Happy Thursday, Community!
Following up on our Tactical Tuesday debate about when to let go of "cold" leads, today’s tip is about how to stop guessing and start automating your visibility into your audience's behavior.
The secret to high engagement isn't just better subject lines, it’s ensuring your emails are actually being seen. When you consistently mail contacts who haven't interacted in months, email providers (like Gmail and Outlook) start to flag your content as "low-interest," which can land your most important messages outside of the primary inbox.
The Tip: The "Last Engaged Date" Field & “Last Engaged Date” automation
Instead of performing manual audits to see who is active, use a simple process to update a custom date field every time a contact interacts with your brand.
How to set it up:
-
The Trigger: Use a process triggered by an Email Open or a Link Click.
-
The Action: Use the 'Update a Contact' action to set a custom date field (e.g., "Last Engagement Date") to the 'Current Time.'
-
The Result: You now have a living, breathing timestamp for every single person on your list.
Pro tip: Let us do the setup work for you and use this automation recipe to import this automation directly into your account: https://www.activecampaign.com/recipes/last-engaged-date
The Strategic Win: Automation that cleans your lists for you
Once this date is being tracked, you can move away from manual list cleaning. You can set a simple rule: “If the Last Engagement Date is older than 6 months, move them to a re-engagement series or remove them from active sending.”
The Benefits:
-
Better Deliverability: You protect your sender reputation by only hitting active inboxes.
-
Higher Engagement: Your open and click rates will naturally climb because you’re talking to people who actually want to hear from you.
-
Zero Manual Labor: The system handles the "pruning" while you focus on your strategy.
Quick Question: Are you currently automating your engagement tracking, or do you still find yourself doing a manual audit once or twice a year?
Drop a 'Team Auto' or 'Team Manual' in the comments!