Have you noticed that your open and click rates are unreasonably low? Are you getting too many unsubscribes each month? Have you even received abuse complaints? If any of these things are happening with your email marketing strategy, it is time to get serious about segmentation. Segmenting your email marketing list will allow you to hone your message and target it to a specific audience.
According to the Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report, 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists experienced higher open rates and 28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates. Without further ado, here are five ways you can segment your email list and improve your ROI!
1. Location
If geography plays any role at all in your sales or marketing efforts, then consider segmenting by location. For example, some retailers are located in a specific region (e.g. the East Coast) yet they sell their products online nationwide. Because of this, their marketing messages probably differ for local shoppers and non-local shoppers. Segmenting their lists will allow for targeted “in-store only” emails to locals and special free-shipping emails to out of area customers.
Similarly, B2B companies may find their own uses for segmenting by location. For example, a company that hosts monthly classes for their clients may find that it only makes sense to send those email announcements to local clients. Or if your company has a lot of clients in California, you may want to send a targeted email before heading their direction for a trade show. With location segmenting, the opportunities are endless!
2. Status
Status can mean a number of things but we recommend you think of it in terms of your customer base. Retailers may want to send certain emails to their active customers, those that have made recent purchases, and other emails to their inactive customers, those who haven’t purchased in awhile.
Non-retailers can use status segmentation to separate prospects from active clients and active clients from retired clients. This allows for companies to send privileged information to their active clients that other groups shouldn’t be receiving.
3. Interests
One of the most obvious ways to segment your email list is by interest. By segmenting based on interest you can send highly targeted emails that you know your recipients will love. Interest segmentation helps to ensure that your message is relevant to the customer and that you are providing value-added content.
4. Past Purchases
Similar to interests, Hubspot recommends segmenting your lists based on past purchases. Past purchases imply interests and therefore allow you to better understand your recipients. For example, a large clothing store may create a segment for everyone who has purchased baby clothes in the past. They can then assume that the subscribers have a baby in their life and send information about future baby clothing sales and new arrivals. If you, as a subscriber, just had a baby and ended up on this list, chances are you would be thrilled to receive updates on deals and new arrivals!
5. Sending Frequency
In order to segment by sending frequency you will need to ask your subscribers how often they prefer to hear from you. For example, Bonobos created a clever email signup page where they ask subscribers to select their frequency (Email on Acid). With this information in tow, Bonobos can now meet the needs of their individual subscribers and hopefully improve their open rates. If you send a lot of emails to your subscribers, segmenting based on sending frequency may be a good option for you.
If you have noticed that your open rates or click rates are lower than average, we highly recommend using one of these techniques to segment your email list. If you need assistance with segmenting or managing your email marketing strategy, contact Informatics today.
