Have you ever tried on clothing from a “one size fits all” shop?
If you answered yes, you'll know for certain that it’s just not true: there’s always a part of the garment that’s too loose or too tight.
The same thing happens with email marketing: there is no such thing as a single email message that works for all customers and brings about sales every time.
Segmentation in lists and email marketing campaigns is a strategy that divides a customer database into smaller groups and adapts contents to their profiles and interests.
Companies that are just beginning to build their list of customers and have few contacts can lower their efforts and use the same email template for everyone. But as soon as the customer base begins to grow and diversify, segmenting the contents that you send by email becomes fundamental.
What’s more, it’s a great way to really get to know your customers, study the groups into which they can be divided, and discover which ones are more profitable for your business.
Creating segmented contents does entail a greater effort and more preparation, but it also can pay off in the form of getting your customers and users more satisfied and identified with your brand. Instead of a typical “cookie cutter” email, being specific is where it’s at in this day and age.
The magic word is ‘customization’ —that necessary quality in the online experience, purchase processes, and, of course, contact with customers.
Segmenting does not mean having to write each email by hand and racking your brain to change the style of twenty different messages. What it does mean is knowing your main groups of customers —both the active ones and the inactive ones— and adapting the contents of your newsletters and contact emails effectively.
→ You may also be interested in: why digital marketing is key to omnichannel sales
According to a study by Mailchimp on 2,000 users of its email marketing management platform, 75% of email recipients are more willing to open an email from a segmented campaign than from a non-segmented one. Additionally, the click-through rate on the message’s contents is 100.95% greater.
And you’re not only after a click to take the user to your website or online shop, but you also want to avoid the feared click on the “Unsubscribe” link. MarketingSherpa says that 21% of the users who unsubscribe from a list feel that the contents of that list is not relevant, and 17% believe that the emails are, simply put, boring.
A good segmentation strategy may help you to keep that 38% of weary subscribers.
If the numbers don’t really do it for you, even though they somewhat speak for themselves, here are all the reasons why segmentation means success in email marketing.
And the icing on the cake: customer base segmentation is an inexpensive marketing strategy that is accessible and easy to apply because there are a lot of services to automate the segmentation of your emails and undertake tests.
→ Be well prepared: marketing tools to boost productivity
These are some of the profiles for regular customers that you can identify on your online shop:
→ Discover more: What is upselling and how can you use it?
Creativity is endless: you can combine several pieces of segmentation criteria in your marketing campaigns.
For example, segmentation applied to customers who are over 30 and normally spend more than €100 per purchase and have been active on your site in the last 3 months.
And the contrary: a group that has been inactive for a while and whose members are of an age range that is less interesting for you, with said members spending less on average, normally taking advantage of the sales or discount coupons, or never having made a purchase.
While the first group may be more attracted and motivated by new items and exclusives, the second group would find bargains and slogans like ‘clearance’ more motivating.
Some email marketing strategies calculate and award points to each customer depending on their activity, level of engagement, or conversion value: for example, a client with 10 points as opposed to one with just 2. Use that system if you prefer numerical classification.
→ What is cross-selling? An excellent strategy to discover products
1. Decide on the type of segmentation that you want to apply (what criteria of those mentioned before you will use and how you will combine them).
2. Organize the data from your customer database in a way that is relevant for your strategy: age, gender, location, purchase history, etc. You don’t have to do surveys and you can collect this data from your usual download and purchase forms.
3. Create your segmentation lists based on a criterion or KPI of interest for your business goal or marketing strategy, naming them and giving them a description. You can also give your subscribers the option to sign up for a specific list, like in the prior example of Penguin Books, and the option to set the frequency of emails (weekly, monthly, etc.).
4. Prepare content that is adapted to each segment and send it to the right lists. Remember that you can activate automated workflows and do A/B testing to compare results.
Keep studying, monitoring, and improving. The key metrics to evaluate your campaigns are the email open rate and click-through rates.
→ Analyze everything: KPIs for ecommerce that will help you to make business decisions
Should you include ‘ghost’ users in your email segmentation strategy?
Perhaps: study them to decide if you can try some last resort actions to bring them back, or definitively remove them from your lists.
Some criteria to analyze inactive users:
You can segment the contents of your emails by recent purchases (with suggestions to cross-sell, by saying something like ‘You may also be interested in’) or by purchase history.
For example, if a customer normally buys vases, use a promotional email to highlight sales on that type of product or on dried flowers. If a customer has recently bought something expensive, your next contact may encourage him or her to go for something a little more upscale, like an exclusive collection that has just arrived or a subscription to a service for early access or new launches.
These users are at the bottom of the sales funnel.
But don’t lose hope with them: a segmentation strategy may help you to recover clients who didn’t go through with a purchase. Notice if they open the emails reminding them about the items in their cart, if they click on them, and if they go back to their cart on your site without having opened the email.
All that will give you clues about the obstacles that your customers may find and what may be the reason for them to decide not to make a purchase.
→ More strategies: how to retain loyal customers to increase your conversions
These users are very attractive for you because they are at the top of the conversion funnel.
In this age of spam and demanding users, a new subscriber means someone is very interested in you. It may be that a percentage of them are competitors who wish to analyze how you go about your emailing, but the majority will be potential customers that you can secure with personalized contents from the very start.
In this section, it is very useful to personalize the contents of your follow-up emails to align with the downloaded material so as to continue suggesting other contents along the same lines and to not repeat things the subscriber has already seen.
This step equates to effort by your customer service or customer success department. The data that Customer Success can gather through online questionnaires, when speaking with customers, or upon launching a private survey is very valuable for marketing purposes. It will allow you to better profile your customer segments as you will be familiar with their usual question and interests.
Segmentation of customer databases and promotional emails and correspondence is a must to shore up a business’s conversions.
Using segmentation does not require a lot of resources thanks to automated email marketing software that can tie in with your ecommerce or CMR platform.
At the end of the day, segmenting is the result of sharing valuable knowledge about your customers inside your company, bringing the brand to the user more precisely, and avoiding adding too much extra noise to inboxes around the world.
Your customers are unique and your contents should also be that way: start by taking care of the quality of your product information with a PIM solution (that you can try for free right here) and draft more attractive email campaigns—always with the right recipients in mind.