21 Jan
If you don’t do email segmentation, you currently have one big list of emails. And an email’s effectiveness comes down to being sent to the right people.
Also, If you do email segmentation, you could have dozens of lists of emails. Why? Because you’ve taken that big list and broken it down into meaningful, useful segments.
Segmentation allows you to treat different groups of people differently. By sending them more personalized content, you can increase conversions. Motivations, intentions, anxieties, etc. change based on the stage of the conversion funnel, time, interests, age, gender – the list is endless.
Segmentation is what helps you stay relevant, automagically, with your ever-changing list and their ever-changing wants / needs.
What is email segmentation?
Email segmentation is a mailing list division based on similarities to provide the recipients with the most valuable information and proposals at the most appropriate time.
Simply email segmentation means sorting your subscriber list into different groups, aka segments. Then you can tailor your marketing messages to each segment, so your customers are more likely to act on the offers they get from you. here are four types of segmentation:
- Demographic: using concrete information about who contacts are
- Psychographic: using subjective characteristics of contacts’ personalities
- Behavioral: based on contacts’ past interactions with your business
- Geographic: based on where contacts are located
Why is email segmentation important?
Prompts to learn more about the clients. To succeed with segmentation, you need to know the people you want to converse with. Segmenting mailing lists will help clarify the aims of email marketing campaigns. It is more convenient to address your goals towards relevant groups of people, rather than try to blanket all of them with a one-size-fits-all message.
Motivates to maintain a robust email database. To set up email segmentation, you need to put the contacts in order and get rid of those subscribers, who don’t show any signs of activity. Without segmentation, your database will become a mess, especially when you have thousands of contacts.
Improves efficiency. Segmented mailing lists make email marketing campaigns better targeted and compelling. Segmentation significantly increases open rates and click-through rates, in comparison to non-segmented campaigns.
Сonsolidates email reputation. Emails containing targeted and valuable information found more natural engagement from your audience. Recipients like having high-quality content in their inboxes. They trust and rely on those who provide them this content and look forward to receiving more.
Lays a foundation for good and effective communication. Email segmentation results in a pleasant experience for the clients. It is a fundamental practice that builds up less robotic and human relationships with people.
Why not just send all your offers to your entire email list?
One problem with blasting your whole list with every email you create is that people get turned off by irrelevant messages, to the point where they may just unsubscribe and take a pass on all your offers.
Another problem is that email marketing is about more than alerting people whenever you want them to buy something. It’s also about nurturing long-term relationships with those customers, based on offering them what they need and want. And you can’t do that with one-size-fits-none email campaigns.
When and how to start segmenting your email list
If you’re wondering when to start segmenting, the short answer is straight away! In the early days of email marketing, segmentation was considered an advanced feature used only by expert email marketers. Today, anyone can target their messaging using easy tools like MailerLite.
People subscribed to your list for different reasons. The best way to uncover these differences within your list is to start with a basic segmentation like sign-up source or subscriber behavior. Your goal is to build more detailed profiles of each new subscriber as time goes on. You will learn more about what email content your subscribers like and want as you interact with them.
First, you’ll want to get started by defining your segmentation goals.
What are segmentation goals?
Segmentation goals start with your overarching email marketing goals.
- What are you trying to achieve through email?
- How will segmenting your list help you achieve those goals?
Let’s say your goal is to get bigger open rates and a more engaged audience. You can then filter your email list to send different messages to the active readers and to the passive ones.
Once you’ve settled your goals, it’s time to decide how you’ll incorporate segmentation into your email marketing strategy. We’ll be talking about some best practices that do just that
Ways you can segment list
Listed below are the top 5 ways you can segment your list:
1. Geographic email segmentation: The most obvious way to segment emails is through geography. For instance, imagine your business is hosting a special event. You send out content to a full email list, which includes contacts both local and distant.
2. B2B and specialization email segmentation: You work with other businesses. You may sell or provide services to other businesses. And because of the different people you work with, you wouldn’t send the same email to a vendor contact as you do to a sales manager, a marketing specialist, or an administrative assistant. They each require their own messaging.
3. Content-specific email segmentation: For this, you need to rely on data collected about specific contacts. What pages did they visit on your site? and What did they download from it? What tools did they use? Did they purchase anything?
4. Behavior-specific email segmentation: This goes into a level of email marketing segmentation that’s even deeper. How long is a customer lingering on a page? How many pages do they view on an average visit? Do they visit and buy quickly, like an impulse buyer? Or do they visit a few times in a week, loading the same items into an online cart and canceling, like a nervous buyer?
5. Influencer email segmentation: This is more complicated than the title alone suggests. Customer loyalty is no longer just about purchase totals and the frequency of purchases. Today, it’s about who recommends your brand. Who’s given you testimonials or reviews? Who shares your brand on social media? Which platform? How effective are they? Send superficially to those customers—and show them some love for being a voluntary brand ambassador.
Email segmentation best practices and tips
1. Figure out the segmentation which fits you. After you gathered your audience, try to analyze it and decide what will be the best way to segment it. It depends on your business. For instance, if you sell healthy food, you’d drive segmentation for vegans, vegetarians, people with health problems, athletes, etc.
2. Create a survey or a quiz. If you didn’t know about segmentation from the very beginning, it’s still possible to learn more about your contacts. Tell your audience you created a quiz or a survey to improve the quality and personalization level of emails you send them. Many will be excited to help! On the other hand, it is a great chance to add more trust in the relationships with your contacts.
3. Divide according to lifecycle stages. The lifecycle stage depends on the place of the contacts in a funnel. There are three lifecycle stages: subscribers, leads, and customers. All of them deserve to receive different messages, according to what actions you expect them to take.
4. Define buyer persona segments. Just try to imagine your customers’ psychological portraits. You can divide your audience into groups based on their preferences, lifestyle, habits, and beliefs. When you defined 3-5 types, you can even ask your contacts which persona they bare the strongest resemblance to in a quiz.
5. Pay attention to geographical segments. With email segmentation by a geographical principle, you can send different emails to people from various countries. Also, this segmentation type enables you to submit your email at the right time, bearing in mind that customers may live in different time zones.
6. Use segments based on the amount spent. Beneficial email segmentation is built upon the amount of money your consumers spent on your brand. Divide the active part of your audience on VIPs, sales shoppers, and brand shoppers. Think about what kind of content is the most preferable for each customer and create relevant emails.
7. Mind the time since the last purchase. You can also divide your active contacts into frequent buyers and one-time customers. You need to stir up the interest of regular buyers and propose those who bought only once and encourage discounts on the similar products they liked before.
8. Maintain a healthy database. Not all of your contacts are looking forward to communicating with you for some reason. So you need to clean your mailing list from passive subscribers. The database naturally decays in 22.5%, according to HubSpot Academy.
Email segmentation for different types of businesses
A local landscaping contractor won’t need to segment by country or maybe even by city (geographics). But behavioral segmentation could help them craft marketing messages for distinct groups like:
- Commercial versus residential clients (purchase usage)
- Mow-and-edge service clients versus landscape design-and-install clients (benefits sought)
- New clients versus longtime customers (life cycle stage)
On the other hand, a small online retailer can have customers anywhere. They might choose to create geographic segments to:
Tailor holiday-shopping-season messaging to different countries, like Canadian Thanksgiving versus American Thanksgiving.
- Customize product offers for customers in rural areas (work clothes, outdoor clothing) differently from customers in large metro areas (office wear, cocktail dresses).
- Localize emails in different languages for customers in different countries or regions—for example, for English-speaking customers in Ottawa versus French-speaking customers in Quebec.
What about segmenting by demographics? Let’s say you’re a freelance portrait photographer. You might segment your email list this way to identify:
- Customers with children who might want yearly family portraits.
- Couples who need engagement and anniversary photos.
- Customers with higher household incomes who might be interested in your high-end makeup-artist/personal stylist/photo shoot packages.
- Families with more moderate incomes who might be looking for budget photo packages.
That leaves values and attitudes, aka psychographics. This is a particularly useful approach for lifestyle businesses like spas, fitness centers, personal trainers and travel planners. They can use psychographics to identify segments like:
- Customers who are looking for self-care activities.
- People seeking ways to improve their health.
- Customers who need to de-stress.
- People who put a high priority on leisure travel.
Keep in mind that you can have more than one kind of segment, too
For example, a freelance content writer might segment their list according to country so they can market local-holiday promotional content to clients in different countries. They might also segment by intent, so that customers who want a blog writer will get one type of email campaign ,and companies that want a writer to create their webinars get different emails.
Wrap up
Email segments make it easier to reach the right customers with the most compelling messages. They also make it easier to see how well your email marketing is working. As you start sending segmented email campaigns, you can see if they’re performing better than your old, general campaigns and if so, by how much.
You can also compare different segments to get a sense of which ones are most likely to open your messages, which are most likely to convert, and how much they spend based on your emails. Over time, you’ll be able to identify your best customers in terms of loyalty and revenue, and you’ll be able to refine your segments and your messaging for even better results.