The Benefits of Email List Segmentation and How to Get Started
A marketing strategy that has proven to be effective throughout time is email marketing. Collecting contact details of interested consumers, and nurturing them with the right messaging, can be a great way to turning contacts into prospective customers.
However, email marketing isn’t as simple as merely collecting addresses, putting them on a list, then targeting that entire list with your marketing materials. In fact, one of the best ways to ensure that your email list is an effective marketing tool is by simply segmenting your contacts specifically by who and what you need to target.
Email contact segmentation involves splitting up your contacts by grouping them together by similarities such as demographics, expressed interests, lead source, activity, purchases and more.
While email list segmentation can be used in a variety of ways, the goal is to send the right message to the right person. It provides the ability to increase your open & click rates and ultimately push them gently towards your conversion goal (e.g., a purchase, sign up).
Learn more about the concrete benefits of email list segmentation below.
You’ll Be Able to Charm them All!
Let’s face it — even if your business sells only one product or delivers only one service, your customers will not all be the same. Customers will vary in a slew of ways: their geographic location, their age, their interests, and the stage they are in the sales cycle and so on. Use relevant information regarding your lists by segmented specific actions or data.
For example, when it is summer in Australia, it is winter in America — so segmenting your email list will allow you to promote summer goods or deals to Australian leads while promoting winter products to American contacts.
Segmentation tool also provide opportunity to filter your visitors based on where they are in purchase decision funnel. This helps to re-approach them at the right time and with the right amount of aggressiveness. So, you can sell to those who are very likely to buy while courting those who have merely expressed interest.
Earn a Good Email Reputation
When you send marketing emails that are targeted, personalized and interesting to the audience, your brand develops a reputation for creating and disseminating good content. Good segmentation helps you increase the chances that the information you send to people will actually appeal to them by being relevant to what their indicated interests area (for instance, what they have browsed on your website).
Precise segmentation frequently affects your potential customers that enjoy receiving your marketing material regularly.
Your Marketing Efforts Will Be More Successful
One of the best reasons why you need to segment your email list is because it has been proven to work. Marketing Sherpa did a case study about the effectiveness of list segmentation. What they found was hard to dispute: companies that chose to segment email lists saw an increase with their email marketing efforts than those that didn’t. According to the study, when emails were sent to segmented lists, open rates increased by 20 to 40%. Also, following a research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, it was found that 77% of all email marketing ROI came from campaigns that were segmented or targeted.
Overall, companies that use segmented email lists to execute their email marketing strategies see increased therefore lead nurturing and sales are more efficient.
How to Get Started With Email List Segmentation
There are an endless amount of ways to segment your email list, and the variety of options can seem overwhelming. However, you can take some simple steps to get started:
1. Sign Up for an Email Solution
First, you’ll need to sign up for an email solution that works with segmentation. ContactPigeon is a leading email marketing automation platform that can help you consolidate your customer data and send smart, targeted emails.
2. Gather Data Associated With Peoples’ Email Addresses
When you begin to collect email addresses, collect additional information about them as well (e.g., their age, location, gender, etc.) Try to choose data that will be helpful in the long run for you to re-target your lists. Tracking this data will help you begin with your segmentation.
3. Plan your Segmentation
Most email programs that use the segmentation tool will help you adopt filters to your lists and keep track of your data. Some tools even analyze your data and segment lists for you. However, before you begin your venture into email list segmentation, you should make a plan for how you want to use your lists. Several options include by user data, user activity or sign-up date (and much more).
Email List Segmentation Best Practices
We’ve made a great list for you that includes the best segmentation practices which are proven to help companies send more relevant and successful marketing campaigns!
Geography
Consider segmenting your email list based on a recipient’s geographic location. Brick-and-mortar businesses can use geographically targeted emails to drive up in-store business, and online businesses can use them to send more relevant or seasonal information to shoppers.
Level of Interest
A successful segmentation strategy is to segment your list by where a potential customer is in the sales funnel. When collecting sign-up information, ask consumers a question or two that indicates their level of interest in your company’s products or services. Follow up by sending them an email based on their expressed level of interest. This will ensure that the emails they receive are appropriately timed and that you built an effective nurture stream.
Consumer Behavior
Another way to segment email lists is by the consumers’ behavior patterns. Consider creating lists of people who click links in email newsletters (and for those they don’t), people who abandon their shopping cart while browsing your online store, or those that used to make purchases from you but haven’t in a while. Paying close attention to a consumer’s behavior will ensure that the messaging they get from you is relevant to how they interact with your company.
Demographics
A simple way to segment email lists is by demographics — things like consumer age, gender, etc. Knowing basic facts about the person you are speaking to can help ensure you’re speaking to them in a way that will elicit a positive response.
Wrap-up
Email list segmentation is not a simple science, but it can be an extremely beneficial one. Once you begin using segmented email lists, you can see which tactics are working and which aren’t paying off. Then tweak and refine your segmentation strategy from there.
Originally published at ContactPigeon | Blog.