10 Easy Ways to Segment Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Segmentation — targeting your audience based on demographics or behavior — has proven to earn marketers better open and click-through rates. MailChimp reports a 14.64% increase in opens and a 59.99% increase in clicks on a segmented email marketing campaigns when compared to those that are non-segmented.

The question is, what types of segmentation should you use? Kissmetrics.com’s article, 10 Quick and Easy Email Marketing Segmentation Strategies to Try Today, shares some ideas on how to build your lists. Your contacts can be broken into three major categories:

Who they are

Kissmetric recommends that we start with the basics:

The first way many marketers begin email marketing segmentation is by demographic data. Information such as age, gender, company position, and income level can tell a lot about a person’s needs and interests.

Where your contact is located can be another important factor. Their geographic area could be the key to a pain point that needs resolving. Messages that speak to it are much more likely to be opened.survey or quiz results

If you’re squeamish about asking too many questions at once, try collecting it through a survey or quiz. This can be a perfect time to dig deeper and find out about your contact’s interests. Use the results to further segment your list.

What they’re doing

Use actions like email engagement and website behavior to guide you on what to send. This, as well as their position in the sales funnel, is one of the most valuable ways to determine how to customize your message. The further along they are in the funnel, the more specific their email should be by focusing on the product or service of interest.

What they’ve bought

The last general category of segmentation is for existing customers. It’s likely that you already have more general information on these contacts than on any others, so you should use it to your advantage.

Try segmenting this group based on their past purchases. You can offer in-depth information on the products or services that were chosen, or a similar or upgraded version of the product if enough time has passed since the sale. How much your contact spent can give you an idea of future budget possibilities, so you won’t send offers that are too large or too small for their organization.

The takeaway

Email campaigns have a better chance of success when the recipient is interested in your message. Make sure you’re sending it to the right person with these segmentation tactics.