Are we conditioning our non responders?

I attended the list attrition presentation at the EEC Conference in February and as expected, the subject of non responders arose.

I guess my concern is similar to Stephanie Miller's in her recent blog about subscribers becoming hooked on discounts, so much so, that they don't respond to regular emails. Albeit a different subject matter - the principle is the same.

As marketers, we need to use re-activating campaigns wisely so that we don't condition our subscribers to tuning out from our regular email campaigns unless they are immediately 'rewarded'.

Ideally we need to encourage long term re-activation of the subscriber, rather than rewarding those who are in it for the 'goodies' and then sit dormant until another reward is offered. In this recent interview for the DMA UK's newsletter, Stefan Pollard has some suggestions for long term subscriber reactivation and better still, just plain keeping them interested.