If You Are Not Segmenting Your Email List Here’s Why You Should

Segment your subscribers

A recent survey carried out by email marketers showed that segmentation comes second on the list by top initiatives.

Image source: Super Office

There’s a reason why segmentation ranks so high. It is because the moment a database is segmented, the campaign is better targeted to the right audience.

For example, you are the host of an event that involves networking between owners of small businesses within a twenty-mile radius. The best way to make people turn up for your event is through segmentation.

This is done by creating a segment of individuals who identify as owners of small businesses living within twenty miles of the event you’re hosting. The next thing to do is to invite each of them by email. Segmentation is quite simple, and it can be achieved by using CRM software.

Now, this would be more effective than sending the same email to every subscriber on your database, knowing fully well most of them do not reside in the same geographical zone. For some, it would be very annoying to receive an invite via email to an event that is far from them.

Let’s quickly take a look at the benefits of segmentation

A study carried out HubSpot revealed that all email marketing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) perform better when the email list is segmented. The results from segmentation show an increase in performance:

Image source: Super Office

With segmented lists, your open rates, leads, revenue, transactions, and customers increase exponentially. Another advantage of segmentation is that it works hand in hand with email marketing and GDPR.

With the success that you can achieve with segmentation, you’d think that most email marketers will segment their database. How wrong can you be, most don’t? Studies show that about nine out of ten email marketers don’t segment their database. By segmenting your database, you’re sure to stand out from the crowd.

With this in mind, here some examples to help get started:

Segmentation by industry:

Do you offer products and services to consumers or businesses? Knowledge of your subscriber’s industry is one way to segment your email campaign. Let’s see how this works, a company that sells beauty products would engage better if the email campaigns they receive are related to beauty products. The engagement rate would be quite different when compared to a company that sells computer parts.

Segmentation by the organization’s size:

This is sometimes called account-based marketing. When you segment your email campaign by the organization’s size or yearly revenue, you’re poised to see an increase in response rates. Sending emails to a relatively small company with a staff strength of 5 people for a conference of industry leaders would only lead to a poor response rate. On the other hand, sending the same email to a company that employs about 1000 people would show a totally different result.

Segmentation by sales cycle:

Buyers at an early stage will not be prepared for a one-to-one demo or an aggressive sales pitch. On the other hand, they will appreciate it if they get a research white paper on their industry. Alternatively, buyers who are prepared to buy will respond positively to free trial offers or product webinars.

To be continued…