Imagine getting a reply from your email subscriber after the last newsletter saying,
“It felt like you created it just for me”
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
This certainly validates that you understand your audience and connects with them on an emotional level. That user is more likely to follow through on your call to action on the email.
Delivering one-on-one personal experience on email marketing is a huge challenge.
Although email is so personal is one of the reasons you started the email list, sharing a message that is universal to your entire audience is practically impossible.
You deliver the messages to your audience’s inbox but if it seems out of place or irrelevant to them you risk unsubscribes or long term inactive emails.
This is where email segmentation comes in.
Email segmentation can substantially improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. It can improve your open and click-through rates and decrease your unsubscribe rates as well.
In this article, I’ll show you 25 email segmentation strategies that can transform your email marketing. These strategies are grouped into 4 categories based on their difficulty level.
So if you’re just starting with email segmentation or want to use it more effectively, you can use these 25 strategies as you see fit.
But before that let’s cover some basics of email segmentation
Email segmentation is the process of dividing your email list into smaller ‘segments’ according to certain shared characteristics. This enables email marketers to send highly targeted and more relevant emails based on the interests of each segment.
What is email segmentation?
Email marketing usually takes a one size fits all’ approach by sending mass emails to your list. Instead of this, you can differentiate your list into smaller groups based on their specific characteristics and send tailor-made content to each individual segment.
This will significantly increase your conversions and email engagement.
Why does email segmentation matter in email marketing?
Most of the marketers recognize the importance of emails, regardless of the ‘email is dead’ debates. There is no other channel that competes with emails in terms of engagement and ROI.
Even though it’s one of the best marketing channels, email segmentation can improve your email marketing campaigns than it already is.
Slicing your email list into various segments and delivering tailor-made contents to those individual groups is how you will provide one on one personal experience with your email list subscribers.
Here are some reasons why you should be segmenting your list
Your customers are different
Even if you sell a single product or service, you are not selling it to the same customer. You probably will have several ideal customers who all have different problems and needs. Imagine you’re sending a broad message to everyone and sending a targeted email specific to their problems and needs. Which do you think will be effective?
Your contacts are at different stages at the sales cycle
Your email list is made up of contacts who are at different stages of interaction with your business.
There will be people who just discovered your business and are trying to learn more about you and how you can help them. There will be people who are comparing you with their potential prospects. And of course, there will be people who’re ready to buy from you.
These people are at different stages of the sales cycle and they have different types of needs and problems. Depending on the stage at which they are at you need to customize the communication and information you sent to them.
You’ll be leaving money on the table if you’re failing to use email marketing to take advantage of where your prospect is at the sales cycle.
Better results
Sending segmented emails sure does outperform general, untargeted emails.
According to Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report, 39% of marketers who segmented their email lists experienced higher open rates. 28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates, and 24% experienced better deliverability and greater revenue.
Here are some of the other results,
On top of it, Jupiter research says that Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails
Hopefully, you are now on board with the idea of email segmentation. Now, Let’s see the 25 segmentation strategies you can implement to transform your email marketing.
Difficulty level: Easy
1. Geographic location
Location-based segmentation is one of the easiest and efficient email segmentation methods. You can use this method to send location-specific contents, regional promotions, local events, and timezone based emails.
This will be a good option to optimize your webinar and AMA invitations to adjust the time according to your audience location.
2. Customer behavior
Segment your list by how a customer interacts with you.
Send different campaigns for browsers and buyers. Use different CTA and copy for customers who prefer calling from customers who prefer emails and DMs. You can even adjust the frequency of the emails with customer preferences.
Use this segmentation to fine-tune the email list.
3. Lead status
Use the customer’s level of interest to tailor the emails. Send different types of emails to ‘cold, warm, and hot’ leads. This will increase the chances of them becoming a paying customer.
4. Lead magnet
Segment your email list by the specific lead magnet they’ve opted for. depending on which lead magnet they are opted for, you can send personalized campaigns to the right segment of your list.
Kobo books use this segmentation to send you an invitation to purchase the book after you download a free preview.
5. Birthday
Who doesn’t like to be remembered on their birthday?
Sending a special offer to your subscriber on their birthday or even just a simple ‘happy birthday’ note makes them feel special. It helps you connect with them on a personal level.
Segmenting your subscribers is one of the nice things to do for your subscriber.
Difficulty level: Intermediate
6. Age
Segmenting your list with demographic data like age is important in relating to them better.
You connect to them with campaigns and offers relevant to their age.
7. Gender
Like age, gender is also a highly effective demographic segmentation option.
If you have different products for men and women, make sure you segment your list by gender. Especially for e-commerce brands handling clothing and personal care segments the gender would be extremely valuable to know.
8. Lead magnet type
Some subscribers prefer PDF ebooks and some prefer videos and webinars. Everyone learns in different ways and pace.
Paying attention to the type of lead magnet your subscriber prefers and segmenting them based on it will help you continue to give them the type of content they like best.
9. Email engagement
Segmenting your list based subscribers who frequently engage with your emails versus someone who engage less frequently can have a huge impact on your email list.
You can reward active subscribers with special offers and re-engage your inactive users with specialized campaigns.
10. Amount spent
Segmenting your subscribers based on the amount they spent helps you offer them appropriate upsell offers.
If you’re offering a wide range of high and low dollar items, this strategy can be highly effective.
You can offer non-monetary rewards like exclusive events and invites to shoppers with highly disposable income and motivate the price-conscious shoppers with coupons and discount offers.
Difficulty level: Advanced
11. Surveys and Quizzes
Surveys and quizzes allow us to get valuable demographic information about the subscriber. It also gives insights into their tastes, preferences, and beliefs.
You will need an incentive for completing the survey if you want to get a lot of responses from your list. They’ll be glad that you respect and appreciate the time they took out of their day to help you out.
12. Cart abandonment
For e-commerce stores, cart abandonment is a huge and common issue. You can segment your list by the people who start the checkout process but drop out before completing the purchase. Use a win-back email campaign to re-engage those shoppers.
Be creative with your campaigns, dollar shave club brings the fun in with this cart abandonment campaign.
13. In-store vs online customers
If you have both online and a brick and mortar store, segment your shoppers by where they shop. You can get your in-store customers to shop again with specific campaigns about in-store only promotions. With campaigns targeted to online customers, give them a reason to click back to your store
14. Attending events
Keep a track of people attended and registered for your events like the webinar and in-person events.
You use this data on who attended your event to send segment emails.
Send targeted emails to the people who registered but didn’t turn up on the webinar. Use something like webinar replays so that they’ll be interested. You can also send photos of in-person events and notify them about the next events with this segmentation.
15. Customer lifetime value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value represents the amount of money a customer is expected to spend on your business during their lifetime.
You may have different customer profiles with a different CLV. Make sure you segment the list by CLV so that you can focus on those customers who are worth the most over the long term.
It will be a good time to give some special treatment to customers with higher lifetime value.
16. Purchase history
You can optimize your targeting by segmenting the list by your customer’s purchase history. Use the products purchased, category, and value of the products or even combine different purchase activity by the customer.
The easiest way to use this segmentation will be to send recommendations for similar items or accessories that go with the previous purchase.
You can also send targeted emails based on their needs like a replacement, refilling to renewal.
17. VIPs
Segment your email list in terms of engagement and purchase activity and reward your top 1% of VIP customers with something exclusive.
Make your customers feel special with exclusive sneak preview, early-bird registration, or in-person calls.
18. Website behavior
Keep track of your customer’s website behavior and learn more about their interests.
You can segment and send targeted emails based on the content people did or didn’t engage with on your website.
Send targeted emails based on their behavior on the website like – specific pages they visited, videos they watched, and visited certain pages but missed another related page.
Difficulty level: Expert
19. Business Type
If your subscribers have their own business and you can segment your list by the type of business they own.
Cater to the different needs of franchisees, non-profits, online businesses, and enterprise organizations by segmenting them and sending targeted emails to meet their unique requirements.
Each business type has its own unique needs that you can address by segmenting them.
20. Industry type
Like business type, you can also segment your list by subscribers industry type and tailor your email content so it is highly relevant to them.
For example, when you are sending your latest blog post to your list, you could send different versions explaining how they can use it in their specific industries. That way, you’re sending highly relevant emails to the store owners, real estate agents, and restaurant owners you have on your list.
With this email segmentation, you can separate and refine messages based on the subscriber’s industries.
21. Skill level
The skill level is often overlooked in email campaigns. Your subscribers have different levels of skills ranging from a complete beginner to an expert. The content you’re sending them should acknowledge this fact. If you’re sending advanced content to a beginner level user or beginner level content to a fairly advanced user, you risk unsubscription.
Segmenting your list based on their skill level and knowing what language to speak to them can be extremely helpful to your campaigns.
22. Seniority level
Your subscriber’s seniority level often becomes an important factor when it comes to the purchase decision of your product.
An employee will need compelling reasons to get their manager on board with the idea of purchasing your product. A manager may want to know that your product is something that can solve their problem and can be easily delegated to their employees.
Tailor your messages and campaigns to subscribers’ roles in the purchasing process.
23. Customer satisfaction level
Net promoter score (NPS) measures customer experience and predicts business growth.
You can calculate your NPS using the answer to a key question, using a 0-10 scale: How likely is it that you would recommend [your brand] to a friend or colleague?
Segment your list based on their answer to promoters (score 9-10), passives (score 7-8), and detractors (0-6) and send highly targeted emails to accelerate your growth.
24. Stage in the sales funnel
Your subscribers are at different stages in the sales funnel. Segmenting by where they are at your funnel can be highly valuable to email marketing.
Someone at the top of the funnel should be receiving different targeted emails than those at the bottom.
You need to nurture your new subscribers, warm leads need to be primed for the sale. Your customers need to be presented with upselling and cross-sell options.
Every stage in the sales funnel should have its own email marketing campaigns.
25. Personal interests
You can get detailed information about your subscriber’s personal interests and preferences to send targeted content that you know they’ll love.
Ask for their preferences when they sign up and give plenty of opportunities to update the preferences with CTA in your emails.
By segmenting your subscribers based on their real personal interests and sending targeted emails, you can easily cut through the noise and connect with them on a more personal level.
Conclusion
You don’t have to be a big brand with the most advanced email marketing tools to use email segmentation strategies. With fairly simple email marketing tools and a bit of creativity, you can start segmenting your email list.
Work your way from easy to the expert level.
Use these email segmentation strategies relevant to your business and difficulty level to send a targeted email to your email list.