Email segmentation is an essential aspect of effective email marketing. It helps marketers create more targeted campaigns that deliver better results. Segmenting your email list involves dividing your contacts into different groups based on relevant characteristics, such as demographics, location, and behaviors. This allows you to tailor your content and messaging to better resonate with …
Your Email Strategy is Broken: Here’s How to Fix It
Email segmentation is an essential aspect of effective email marketing. It helps marketers create more targeted campaigns that deliver better results.
Segmenting your email list involves dividing your contacts into different groups based on relevant characteristics, such as demographics, location, and behaviors. This allows you to tailor your content and messaging to better resonate with each group.
1. Know Your Audience
If you’ve got a great product and are targeting your marketing efforts to specific demographics, then you probably already have some granular information that you can use to segment your email list. Using that data to create targeted, relevant emails to your audience will yield better click-through and conversion rates, something well-used by Emails Nest.
The days of a one-size-fits-all email blast are long gone. It’s important for marketers to understand that the content of their emails should be suited to the needs and goals of each group or individual on their email list. To do that, they must know who those individuals and groups are.
Ideally, your buyer personas should provide you with this level of detail, but even if you don’t have them, there are still ways to gather a good amount of information about the people on your email lists. For example, if you’re running a B2B email campaign, the answers to the questions on your web forms — such as business type and location — can be used to automatically sort your leads into specific categories that will help you target your campaigns more effectively.
Using that information, you can also segment your emails based on things like industry/job function and job title. For instance, an entry-level copywriter and a VP of marketing may have similar jobs, but their responsibilities and interests are vastly different. Sending them the same information doesn’t make sense and can be frustrating for both parties. By sending more relevant emails to your audience, you’ll boost open rates, click-through rates, and ultimately sales. Plus, you’ll avoid the poor sender reputation that comes with low engagement rates and irrelevant email content. That’s a reputation that no marketer wants to see.
2. Know Your Goals
Email segmentation is the process of creating smaller groups of email recipients based on specific criteria. This allows marketers to deliver more relevant content that appeals to the needs and interests of each audience group. It also increases the effectiveness of emails by reducing the likelihood that they will be perceived as irrelevant or intrusive, leading to lower unsubscribe rates and fewer spam complaints.
It’s important to know what your email marketing goals are before you start creating and sending out segments of your audience list. For example, if your business offers both products and services, it might be beneficial to send a series of welcome emails designed to educate new subscribers and encourage them to interact with the company online. Alternatively, you may want to use email segmentation to provide special discounts or loyalty rewards to loyal customers.
The information you use to create your email marketing segments can be obtained from a variety of sources. Some of the most common data points include business type, purchase history, and email frequency preference. Depending on your business and your target audience, some of these metrics will be more important than others.
Regardless of the information you collect, you should regularly audit your email list to remove duplicates and inactive subscribers to maintain the health of your email database. Additionally, it’s important to test different segmentation criteria and messaging strategies to find out what works best for your audience.
It’s easy to get over-complicated when it comes to creating email list segments, so be sure to take time to consider what will work best for your audience and business. Then, implement the processes needed to make it a reality.
3. Know Your Content
Email list segmentation helps email marketers provide a better customer experience because emails are more targeted and relevant. However, it can be difficult to know what criteria to use to segment an email list since there are so many variables. The key is to start small and work your way up. It is important to continually test and measure your results in order to optimize your strategy.
Some common criteria to consider are age, gender, job title, industry, and location. For example, it makes sense to tailor your messaging and language based on age because you are likely talking to different people when you speak to college students versus retirees. It is also helpful to segment your email list based on industry and company size because you are targeting different people when you talk to small businesses versus large enterprises.
Another criteria to consider is purchasing history. For example, you can target customers who have bought a particular product or service with additional offers or recommendations. You can also use this data to target unengaged subscribers with a re-engagement campaign.
Other data that can be used to segment an email list are behavior, website activity, and survey responses. For example, you can target customers who are not visiting your website as often by using remarketing ads on Facebook or Google Adwords. Behavioral data can be collected via surveys, signup forms, or tracking software like Brevo.
Ultimately, email list segmentation allows you to deliver content that aligns with your audience’s interests and needs and reduces the risk of subscriber dissatisfaction and unsubscribes. It is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy and can help you achieve your ROI goals.
4. Know Your Messaging
Email marketing continues to be an effective method for businesses to drive revenue. However, it’s important for marketers to optimize email campaigns by following best practices, including list segmentation, which allows them to deliver more targeted content that is more likely to generate results.
Segmenting your email list ensures that you are sending the right message to the right people at the right time, resulting in higher conversion rates and a higher ROI. There are multiple ways to segment an email list, but some of the most common include business type, website activity, purchase history, and lead magnet interaction.
For example, if you sell B2B products and services, it’s likely that your leads and contacts work in different industries. Knowing this information enables you to tailor email messages that are relevant to their specific industry and job function. You can also segment your list by job title to send tailored messaging that speaks directly to their level of experience and decision-making potential within the company.
Another great way to use email list segmentation is by leveraging behavioral data and monitoring subscriber interactions with your brand, such as clicking on a certain offer or abandoning a shopping cart. You can then use workflow automation to dynamically segment your email list and send personalized messages in real-time based on those behaviors.
It’s also a good idea to allow subscribers to self-segment by choosing their preferred email frequency through a signup form or email preference center. Some individuals prefer to receive emails daily or weekly, while others would rather only receive a few messages every once in a while. This is one of the easiest email list segmentation tactics to implement and can help keep your subscribers from feeling overwhelmed.
5. Know Your Target Audience
Email marketing is a powerful tool to drive business, but it can only do so if it’s targeted effectively. The days of a blanket email campaign are long gone, and the success of your campaigns hinges on delivering content to your audience that is relevant to their interests. Segmenting your email list enables you to provide more personalized and relevant emails, and this results in increased open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
The way you segment your email list is up to you and will depend on a variety of factors, including demographics (e.g., age, gender, location), behavior, preferences, and customer lifecycle stage. Use signup forms, surveys, tracking pixels, and other data collection tools to gather the information you need to divide your audience into different groups. You can also ask your subscribers to self-select what types of emails they want to receive, which is an effective method for increasing engagement and retention.
For example, a retailer may want to create an email campaign that targets new customers by offering them a discount for their first purchase. This is an easy and effective way to convert new email subscribers into loyal customers, which is a key objective of any digital marketing strategy.
Other common email list segmentation strategies include dividing audiences by their buying habits, customer lifecycle stages, and the specific product or service they’re interested in. For example, e-commerce marketers can use the data from their website and sales funnel to classify customers into different segments based on their browsing history, purchasing behaviors, and the products they’ve added to their carts. These segments can then be used to deliver a personalized email experience that will encourage customers to take the next step in their journey with your brand, like making a purchase or learning more about your services.
