Email Marketing Segmentation

Introduction

Result Oriented E-Mail List Segmentation using Tools and Software- in this regard, what makes email marketing so powerful, some say that the secret sauce is email list segmentation. email list segmentation is the practice of dividing your email list into groups based on the characteristics. Segmenting email list helps to speak more intelligently and directly with customers, giving them information that they want at the opportune time. Smart marketers use email list segmentation to drastically improve the effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns. Personalized emails deliver higher transaction rates, yet many of brands fail to use them effectively. By understanding the specific characteristics that differentiate each of these groups, you can tailor the content of your email marketing campaigns to each individual segment and significantly increase conversions.

Everyone’s business is different, so the ways that you choose to segment your email list will differ from how someone else segments their list. However, there are a few basics that will help to segment list properly and effectively:

• Email Segmentation Software: Email Service Provider(ESP) allows to segment email list. There are number of Email Service Providers in the market lets take a look later.
• Page-Level Targeting: A tool that will allow to create targeted email opting forms for specific website visitors, and then add them to the appropriate email list segments.
• Lead Magnets: Now we need to create some lead magnets that will allow your website visitors to self-identify as belonging to one of your segments.

 

Email Segmentation Definition

“Email list segmentation is a technique that email marketers use to send highly targeted emails by dividing their list up into smaller groups or segments”.

Email Segmentation Software and Tools

1. EmailOctopus:

• $0-$42/mo
• EmailOctopus sends your Mail through Amazon’s simple Email service(SES), saving money without sacrificing deliver-ability.

 

2. MailChimp:

• $0-$10,000(Free-high Volume Custom Quote)
• Send Better Email.
• Its Features and integrations allow you to send marketing emails, automated messages, and targeted campaigns and detailed reports help you keep improving over time.
• Get insight about your subscribers and keep your contacts in one place with subscriber profiles.
• Helps you email the right people at the right time.
• Send automated emails based on customer behavior and preferences.
• Get started with pre-built Workflows or use our built-in segmentation and targeting options to build custom rules. And get in-depth reporting on how each of your automated series is performing.

3. Aweber:

• $19-$194(Monthly-Yearly)
• Easy email marketing tools that allow you to send awesome emails.
• Time-Saving Autoresponders, Seamless Integrations, Faster Email List Growth, Easy Importing, Industry-Leading Deliver-ability.

4. Intercom:

• $49 – $500
• Intercom is one place for your entire business to see and talk to customers.
• Have live conversations and send targeted messages to website visitors and users of your app.

 

5. ConvertKit:

• $29+
• Email marketing for professional bloggers

 

 

 

 

6. Newsletter2Go:

11. SmartMail.io:

5. Open Rate

Use information about your subscriber’s open rate to segment subscribers who frequently engage with your emails vs. those who engage less frequently. For example, you could reward your more engaged subscribers by giving them special opportunities.

6. Inactivity

If your subscribers have been inactive for a little while, remind them of the next step that you want them to take.For subscribers who have been inactive for a long period of time – say two months – you may want to send out a targeted email to see if they still want to hear from you, or if they would rather unsubscribe. This way, you keep your list fresh. 

7. Lead Magnet

Segment your subscribers by the specific lead magnet that they opted in for.

8. Lead Magnet Type

Everyone learns in different ways. Some subscribers may prefer to attend your live webinars, others prefer to read your summarized PDF reports.When you segment your subscribers based on the type of lead magnet that they initially opted in for (and any additional types they opted in for later), you can continue to give them the type of content they like best.

9. Opt-in Frequency

Some of your subscribers opt in for one of your lead magnets, while others may opt in for multiple lead magnets. Create a segment of subscribers who opted in for more than one lead magnet, and you’ll know who is most likely to want to hear about any new lead magnets that you have coming out. Then, you can notify that segment about your new lead magnets without pestering your other subscribers.

10. Abandoned Form

How about targeting visitors who started to fill out a form on your website, but never completed it?For example, you may have a web app with a free trial that requires a signup. A certain percentage of your visitors are going to start to sign up and then either change their mind or get distracted. You can recover those signups by sending them an email reminding them to finish the process. Just make sure that the first step in your signup form is to ask visitors to submit their email address.

11. Abandoned Shopping Cart

Shopping cart abandonment is a common issue for eCommerce sites. Thankfully, you can use targeted email marketing to re-engage those shoppers.

12. Didn’t Buy

Perhaps your visitor missed out on an opportunity to buy something altogether. For instance, you may have launched a product for a limited time, and now they’ve missed the window of opportunity to buy.What is the next step for these subscribers? The first thing you may want to do is send them some really valuable free content, to remind them of why they wanted to follow your brand in the first place. Maybe they didn’t buy because they don’t know your brand well enough, or they don’t have enough trust for you yet. Build a stronger relationship with these subscribers, and the next time you have something to offer they will be much more likely to buy.

13. Purchase History

Use your customer’s purchase history to offer cross-sells or up-sells.

14. Amount of Purchase

Segmenting your customers by the amount of their purchase allows you to offer them an appropriate up-sell on the back end. You can also give special treatment to customers with especially large purchase amounts by offering them a free “thank you” gift, or some other bonus that will reinforce in their minds that they made a good decision by buying from you.

15. Type of Purchase

Especially if you offer a lot of different types of products, segmenting your customers by purchase type is a great way to determine what their interests are so you can offer curated products that you know they’ll love.

16. Purchase Frequency

Reward your frequent shoppers with a special coupon just for 3rd time buyers or an invitation to join your loyalty program. On the flip side, you use targeted email marketing to encourage one-time customers to come back for seconds.

17. Buyer Satisfaction Level

When you get a new customer, do you ask them the following loyalty question: “On a scale from 0-10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?” You can use their answers to segment your list based on Net Promoter Score(NPS), or those who have a high score between 9-10 (“Promoters”), a medium score between 7-8 (“Passives”) and a low score between 0-6 (“Detractors”).

18. Purchase Cycle

Certain purchases have a cycle: they are seasonal, or they occur at certain times. Knowing where your customers are in their unique purchase cycle can guide your email marketing campaigns. For instance, let’s say you sell diapers, and one pack usually lasts for one month. When the customer is probably starting to run out of diapers (say, 21 days after their purchase), you might send them a friendly reminder email asking them if they’re ready for a new shipment.

19. Stage in Sales Funnel

Each subscriber’s stage in your sales funnel should determine what email they receive next. New subscribers need to be nurtured. Warm leads need to be primed for the sale, and eventually sold. Customers need to be presented with cross sells or up sells. Every stage should have it’s own unique email marketing campaign.

20. Change in Engagement

Sometimes people simply get busy and they stop engaging with your emails like they used to. This can happen no matter what you do. However, if you don’t do anything to re-engage those subscribers, you could lose them forever.

21. Change in Purchase Behavior

Particularly if you offer a monthly subscription or you have a product that needs to be re-purchased on a regular basis, you should check in with customers when they change their purchase behavior. If a customer cancels their subscription, you might want to send them an email to ask them why. Even if you don’t get that customer back, their answer will help you to improve the experience for future customers.

22. Mobile vs. Desktop

49% of email marketers still don’t segment their lists based on device habits. However, the email reading experience is completely different depending on whether you are reading on your mobile phone or your desktop.

23. Type of Email Account

If you want to refine your email design even more, you can segment by the different email clients that your subscribers use. Perhaps an even better use of this segmentation, however, is to interpolate what other services your subscribers have along with their email provider. For instance, HubSpot suggests asking everyone who has a Gmail address to add your blog to their Google Reader.

24. Affiliates

Do you have an affiliate program? Don’t forget about your affiliates! Nurturing that relationship will really pay off, so make sure you have specific email campaigns just for them.

25. Subscribers Who Referred You

Maybe you don’t have an affiliate program, but you do have subscribers who referred you to their friends. These are highly valuable subscribers who should be treated with special care, so give those people a special tag. Once tagged, you can give these evangelist subscribers a special “thank you” gift, an exclusive discount, or VIP access that no one else gets. Let them know how much you appreciate them for spreading the word about your brand, and they will show you undying loyalty.

26. Customers Who Haven’t Left a Review

Your customers can be your best brand advocates but only if they take action by sharing their experience. Customers who haven’t left a review yet can be sent a targeted email with a friendly request to leave a review. 

27. Brick-and-Mortar Customers

If you have both a brick-and-mortar plus an online shop, segment your customers by where they shop. That way, you can provide specific information to your brick-and-mortar customers about in-store only promotions.

28. Customer Lifetime Value

Do you have different customer profiles who are worth more or less over their lifetime as a customer? Be sure to segment those out so that you can really focus in on those customers who are worth the most over the long-term. For example, you might have one segment of consulting customers who hire you to give them advice, and another segment who hires you to provide them with high-end, done-for-you services. The done-for-you customers have a much higher lifetime value, so you may want to give them some special treatment.

29. Website Activity

Monitor your subscriber’s activity on your website so you know exactly what they are looking for.

30. Website Inactivity

You can also use website inactivity to segment your email list and get those users back on task.

31. Web Store Visit History

Use your website visit data to send targeted email campaigns to subscribers who visited your web store or your sales page but didn’t purchase.

32. Buyer Persona

Most businesses have more than one buyer persona. These personas usually have different needs and respond to different copy, so why not send targeted campaigns to each? You can create targeted email lists by separating your subscribers into various buyer personas by looking at what they’ve opted in to, what they’ve clicked on inside your email campaigns, and their behavior on your website. Use that collective info to create segments for each of your customer profiles.

33. Job Title

What does your subscriber do for a living? Are they a designer or an art director? Are they a salesperson or a customer service representative? Each job title has different pain points which can be addressed separately with segmentation.

34. Seniority

When it comes to making the decision to purchase your product or service, your subscriber’s seniority in their company often plays an important role. For example, a busy manager may want to know that your solution is something that they can delegate to their employees. On the other hand, the employee will need to have compelling reasons to give their manager for making the purchase, since their primary motive is to make their manager happy.

35. Skill Level

How skilled is your subscriber at the discipline you are trying to help them with? Are they a complete beginner or fairly proficient? Or are they already advanced, and looking to take their skills to an even higher level? The content you send to your subscribers can vary greatly depending on the skill level of your audience. So knowing what level to speak to them at can be extremely helpful for your campaigns.

36. Birthday

Segmenting by birthday is a nice thing to do for your subscribers, and it makes them feel special. By sending them targeted emails with special offers, or even just a simple “happy birthday” note, you can connect with them on a much more personal level.

37. Weather

Does weather play a role in your subscriber’s behavior? Use what you know about the weather in their area to entice them to take the action you want

38. Psychographics

What can you deduce about your subscriber’s psychographics from your data? Psychographics are traits like personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. If you know what makes your subscribers “tick”, targeting emails to them will be so much easier and more effective. You can collect your data from lead magnets downloaded to clicks and website activity to “profile” your subscribers by psychographics and send them targeted emails that focus on just what they need from you.

39. Event Attendance

Use your data on who attended your events to send segmented emails. For example, you could keep track of people who attended your webinar vs. those who registered but never showed up Or you could have a segment of subscribers who attended your in-person event so you can send them photos from the event and notify them about the next one you have coming up.

40. Business Industry

If you collect industry information about your subscribers, you can tailor your email content so it is highly relevant to them. Perhaps you have written a blog post about how to market your business. When promoting that blog post to your email list, you could send one email to your real estate subscribers that explains how this blog post will help them get more clients. You could send another email to your restaurant owners that explains how your blog post will help them get more customers through the door, and so on.

41. Business Type

If your subscribers have their own business, you can segment by the type of business they own. Are they an eCommerce or a brick and mortar? Are they a franchise or a non-profit? Are they an enterprise or a small business?Each business type has it’s own unique needs that you can specifically address by segmenting.

42. Survey Respondents

If you sent out a survey, send something special to those who participated. They will be glad to know that you respect and appreciate the time they took out of their day to help you out!

43. Membership Expiration

Is your subscriber’s free trial about to expire? How about their membership that’s almost up? Let them know that it’s time to upgrade or renew.

44. Webinar Attendance

Segment subscribers who registered for a webinar by whether or not they attended. That way, you can re-engage those who didn’t attend with an opportunity to register for the encore Or you can simply give them a brief summary of what they missed. You can also segment your webinar attendees by how long they stayed on the call. Those who stay for the entire presentation might get a special bonus download, whereas those who drop off early might receive a survey about why they had to go or what caused them to lose interest.

45. VIPs

Reward the top 1% of your email list in terms of engagement and purchase activity with something exclusive, just for them.

46. Gender

If you have different offerings for men and women, go ahead and segment your subscribers by gender. Adidas sends out two completely different email campaigns. You’ll get one or the other depending on whether you’re male or female.

47. Age

Sometimes segmenting by your subscriber’s age can be important in relating to them better. 

48. Income

Segmenting your subscribers by income can be helpful. For instance, some subscribers need different information depending on their current income. If your subscribers are small business owners, one segment may want to learn from you about how to grow their 5-figure business to 6-figures. Another segment might want to know how to scale from 6-figures to 7-figures. Yet another segment may just want to know how to make their first 2K month.

49. Level of Education

In some cases, it may make sense to segment based on level of education.For example, if you are an educational institute, you may need to send different content and promotions to subscribers who’s highest level of education is a High School diploma, versus those who have earned their Bachelor’s degree and are looking to get their Master’s.

50. Employment

If you are a career coach or a recruiter, you may need to segment based on employment. Your groups might look something like this: 1) subscribers who want to change careers, 2) subscribers who are unemployed and looking for employment, 3) subscribers who simply want to “climb the corporate ladder”.