Segmentation for success

We all know that segmenting your email marketing lists you get better open and click rates. By concentrating your focus and sending messages to targeted groups within your lists, your recipients will find your campaigns more relevant – and relevant campaigns get better results.

Segmentation of email lists can be based on all kinds of data, virtually providing an unlimited number of possible ways to segment your email list and better personalize your email content for subscribers. Here are some major categories:

Demographic Segmentation – (e.g., based on age, gender, family, occupation, income, education)

Geographic Segmentation – (e.g., geo targeted email marketing based on country, city, climate, language)

Psychographic Segmentation (e.g., lifestyle, values, attitudes, activities, opinions)

Behavioural Segmentation – (e.g., products purchased; products browsed on your website; engagement with your email marketing, such as opens and clicks).

Let’s look at some popular choices in a bit more detail:

Age

Based on this information you can decide if you want to adjust the tone of voice in your emails or even adjust the images you use.  This information also allows you to send triggered birthday messages too.

Location

Use your subscriber’s location to send targeted emails to let them know about upcoming events in their area. From in-store events to breakfast briefings the people most likely to attend are close to the location. The rise of mobile marketing also enables you to send targeted and relevant offers for consumers to enjoy in their surroundings to combine the online and offline shopping experience.

New subscribers

Welcome new subscribers with an email designed to introduce them to the benefits of your brand and what they can expect as a subscriber. But why stop at just one welcome email? You could even send a series of emails to all new subscribers with the best of your blog content, or show your new app users how to take the first step, and then the next, and the next.

Whatever you decide to do with your welcome email or welcome sequence, make sure that you are introducing your new subscribers to your best stuff, so you can begin to grow that relationship with them.

Want some welcome email inspiration, take a look at our pinterest board for some fantastic examples.

Purchase history

If a segment of your list has purchased from you before, use that information to send them emails catered to that which interests them. Then make your bottom line bigger by identifying upsell opportunities with additional services or complementary products they'd enjoy based on their past purchases.

Purchase cycle

Do certain customers come to you on a weekly, monthly, yearly, or quarterly basis? Or perhaps they only need you at a certain time of year?  If you segment on purchase cycle you can make sure that you appear right when your customer might need you. 

Abandon Basket

After analysing 34 online studies of ecommerce shopping cart abandonment, Bamyard Institute determined that, on average, 68% of shopping carts were abandoned prior to purchase. Re-engaging these warm leads can have a huge impact on your bottom line.  If you have an e-commerce site then an abandon basket programme is a must.

Form Abandonment

Even if you don’t have an ecommerce website, abandonment is just as much an issue for you – but this time it is those that start the subscription or form completion process but don’t finish. Nurturing these website visitors can help move them down the sales funnel, turning stranger to prospect, prospect to lead and finally lead to customer.

Event Attendance

Whether it is an in-person event or an online webinar, don’t miss the opportunity to engage with leads who express interest.  You can segment attendee and non-attendees and you can invite to future events whilst sharing relevant content based on the previous events they have attended.

Net Promoter score

If you run a net promoter score campaign with your customers consider sending mails based on the level of happiness that they report. Those with a high NPS may provide opportunity to upsell or gather reviews or case studies. Those with lower scores may need more education on how to get the best from your product.

Referring customers

 These are your brand advocates, your VIPs, so show them how much you appreciate them with loyalty programmes and VIP offers. Some companies use this group as new product testers who trial new features or products and give honest feedback before official launch.

Every time you select a group from your email database, it is segmentation. Which segments or combination of segments you choose will be governed by what data you easily have access to. It is also possible to layer the segmentation for even more targeted results depending on the message that you need to get out and the more you pinpoint the more relevant your message should be.  Segmentation is a seemingly simple but extremely powerful mechanism and should be a part of every healthy email marketing strategy.