Email re-engagement campaigns: when to use them and when to move on
Joey Lee
September 22, 2025
Every marketer has been there: budgets are tight, growth is slowing, and the idea of re-activating old contacts suddenly looks like the quick win you need. After all, they already know your brand. But here’s the catch: while re-activation can deliver short-term gains, it’s a risky foundation for sustainable revenue.
In this post, we’ll unpack when re-activating old contacts makes sense, why it’s dangerous to lean on them too heavily, and how to balance re-engagement with long-term growth.
What counts as an “old contact”
Old contacts are people who once engaged with your brand but have since gone quiet. That might include:
Subscribers who stopped opening your emails
Leads who attended a webinar or downloaded content but never moved forward
Customers who purchased once and then disappeared
“Old” could mean 90 days of inactivity, six months, or more. The exact timeline depends on your sales cycle and how often you communicate. The common thread: they’re no longer actively engaging.
When re-activation is worth trying
Re-activating old contacts can be a smart play in the right context. It’s worth considering when:
You have clean data to personalize outreach
Your product, service, or messaging has evolved since they last heard from you
You haven’t run a re-engagement campaign recently, or you don’t have an automated series running
Your acquisition costs are high, making “known” leads cheaper to pursue
Re-activation often delivers lower cost per conversion than cold acquisition. That said, it works best as a complement to other strategies, not a replacement.
Why old contacts can’t be your growth engine
Leaning too heavily on re-activation comes with real risks:
Deliverability headaches
Inactive subscribers drag down open rates, which can hurt sender reputation and land you in spam folders.
Outdated or invalid data People switch jobs, abandon inboxes, or change email addresses. Old lists are often littered with bad data. Before executing any re-engagement campaigns, be sure to clean your list.
Shrinking upside
The small group who do re-engage are often the easiest wins you missed the first time. The rest have moved on.
Misaligned expectations
Contacts who disengaged months (or years) ago may no longer match your ideal customer profile.
Opportunity cost
Time spent chasing cold leads is time not spent nurturing active ones or building new acquisition channels.
How to run smarter re-activation campaigns
If you do choose to re-engage, make it count. Best practices include:
Define inactivity clearly: Segment by time frame so you don’t lump a 90-day lapse in with a 2-year ghost.
Personalize outreach: Reference past behavior or highlight what’s new since they last engaged.
Experiment with subject lines and offers: “We miss you,” incentives, or sneak peeks of new features can cut through.
Offer preference options: Let them reduce frequency instead of unsubscribing completely.
Test and iterate: Try different approaches across email, paid retargeting, or SMS, and track what sparks engagement.
Automate what you can: Set up drip campaigns that run automatically when subscribers and customers hit certain checkpoints of disengagement.
The real balance: re-engagement and new growth
Re-activating old contacts should be part of your toolkit, not the entire plan. Sustainable growth comes from:
A steady flow of new leads from SEO, ads, partnerships, and referrals
Strong lifecycle programs that prevent contacts from going cold in the first place
Ongoing monitoring of list health and engagement metrics
When you strike this balance, you can maximize value from past contacts without letting them distract from the future.
The bottom line
Re-activating old contacts can deliver quick wins and lower-cost conversions. But the risks of poor deliverability, stale data, and limited upside mean it should never be your primary revenue strategy. Focus on keeping your active contacts engaged and continually feeding your pipeline—then use re-activation as the bonus, not the backbone.
