers.
b. ‘We miss you’ (come back offer) – This type of
campaign is similar to a first purchase offer, but
designed to bring customers back into the fold.
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pg. 11

12. Early
Mid
Late
Late Activation Programs
(Aimed at subscribers who have been inactive
for over 12 months)
This category serves two purposes:
1. You still want to get everything you can out of your
subscribers even if they haven’t interacted in a long
time.
2. Before retiring subscribers due to inactivity, you
want to reel as many as possible back in. You might
not get a big response out of this segment, but the
value here is finding out which of these customers
are actually inactive and determining whether to
implement an activation program for them or remove
them from your list since their disengagement with
your emails negatively affects deliverability.
You do not want to drop these subscribers into your
base communication flow because that will cause
deliverability issues due to lack of response and
engagement with your messages. Keep this segment
separate and consider it in Purgatory until you decide to
‘retire’ them from your database or attempt to re-engage
them. You may ask, “How long should I wait until I finally
let them go?” Like most things in email marketing, this
will depend on your company, but if someone hasn’t
opened in the past two to three years, it is safe to assume
that bringing them back is not likely.
Tips for developing activation campaigns for this
segment:
a. Proceed with caution. Start your campaigns using
small segments of subscribers to gauge interest and
avoid deliverability issues.
b. Don’t be afraid to be personal and direct. Use first
names: “Hey, Joe, we haven’t heard from you in a
long time.”
c. You have nothing to lose by sending the multi message best offer campaign to this segment. So
don’t be afraid to send your very best offer to bring
these ‘zombies’ back.
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pg. 12

13. Lifecycle
Campaigns
Connect and
Engage
Purchase Cycle
Campaigns
On-going
Communications
Where Activation Campaigns Fit in your
Portfolio
Welcome
Transactional
(order/ship/
confirmation)
Early Activation
0 to 30 days
Promotions
Welcome
Series
Bond
Get started
with your
product/tips
First Purchase
Offer
Cross-sell
Up- sell
30 to 90 days
Events
Activation campaigns are triggered off of email
inactivity and purchase activity. This means you can
email first purchase offers, as part of your lifecycle
campaigns, to subscribers who have been in your
database for some time, but have not yet purchased.
Similarly, to drive customers to the next level of
engagement, you can trigger a next purchase offer
within your purchase cycle campaigns.
Your base communications (on-going promos,
newsletters) will run in parallel with activation
campaigns and can also be targeted by activity
segments as appropriate. Some marketers will send
base communications less frequently to their less
active segments.
Survey
Review
Products
Loyalty/ VIP
Recognition
Newsletters
Shareable
Offer
On-going
Relationship
90+ days
Birthday
Anniversary
Re-purchase
Offer
Updates
Best Customer
Campaigns/
Loyalty
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pg. 13

14. ROI and Value of Activation Campaigns
Early
Activation
Middle
Activation
Late
Activation
Average
open rate
Average
open rate
Average
open rate
1.877.937.6245 |
91%
Increase
NO
Increase
21%
We recently ran a small performance analysis of five
leading e-commerce brands with activation campaigns
and compared their performance against Yesmail’s
portfolio of over 200 email marketers (that may or may
not have activation programs). We found that brands
that run activation campaigns had a lower percentage of
inactive customers. There are many types of campaigns
that can be sent to activate customers and prospects
under the early, mid, and late activation categories. For
our analysis, we selected one example campaign per
category to showcase the value of each category.
As expected, early activation campaigns typically
achieve an open rate that’s 91% above the average
open rate of 15.7% for base communications. Mid
activation campaigns performed in-line with base
communications, while late activation campaigns
yielded a 21% open rate decrease in comparison to base
communications. In addition, we discovered that clients
that deploy activation campaigns have a 13% higher
active subscriber rate (opened/clicked in last 90 days)
than typical senders.
These stats should convince you to reactivate early
and catch your customers before they drop off and
become inactive. Keep in mind these numbers may not
reflect some of the other benefits of the later activation
campaigns, like list hygiene.
Take the time to fully develop campaign strategies
and define success metrics. You need to have realistic
expectations about the type of response you will get from
early vs. late activation and understand that sometimes
the value of the campaign lies in gaining knowledge
about your database not achieving high response rates.
Decrease
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pg. 14

15. Conclusion
Activation programs have become a not-so-secret
weapon for achieving optimal consumer engagement.
A fully developed activation strategy that uses email
behavioral data can prevent customers from becoming
disengaged, re-engage those who have become inactive,
increase revenue from key segments, and provide
valuable information about the interests and preferences
of your subscribers.
Normal
Database
Wr
on
g
O
Activ
e
r
ffe
Segmented
Database
Too Busy
Don’t See It
ted
Not Interes
19%
14%
22%
13%
1 year
2 years
3 years
4 years
As you develop activation campaigns, remember to
begin by defining and tracking key segments over time.
Find out as much as you can about your audience and
when they become inactive. Create various campaign
strategies and test them to learn which ones produce the
best results.
For many marketers, one of the most difficult parts of
developing activation campaigns is having the time or
analytical prowess to crunch behavioral data and create
segments, but that hurdle is becoming less troublesome
with technological improvements that make analysis
easier. Tools that help you consistently measure and
automatically segment based on email behavior, and
automate early engagement campaigns, cascading
promotions, best subscriber offers and late activation
campaigns can be an important asset, so don’t forget to
reach out to your ESP to understand how they can help.
Successful activation programs should be a key part
of your ongoing email portfolio - and if they aren’t,
what are you waiting for? The quicker you can reach
the customers who have pulled away, the higher your
chances of bringing them back.
Don’t forget!
measure segments over time
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pg. 15

16. RESOURCES
1. http://sherpablog.marketingsherpa.com/emailmarketing/email-marketing-your-questions-aboutpersonalization-and-length/
2. http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/thenew-multi-screen-world-study.html
3. http://www.yesmail.com/resources/whitepaper/
yesmails-email-marketing-compass-mobile-effect
4. http://www.chiefmarketer.com/site-files/chiefmarketer.
com/files/uploads/2013/03/email-tech-roundup.pdf
We power intelligent customer interactions. We give you
the insights to recognize and understand your customer to
deliver contextually relevant digital communications – while
respecting their preferences and privacy. We help marketers
evolve their customer relationships through intelligent
interactions via technology, insights, and services in a near
real-time multichannel environment. We help you compete
in the age of the customer.
For more information, visit www.yesmail.com.
5. http://www.yesmail.com/resources/whitepaper/endnightmares-10-email-deliverability-myths-debunked
6. http://socialbarrel.com/why-do-email-subscribersunsubscribe-infographic/51195/
7. http://lifehacker.com/how-many-inboxes-do-you-dealwith-477186651
8. http://www.meclabs.com/training/publications/
benchmark-report/2013-email-marketing/overview
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pg. 16