The Ultimate Guide to Email Segmentation for Better Engagement

No matter what you do, believe us when we say that this is one of—if not the— most relevant tools in a marketer´s belt. Segmenting your email list allows you to cater content based on the interests of distinct sections of recipients, leading to better engagement and relationships with leads as well as higher ‘converting’ subscribers. Whether you are just starting with email marketing, or simply want to fine-tune your tactics — keep reading for essential tips and strategies on how to take control of email segmentation…and get better results.

What is Email Segmentation?

Email segmentation, then again is the process of partitioning your email subscribers into smaller and even more well-defined groups based on chosen criteria such as demographics, behaviors purchase history, or engagement. Segmenting your list, as opposed to sending the same email to everybody you know, …allows for more relevant and impactful emails that are crafted with only those audience sets specific interests or needs in mind.

Why Segmentation Matters

Personalization is key to making email marketing great again. In the age of consumer-centric marketing, tailored customer experiences are greeted with open arms by modern shoppers — particularly when it comes to their inbox. That means personalization will be a must-have for email in 2019. But Segmentation makes that possible by helping you to:

Higher Engagement: Tailored segmentation emails are more responsive and increase user interaction as the readers find it relevant to their problem.

Decrease Unsubscribes: If your subscribers are getting exactly what they asked for (which is an engaging email that keeps them informed), then it follows that they will be less likely to unsubscribe.

Increase Conversion Rates: Personalized messages with the right content and specific color schemes, font size or style helps users to make quick decisions and attract them towards purchasing.

Increase Deliverability: You want content to be appealing enough that subscribers are not going to hit spam and will deliver on the sender’s reputation.

Key Segmentation Criteria

Important Criteria to Segment Your Email List:

Demographics: Age, Gender, Location or some other basic parameter as Job Title and Size of a company can be used for segmentation purposes. A clothing retailer could, for instance, target men differently from women or adjust their offers based on the weather in a particular local area.

Behavioral Data: Cleverly segmenting subscribers for how they respond to your emails and website. You can follow convenient metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), purchasing history or browsing behavior and previous interactions. With behavioral segmentation, you can target the subscribers that engage with your email differently from those who do not.

Order History: Previous purchases can be sliced and diced in lots of different ways to suggest add-on items, remind the customer that they are out-of-stock on an item (and offer a reorder), or show you rate customers either for regular discounts or unique deals. This is a great way for ecom businesses to drive repeat sales.

It may be that not all subscribers interact with the emails you send them. This way, you can reach out to inactive subscribers and try a win-back campaign or give great offers to your loyal customers.

Lifecycle Stage—As you continue to learn about your subscribers, segmenting by where a subscriber is in the customer journey can help ensure relevant content that pushes them closer toward making a purchase. A welcome series for new subscribers offers different content than a loyalty reward to customers who have been with the brand for years.

Preferences & Interests: if you have a preference center or data on past behavior use it to segment your audience into what they are interested in. For instance, if a reader regularly reads articles on tech gadgets — you would only feed them more content about technology.

Best Practices for Effective Segmentation

Follow these best practices to optimize your segmentation strategy:

Keep It Simple, Then Keep Adding to Your Portfolio Over Time

If you are not used to segmentation, then take quite a few simple sections in addition to refining these after some time. There is no need to start by implementing sophisticated segmentation. Start with big buckets like active vs. inactive subscribers or customers, and non-customers but add detail as you go. React to how people respond to your marketing campaigns, remember: be respectful!

Segment with Data

Strategic segmentation depends on sound data. Use data from your email marketing platform, CRM, website analytics among other sources to create strong segments. Make sure your data is clean, current and writes to action. Scrub your lists and keep them clean of people who are not engaging with you as they can mess up all the hard work anyhow if those inactives start pushing down viable response levels.

Personalize Your Content

Segment your list and then personalize content that speaks to exactly what the individuals in each segment need or want. Segmented Messaging: Tailor your subject line, body copy, product recommendations, and CTAs for different segments. The results are clear: the more personalized your email is, the better it will resonate with people and lead them to (the desired) action.

A/B Testing Your Segments

But segmentation is not set-and-forget — it demands continuous tuning. You can also A/B test to see which segments respond better with different content, subject lines sending times, and more. Evaluation of your results will allow to improve your segments and strategies as time progresses in delivering the best content perceived by them.

Monitor Performance Metrics

Track open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribes for each of your segments. When monitoring these metrics, you want to look for which segments of email are working well and perhaps being given more focus; conversely what parts may require adjustment. You can leverage this data to further refine your segmentation strategy and optimize overall campaign performance.

SegmentationMake sure to automate your efforts for segregation

Because segmenting your distribution list can be time-consuming and because consistency is key, whenever possible you should automate that process. Email marketing platforms that support automation can do this. with rules-based segmentation to send out specific mailing lists, triggered mailshots, and on-the-fly content customizing at scale. It can also allow you to provide users with the most current and significant content without any manual help at all.

Examples of Effective Email Segmentation

Abandoned Cart Reminders.

Emails to people who left shopping carts can be a reminder, with some kind of discount or bonus for completing their purchase.

SaaS: Free Trial Expiry

Based on the above segmentation, you can send reminders to subscribe or offer limited- discounts in a timely fashion (e.g. for free-trial-ex-J hook who is just 10 % from the deadline) so that they continue using your product/service when their trial ends.

For Content Publishers: Audience Segments Based on Interests

This, in turn, allows publishers to send readers more specific newsletters based on their interests resulting in better overall engagement and satisfaction.

Conclusion

This makes email segmentation a game changer for any brand when it comes to their Email Marketing results. And by knowing your audience, and presenting them with custom-tailored content that fulfills their needs too, then you are on the right path to developing stronger connections, yielding better conversions and accomplishing everything else according to your marketing plan. Although you may realize that segmented strategies already are in place, the idea is to get as “segmented” and aimed towards a variety of ideal buyers (and positions within these customer types) until your competitors know them better than ever. Learn more about how this is possible in the following guest post and see why email segmentation can turn your emails into a powerful weapon to engage subscribers and help boost business success.

Kid Sigma