List Hygiene - It's Vital But Not Sure Mailwizz Can Handle It

Alex Read

Active Member
Hi

I use autoresponders a lot with my Mailwizz setup.

Unfortunately, over time people lose interest and become cold.

Is there a neat way to have it 'auto' clean 'inactive' people from your various lists?

I know that all the big services have some sort of AR that goes out to 'inactive' subscribers, that if people don't reply to they get removed from the list.

This increases your inbox rate but making sure you've only got engaged readers.

How would I automate this with Mailwizz?

(Since you can't use a custom field like 'open count' and send based off this, because these stats are horribly off (when people download mail with Outlook, etc).
 
Hi Alex - great you're bringing this up. I 100% agree, especially since email marketers get punished by leading email providers for continuously targeting disengaged users. This is one of my biggest bugbears w/ Mailwizz and I'm hoping for a neat, built-in solution in the future.

The way I have solved it is a combination of ...
  • capturing opens and clicks by using a [INCREMENT_BY_X] custom field - I called it "engagement"
  • counting number of successful sends per record, also using the [INCREMENT_BY_X] value - I called that field "sends"
every email opened and link clicked adds 1 point in the "engagement" field
every email sent to an individual record adds 1 point in the "sends" field


I'm then segmenting using both fields by
engagement value to be greater than (say) 5
OR
number of sends less than (say) 3 - since segmentation cannot be done based on sign-up date :(

This creates an engaged segment, which can be fine-tuned and additional segments can be set up:
HIGH ENGAGEMENT, LOW ENGAGEMENT, NO ENGAGEMENT etc. just by changing the values

You can then target the LOW or NO ENGAGEMENT records with automated re-engagement campaigns, or pause them completely to keep your list healthy.

I do wish that best practice and a pro-active marketing approach is being considered as Mailwizz is being developed. The reseller opportunity ow MW is great, but right now I do not have clients who are savvy enough to set these things up themselves and are often rather sticking with overpriced Mailchimp in order to have more intuitive list management and integrated email builders.
 
I was just going to come post about this and ask what the best way to do a re-engagement campaign would be. It is VITAL to have this. I have like 180 days of autoresponders... then people get moved to a general broadcast list.

My goal is to have a process where if someone hasn't OPENED or CLICK ANY email in 180 days or so. MOVE them to a re-engagement list where they get 3 A/R's asking them to click to continue getting email.

There doesn't appear to currently be a way in mailwizz to do this. (However, MailWizz does have an option to clean all lists of un-engaged people after X days. It's in the backend settings. This cron runs and DELETES un-engaged people. But I want to move them to a re-engagement list first...)

So the only way I can see doing this now is perhaps with some sort of API that grabs records that haven't opened or clicked in X days... and them API's them to a re-engagement list and removes them from all other lists.

We might have to actually do some sort of DB selection stuff as the API may not be able to do this - just to get the email records to re-engage. Then ADD them to the re-engage list through the API, and REMOVE them all from all other lists.

What do you think is the best way to handle this @twisted1919 ?

Dan
 
Here's what I'm going to do guys...

1. I created a custom field in all lists called "Last Date Engaged".

2. For every autoresponder or broadcast OPENED, I'll update this to the CURRENT DATE.

3. For every autoresponder or broadcast CLICKED, I'll also update this to the CURRENT DATE. (AS you know opens don't always track.)

4. As my subscribers move from list to list, they are also COPIED to a MASTER LIST, which copies this value as well.

5. I will setup a SEGMENT in this MASTER LIST that will use the dynamic varibles to check this custom field date value against the current DATE minus 180. If the custom field is LESS than 180, an email will be triggered and will MOVE them to the re-engagement sequence.

This should work great as long as I always COPY an email - which would also copy the Last Date Engaged Trigger. I'll just have to double check the "on click links" in each one though as those will change.

I believe this is going to work well... FYI
 
@nadworks - I totally agree with you. MW really needs to up it's game with autoresponders. I've been asking for it for 1.5 years and there are a few minor tweaks that are great but with a little bit of focus it could be epic!

1) I use the exact same method as you. (at least I have those exact fields) - I use different names for the fields but prefer yours!

You can then target the LOW or NO ENGAGEMENT records with automated re-engagement campaigns, or pause them completely to keep your list healthy.
- What's the best way to automatically remove these subscribers from the list?
I'd guess, maybe have a 3rd binary field called 'ENGAGEMENT STATUS' and if they're on the low side, it sends a final email, updates the status to 'disengaged' and then they're removed.

I would MUCH rather have a method where you could trigger a cleanup without having to send another email.

@twisted1919 - how do you envision handling non-responsive subscribers?

For those not sure about the importance - read this AMAZING case study.
https://sumo.com/stories/email-marketing
 
1) The system by @nadworks will work for initial subscribers - people who sign up and don't engage BUT what about 6 months in.
- the sent count will be high.
- the open count will also be above your threshold since they opened at the start but haven't opened the last 5 emails.
So they were engaged, but now they're ICE-COLD. How do you remove these?

2) I have a custom field called 'ENGAGEMENT' that's default is ENGAGED, for new subscribers. So what I've done is after the first 6 emails that get sent I send another email, if they haven't engaged, I update it to DISENGAGED. So now I can see who's disengaged.

BUT how the heck do I stop sending any emails to them?
I have about a 75 autoresponders with custom fields, that send to the main list. So I can't update these AR's to send to a segment called 'ENGAGED' as I'd need to rebuild it all for many client accounts and all the custom fields get reset. I'm also not keen to create duplicate lists called 'List Name - DISENGAGED' as that would make the lists messy.

@twisted1919 I'm totally stuck here. Any suggestions?
 
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All good and very valid points, @Alex Read - I'd probably not want to remove the disengaged subscribers outright. Sending a targeted re-engagement campaign after pausing these "sleeping" users might be a method to get them back in. So keeping them in the list but with a disengaged flag against them until you're marking them as DNR would be my preferred solution.

Either way we're totally on the same page. The value of MW would sky-rocket with a standard of eCRM functionality that can be utilised. I'd be happy to pay for it if it was a premium add-on.
 
Here's what I'm going to do guys...

1. I created a custom field in all lists called "Last Date Engaged".

Yes, I have that field, too. I've called it LAST_OPEN_ACTION and it's a date/time field that keeps getting updated with each new campaign open by that subscriber. So I guess that'll be my field to make a segmentable calculation on, using the "less than" / "greater than" selector.

I must admit though that the terms less than and greater than in relation to a date are seriously messing with my head, where a before and after would be far more logical, or days since...
 
@nadworks - I also have a last sent date, last open date field on top that engagement field. I find that a binary option for engagement is easier to understand :)

Will see how to solve this without creating duplicate lists everywhere...
 
@Alex Read , @nadworks , @eggerda --

Just a quick note to say "thanks" for this thread. Got some great ideas which I utilized in my current campaign (have been away from MW for a while).

Will throw in my "2 cents" once (if) I am able to provide any useful thoughts on this particular thread.:cool:

Cheers!
 
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