Email Marketing Segmentation Examples

7 strategies that will power up your digital marketing revenues

How would you like to generate up to 760% more income from your email marketing campaigns? That’s the difference segmentation can make to your email marketing campaigns, according to research conducted by the Data & marketing Association (DMA). In fact, any way you cut it, email segmentation improves your marketing ROI:

• Experian found that segmented emails have a 29% higher unique open rate and 41% higher click-through rate
• In a survey of marketers, Demand Metric found that 53% reported moderate to significant revenue impact when using personalized communication
• Experian also found that personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates

You can’t ignore statistics like these. The conclusion is that if you are not using email segmentation as part of your email marketing strategy, you’re not seeing the results your efforts deserve.

Why must you use email marketing segmentation?

One of the big turn-offs for people is receiving information that doesn’t relate to them. Think about all that junk mail you get in your mailbox. You probably don’t even look at it now. You just throw it in the trash. It’s a different story with direct marketing from a trusted source, a company that sends what you consider to be important or interesting information and offers. You open and read those. Email marketing works the same way.

If you constantly bombard your contact list with emails that aren’t relevant to them, they’ll stop opening and reading. Each recipient that does this is a potential customer lost to you. Its why the value of email lists so often degrade over time.

To combat this, you must personalize your email marketing. You must segment according to a range of collected criteria. This might include gender, age, geography, likes and dislikes, and previous open and click-through history.

Transform your open and click-through rates

You’ve spent a lot of time, effort, and resources building your email marketing list. Yet your open and click-through rates are poor, and falling. You’ve noticed that your unsubscribe rates are on their way up, too. And you’ve been reported for sending spam. You’re not segmenting emails, are you?

Segment your email marketing lists, and your open and click-through rates will increase. Those unsubscribe rates will fall. Why? Because you will be sending the right content to the right people. The question is, how do you segment?

Sending the right emails to the right contacts

Most of the big email marketing providers – like MailChimp and AWeber, for example – provide tools to automate email segmentation. This slashes the time and effort needed to slice and dice your list. However, whatever system you use, it will only do what you tell it to. Your segmentation strategy must be effective for it to produce the results you want.

Here are five email marketing segmentation examples that will help you improve click-through and open rates, customer engagement, and sales revenues.

Segmented list #1: People who reply to/act on your emails

Have you ever tried to run a survey by email? A simple one-question survey can tell you a lot about your email list. It will tell you about the people who are interested in the subject, and it will tell you about the people who are happy to interact with you.

Using this information, you can create a segmented list of engaged and active customers, and based upon the subjects in which they are most interested. You can then engage these people further by sending them emails alerting them to new content, or offers that are relevant to them.

Segmented list #2: People who don’t reply to/act on your emails

You’ve got a list of, say, 10,000, of which 90% never open your emails. This is not the time to give up on these. They’ve signed up to your list for a reason – they can be sold to! What you must do is re-engage them.

Set up a re-engagement plan. Emails that are designed to pique the interest of seemingly disinterested people. Try changing the subject line of the email, and resending to those who didn’t open it the first time.

Segmented list #3: Track people’s favorite content on your site

You can track the subscribers to your site, and what pages they visit. Using this information, you can send these subscribers offers or promotions based on their page visits. This segmentation can be done automatically. All you need to do is create the killer content that will help convert the visitor to a buyer. The results from this strategy alone can be game-changing. (TIP: valuable subscriber lists start with SEO optimization.)

Segmented list #4: Targeting demographics

When people sign up to your email list, take the opportunity to collect as much information about them as possible (without creating a questionnaire overload). The more information you gather, the more segmentation possibilities you’ll have. You can then send email marketing messages to people based on these metrics. It’s powerful stuff, and virtually guarantees that your emails will be relevant to the audience selected. Perhaps the hardest part is deciding which demographic questions you need to ask.

Segmented list #5: Past purchase history

Previous customers are among a business’s most valuable. You know they are buyers. You know they like your products. And you know what products they like. All you need to do is segment your list by products bought, and send an email to these segmented lists offering similar products. And don’t forget the possibility to sell refills, renewals, and accessories.

Segmented list #6: According to the sales funnel

It’s unlikely that all your email contacts will be in the same place along the sales funnel at the same time. It follows that they shouldn’t be receiving the same emails. People who have just signed up need a different level of nurturing. People further along the sales funnel journey are ready to be converted to buyers, and so can be sent more aggressive promotional emails.

Segmented list #7: Frequency of purchase

Divide your customers into two sections: those who purchase regularly, and those who have bought only once in the last three months.

To the first group, market product upgrades, new products, and regular promotions.

To the second group, send emails as you would to subscribers at the start of the sales funnel. Remind them of your company’s positive points. Send reminders to renew. Promote special offers based on their personal purchases in the past.

Should you be segmenting your email marketing?

By offering people what they want to buy, rather than what you want to sell, you will sell more. For segmentation, read personalization. Email marketing segmentation works. If you aren’t using segmentation strategies, you probably aren’t converting as you could. Your revenues are probably much lower than their potential. And you could be degrading your email list, leading to fewer chances to sell.

For the help you need to take your online presence and email marketing to the next level, contact SSI Design today. 

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