Is your email marketing list one, big, incoherent blob of addresses? Are you finding engagement difficult?
That’s not much use, is it?
I mean, sure – you can just blast out every email campaign to everyone on the list, but that’s the reason your open rates and click-throughs are abysmal.
Email segmentation might sound like a laborious idea, but it’s actually pretty exciting if you think about the many ways by which you can chop up your list.
1. Geography
Let’s start with the obvious. If you know where your subscribers are located, you can send product deals and notifications that are suited to their location. This is particularly useful if you’re a retail operation.
2. Age
It’s not rude to ask for people’s ages when it comes to email marketing; they can either give you it or not, after all. But, if you do know someone’s age, you can adjust your email copy to better speak to their generation.
3. Type of business
If you’re a business to business outfit, understanding the types of business your subscribers work for will enable you to customise email content so it speaks specifically to their needs.
4. Job role
An accounts administrator probably isn’t going to be interested in your forthcoming webinar for sales directors, so get segmenting based on job roles!
5. Gender
If you have products that relate to men or women specifically, knowing your subscriber’s gender will ensure you don’t inadvertently offer them something entirely inappropriate (we’ll let you join the dots). Adam Ward’s discussion about an alternative clothing brand is an excellent example of this.
6. Seniority
Purchasing authority, decision-making and influence are all aspects you’ll want to take into consideration about your audience, and if they’re segmented based on how much control they can wield, your emails can be far more targeted.
7. Buying history
Do you know what your customers have previously bought? If so, feed that info into your email marketing system and segment lists based on types of product; that’ll enable you to send far more relevant offers and product news to the right people.
8. Buying frequency
Why not reward people who have shopped with you a considerable number of times? With an email list that contains people who have bought frequently, you can continue to build that bond by offering them a special loyalty discount, without inadvertently giving it to the people who head through your doors once in a blue moon.
9. List of interests
Capturing details about subscriber interests will enable you to tune your email content to talk directly to the things they love the most. And you know this works, because you’ll probably always open emails whose subject line mentions something relating to a much-loved hobby.
10. Email engagement
Not all subscribers love you – sorry. Some, in fact, will go right off the boil and decide to ignore every email you send them without unsubscribing. It’s weird, granted, but if you can segment those people into a list of their own, you can come up with some cunning tactics to win them back.
Wrapping up
Call us ‘segmentation bores’, but this is a topic we feel passionately about at mailingmanager. It takes time, and every segmented list will need to be strategised and kept up-to-date, but the input will result in very impressive output and much higher levels of engagement.
And that’s what you want, isn’t it?
August 15th, 2018 at 12:14 am
The chop management Email marketing is very important to the system. Email marketing is very important to the business purpose which is really helpful for us. This post is great.
March 11th, 2019 at 6:44 am
Email marketing these days is more than just the size of your list. Savvy marketers know that much more important is a smaller but committed list.. .Thanks for the post,.!!!
March 11th, 2019 at 9:26 am
I fully agree, a large list can be detrimental as much as it can be helpful. If you are judging your email by the numbers of people on your list as opposed to the engagement metrics, then you are likely to be unsuccessful.