Your re-engagement series probably looks something like this: “We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

And I doubt it’s working.

World Animal Protection US was running the same playbook. They had more than 100,000 “inactive” subscribers cycling through a traditional re-engagement series.

The results? Hard to track, angry supporters, and complicated segmentation that created more problems than it solved.

So they scrapped the whole thing and started over.

The counterintuitive fix
Working with Mal Warwick Donordigital, World Animal Protection tried something counterintuitive: instead of sending more emails to disengaged subscribers, they stopped sending emails entirely.

Here’s the logic. When a subscriber hasn’t opened an email in 7 months, they get suppressed from everything. 

No “we miss you.” No guilt trip. Just silence.

After a one-month break, they return to a lower-cadence tier. The team built a green/yellow/red system based on how recently someone last engaged:

  • Green subscribers (active in the last 6 months) get all emails. 

  • Yellow (8-9 months since last activity) gets 1-2 emails per month, and only the most compelling content. 

  • Red (10-12 months) gets 1-4 emails per year, reserved for breaking news and emergencies.

If someone in red still doesn’t engage, then it’s time to part ways.

The results
Their engaged subscribers (green) average 38-40% opens.

The yellow group averaged an open rate of 36% and a click-through rate of 1.51%. 

The red group hit 34% opens and 1.14% CTR. Both kept spam complaint rates under 0.02%.

Across both groups, the approach brought in more than $25,500 in revenue over time from over 300 donors who would have been suppressed under the old system. 

How to rethink your own re-engagement approach
Stop highlighting inactivity. Subscribers don’t respond well to “we haven’t heard from you.” 

Try leading with your best content instead of making the email about their silence.

Build a break into your cadence. If someone hasn’t engaged in several months, pulling them out of all sends for a few weeks can make your next message feel new again. 

It also sends better signals to inbox providers.

Use tiers, not a single on/off switch. Not every disengaged subscriber is equally gone. 

A layered approach lets you test what content actually brings people back before you cut them loose.

The bottom line
I think most of us are guilty of treating re-engagement as a last-ditch guilt trip. 

World Animal Protection US’s results suggest the opposite might work better: give people space, come back with something worth opening, and let the content do the re-engaging.

Industry events

Check our events list for more or reply to this email to submit one for consideration.

Quick hits

  • Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox has filed lawsuits against six nonprofit crowdfunding platforms including GoFundMe, PayPal and Network for Good. The lawsuits accuse the platforms of creating donation pages for nonprofits “without the organizations’ knowledge or consent.” The lawsuits follow a letter 23 state attorneys general sent to GoFundMe on the same topic earlier this month.

  • Email deliverability expert MV Braverman of Inbox Welcome is offering two free one-hour consulting sessions per month to nonprofits. She describes it as a “60 minute live Done-With-You session when you need help fixing the email or tech stuff that’s slowing things down or causing stress in the background.”

  • Bloomreach published a helpful breakdown of what Gmail’s AI-powered inbox means for email marketers. Thankfully, as Katelyn Baughan put it on LinkedIn, “nonprofits with authentic voices and strong missions are more equipped for this than they think.”

‘Til next time!
Sara

Keep reading