Copy And
The marketing podcast where online service providers learn how to write copy that sounds like them, but converts BETTER.
I’m Sam Burmeister, your guide on this copy adventure. As a conversion copywriter & sales psychology expert, I learned the ‘right way’ to sell in my decade-long sales career.
Now, after spending the last 6+ years writing copy for hundreds of successful launches and helping dozens of entrepreneurs write better copy every week…I know what sells and what’s working in online business right now.
And what’s working is copy AND – Copy and messaging, design, strategy, navigating AI and more...
Together, we’ll put the pieces of the marketing puzzle together - and you will write copy that both serves AND sells.
Copy And
20. Reengaging an Abandoned Email List
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In this episode I talk about what to do when coming back to an abandoned email list.
We abandon our lists for myriad reasons, both good and bad: parental leave, burnout, etc. But it's YOUR list. You can come back to it. But how you comes back, too. Listen in to hear my favorite ways to reengage your list.
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Hey friends. Welcome back to Copy End the marketing podcast where I teach you how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. I told you that I was going to start a series this week about what goes into each of your individual pieces of copy. However, as you know, I run copy on demand and I have several new members, and what I have seen as a theme amongst a few people is that they have abandoned their list. And they wanna come back to their lists and start using email marketing again. But where do you start when you've left your list, without sending them anything for the last six to 12 months. So that's what I'm gonna take an opportunity to start with today, because if my clients have abandoned their lists, then you might have two. So let's dig in. What I am gonna do is I'm gonna go through my seven ideas that I have for ways in which you could reengage your list. However, while I'm. Present these as separate ideas. I think there's a lot of good ways to bring'em all together. So I wanna present these as several separate ideas, but if you're a note taker, go ahead and make some notes on what you think would work best for you. Again, everything in copy comes down to it being an art. It comes down to it being personal, and I want you to connect with your audience. So. It depends on why you abandoned your list in the first place. Did you get busy? Did you take a sabbatical? There's a lot of different reasons on why you might have. However, there's a couple things to consider when coming back, and the first is deliverability. I want you to be prepared that there's a solid chance that if you send out a sales email as your first email, you might get flagged by the internet gods. So while you may have. Different goals for what you do with those first couple emails. Are they gonna sell? Is the goal to reintroduce yourself, et cetera. I want you to focus on encouraging engagement in these emails. And the reason for that is because it'll signal to the internet guides that you are legit and you will get more clicks, more views, more deliverability in the future. Because what I don't want you to do is get excited, go all in, and then accidentally mess something up. Your goal here should be engagement unless you plan on rebuilding your list, and that's okay. So let's dig in. Idea number one is engagement. What can you do to get more clicks and more opens? I have a couple of ideas here for you. You could gift your past freebies to people. Again, we're not gonna send them to the opt-in page, we're just gonna send them straight to the freebie. We are going for straight up value add in this email. Another thing you can do is point them to your other pieces of content. Now, somebody who's an SEO expert might tell you something different, but I don't see any deficit in sending them to a third party page. So this might be to your Instagram, your LinkedIn, et cetera, just to say, maybe see what I've been up to in photos here, and then send them out to another piece of content. However many of you have podcasts. You could send them to one of your podcast pages. Many of us have blogs we could send them to something high value that we just published there. I think what's really nice about this engagement strategy is that it gets people to click through to your page. It may encourage people to respond to you and say, Hey, I've been going through this too, or I've also been doing X, Y, and Z, or, this is really important to me. The second idea, this is controversial, is disengagement. Maybe you want people to see themselves out. Maybe you want people to help you clean your own list, and that's okay. I think this is a really good strategy if you're pivoting. One of my best friends is a web designer, and she went on sabbatical, knew that she was gonna reimagine her business, she's not coming back to design, she's coming back to something completely different. So she is going to email her list and tell them all of the exciting things that she's been up to and say, Hey, if you aren't interested in hearing about this new direction in my business, go ahead and unsubscribe. I'm so glad that you've spent this time with me. It kind of goes into the idea of number three, which is sharing news. Sometimes we abandon our list because life gets hard. Sometimes we abandon our list because life gets awesome. If you've been out on parental leave and have left your list, or you took a full-time job and now you're coming back to it, you can announce the news. Or like this friend that I used the example of in the disengagement opportunity, she might come back and say, this is my news. This is what's exciting. Click here to learn more about it. So we've talked about engaging people as an idea, unengaging people, maybe the click is the unsubscribe, and that's okay telling them news. Number four is to repurpose. I always say that your business is in an airport. You don't have to announce your arrival. So if you are making announcements all the time of, I'm announcing that I'm taking a step back, I'm announcing that I'm back. Where are you providing value to your readers? So this is where I think repurposing comes in handy is depending on how long you've been gone for, you could pretend you never left. Give them a subtle reminder of who you are and what you do. And reuse may be the best performing email of last year. I have a lot of friends who do this. I even do this in my launches. I find the content that has performed the best in the past, and I reuse a lot of that messaging, a lot of those words verbatim. So again, I'm giving some pretty easy strategies too, because if you've stepped away from your list, it's hard to jump back in. It can be, it's hard to get back in a new rhythm. So if you're repurposing old content or just simply giving free things that you already exist in your business, it doesn't have to be low lift. In fact, if you go all in right away, you might get flagged. So we've got engage people, disengage people, give them new news. Repurpose some of your old stuff. Number five, promote your besties. Again, this might be controversial to send people to pages that aren't yours, but you can shout people out as your engagement strategy as your, Hey guys. I've been away for a while, but I've been very active. Here's something I collaborated on with one person, and here's something I've found really impressive that another person is doing. Have something that you're excited about. Send it my way. Maybe I'll promote it in another email. Simply just getting on the same side of the table as your people. Number six is to set expectations. You can announce your arrival or your departure if you want to, but set expectations for what you're gonna do moving forward. You haven't heard from me in a while, but I'll be sending X, Y, and Z every Friday is a totally normal thing to do when you're coming back to your email list. And finally number seven is to reintroduce yourself. People may have forgotten who you were. Maybe they were on your list for like a week before you went away. Maybe it's been a while. Maybe they just need a good reminder, and this is a great one for people at the beginning of the year I've seen a lot of reintroduction emails since the new year started, and I love that as a strategy. We might have associated someone with a single service and forgotten who they are as a person, and that they also offer things that are a little bit more holistic. So we have a lot of ideas for what I would do if I were going to re-engage my list, but ultimately, I think it's a combination of all of these. I think it's okay to announce that you're back or that you were gone for a while. You may say something like, Hey, everybody, or, Hey, first name. It's Sam, and a few months ago I decided to take a step back from email marketing, but I have great news. I'm back and I have a bunch of copy tips for you. See what I've done there. I've started to provide value. If you haven't yet, go check out my opt-in copy bot. Here's a direct link so you don't need to opt-in. It will build your opt-in page in a matter of minutes. I hope this is helpful as you start to sell at the beginning of the year. I know I left for a while, but in the new year, this is what I'm planning on, is sending an email every Monday with copy tips, as well as introductions to other professionals that I work with and have really enjoyed. I hope you'll stay along with me, but if you don't feel like receiving copy tips from me, there's a button here to opt out. Regardless. I'm so glad that you're here and I will see you and you'll see a lot more of me in 2026. Here's to writing better copy, Sam. That's a totally normal email to send. It's got a couple of links. It's not gonna get flagged, and it's not super long. I would also definitely add a photo of you or your logo, something that people will recognize you by so that people have that visual reminder that they're getting something from you as well. If you've abandoned your list, be nice to yourself. It doesn't mean that you have to go like 75 hard style and come back to your email list with full chutzpah. You don't need to do that. Be excited to be back. Send a couple of emails over the first couple of weeks and then start seeing where you need to rebuild back part of your list. If you've lost some, if you need to start sending emails so that you can do a list scrub in a little while, that is okay too. It would be unreasonable to come back to the same house thinking there's no dust on the shelves after six months, right? Clean up that list. And start selling and connecting, selling to and connecting with your audience. If you're looking for help on your copy this year, you can reach out to me on Instagram at nomad dot copy on LinkedIn. I'm Samantha Burmeister, or on my website@nomadcopyagency.com. I still have project start dates available for February and March with limited availability, and then we really open up again in April. If you're looking to work with me, reach out as soon as possible so that we can get you on the calendar. I'll see you next week.