From Inactive to Engaged: Best Practices for Re-Engagement Marketing in HubSpot

[cwetmore]

Working with marketers as a Customer Success Manager at HubSpot, I’ve found that so much focus is put into generating new leads that sometimes the leads already acquired are overlooked. How are you handling cold leads, people who have shown interest but slipped into inactivity? 

It’s always worth looking back at the contacts already in your database. Re-engaging these “lost” leads can be one of the most effective (and efficient) ways to spark new conversations, reignite interest, and drive results. A re-engagement campaign is your chance to bring them back into the fold. Here’s how to revive their interest, step by step: 

1. Before Sending 

• Use email list validation software to identify invalid email addresses before sending. Remove these addresses or add them to an opt-out list proactively to avoid bounced emails.
• Use a 3rd party email validator like Kickbox or NeverBounce 
• Be sure all the contacts meet all of HubSpot's minimum requirements for marketing email sends. Contacts that do not meet one or more of the requirements can't be used in the marketing email tool. 
• Segment disengaged contacts by arranging them from least disengaged to most disengaged. Work backward through the list, monitoring engagement rates, and stop when you notice a significant drop-off in engagement.

2. Create a Re-engagement Campaign 

• It’s not recommended to send newsletters to contacts who consistently don’t open your bulk emails or who haven’t received bulk messages in several months. Instead, launch a re-engagement campaign that:
• Asks contacts to click a call-to-action to confirm they want to stay subscribed
• Notifies contacts they’ll be removed from your list if they don’t take action
• Highlights the value of staying subscribed and outlines the type of content they can expect if they reconfirm

• Here are instructions on how to create a marketing email in HubSpot. Prefer a video format? Check this out! 

3. Sending the re-engagement campaign 

• It’s important to protect your brand’s reputation from the lower open and click rates that often come with re-engagement campaigns. Stagger your re-engagement emails alongside your regular, healthy mail. 
• Pro Tip: Make sure re-engagement sends do not exceed 20% of your total weekly non-reengagement email volume. This helps balance lower-engagement emails with ones that perform well, minimizing any negative impact on your sender reputation.
• Begin your re-engagement efforts with contacts who are least disengaged and gradually progress to those who have been inactive for longer periods. For example, start by reaching out to contacts who haven’t opened an email in a month, then move on to those who haven’t engaged in two months, and so on. 
• Pro Tip: Be sure to exclude contacts who haven’t opened any emails in a year or more, as these are more likely to bounce, unsubscribe, or mark your emails as spam—potentially leading to deliverability issues such as blocklisting. Learn more about Grey Mail here
• As you move through increasingly disengaged contacts, expect positive engagement rates—such as opens and clicks—to decline. Set a specific open and/or click rate threshold that will signal when to stop your re-engagement campaign. Once your results fall below this cutoff, end your outreach to help protect and maintain a healthy sender reputation.
• Pro Tip: Monitor and use the benchmarks found in the email health tool to guide your decisions and track ongoing performance.

4. After Sending 

• As a best practice, direct contacts who click to reconfirm their subscription to a dedicated landing or thank you page. Use this page to encourage them to explore additional content or take another meaningful action, further increasing engagement.
• This video lesson goes over creating landing pages in HubSpot, here’s a step by step written guide as well. 
• The contacts who don’t click to confirm should be suppressed from future marketing emails. Their lack of response suggests they’re either not interested or aren’t seeing your messages, possibly due to spam filtering. To ensure these non-responders are excluded from future bulk sends, you can: 
• Import them as an opt-out list 
• Set them to non-marketing 
• Pro Tip: If contacts don’t click to reconfirm via email, try engaging them through other channels like social media, your website, or targeted ads. Their lack of email response doesn’t always mean they’re uninterested in your brand—a multi-channel approach can help you stay connected.
• For example, you can create an Ad campaign that targets your segment of non-engaged contacts as a custom ad audience, helping re-engage them outside of email. 

5. Ongoing Contact Hygiene 

• Maintain ongoing contact hygiene by creating a sunset policy so disengaged subscribers can be thoughtfully managed on a regular, rolling basis. Regularly review engagement metrics, automate suppression where possible, and clearly define criteria for disengagement and re-engagement. For detailed guidance, see the results of the documentation searches I made about sunset policy best practices in HubSpot: Learn more about sunset policies for email engagement.

For more inspiration and practical tips, check out these resources:

• See 10 examples of effective re-engagement emails
• Read this step-by-step guide: How to run a re-engagement email marketing campaign

Moving forward, make re-engagement a regular habit, keep your contacts up to date, and adjust your approach as you learn what works best. By keeping your data clean, sending the right messages, and regularly removing inactive contacts, you’ll get the most out of every lead and protect your sender reputation. Bringing old leads back to life isn’t just a short-term win – it’s a smart move for long-term growth!