There was a small group of us youngsters around a table in the college canteen when the most flamboyantly dressed among us got up to go to class. A student said to the table at large, “He’s so cool. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks about the way he dresses.” She was wrong of course. The way people responded to the way he dressed was probably the most important part of his life at that time. Oddly enough, as I’ve aged, I’ve become more cool as I don’t care what people think about my choice of clothing. You could say, ‘All fashions spent’.

If you want to keep your email marketing list up to date you have to accept that people change over time, and sometimes over a short period. The birth of a child limits the amount of money you can spend on yourself and many people experience a fundamental change in priorities. You need to be aware of how the lifestyle of your subscribers are modified as circumstances and influences vary.

If a particular segregated email marketing list produces significantly lower completion rates, it’s obviously a situation that has to be addressed. Something has affected the group as a whole. Nowadays, you might consider the effects of Covid-19 restrictions, limiting people’s freedom of choice as to where they can go. It’s fair to say that the criteria you used to segregate the list is no longer dependable.

It is much more difficult to identify changes with individual subscribers. If, for instance, they become unresponsive then there will probably be a reason and it is up to you to work out why there is this change, especially if they are a high value customer. 

If it is something personal, such as the birth of a child, it’s not something they are likely to share with you directly, although it might show in their browsing of your website. Now might be the time to move them to a different segregated email marketing list. If they remain inactive, you’ve lost nothing. If, however, they start purchasing again, you have what amounts to a new subscriber, but at a much lower cost.