When it comes to marketing, businesses are always looking for evergreen strategies to make sales happen. Email lists are remarkable in that it gives you a timeless marketing asset you can repeatedly lean back years into the future. But, in this day and age, having a list isn’t enough because most people’s inboxes are flooded with promotional emails. They’ve become desensitized to messages that don’t resonate with them. To really get your email subscribers to keep opening your emails and engage with its content, you must implement email marketing segmentation.
Email segmentation is the art of grouping people in categories defined by factors such as interests, behavior, location, gender, purchase history, etc. Business owners often spend too much time focusing on the length of their list, and forget that those strings of digits are actually people. The principle of email segmentation recognizes the fact that lists are full of people with different personalities. By splitting your master email list into little lists with groups of people who are alike in specific ways, you can better tailor your marketing message to each of those groups.
Email segmentation boosts open and click rate with relevant content
One of the salient gifts of email segmentation is relevancy. Research shows that segmented lists perform 14.31% better than non-segmented email campaigns. If you blast the same email to all your subscribers with the same subject line, your emails won’t even be opened. By knowing what makes the group unique, you can craft targeted headline and copy that takes into account the differentiating factor of that group. For example, if one of your groups have shown more interest in fitness related products on your website, you can send them valuable emails full of information pertaining to that category.
Email segmentation increases sender reputation
A sender score is not much different than a credit score, and essentially is a measure of your reputation in the eyes of Internet Service Providers (ISP). A good sending score means that your marketing emails land in the inbox and not in spam. A low score is indicative of your emails being blocked, reported as junk, and having low open rate. If your list subscribers do not engage with your email, the ISP will place it in the junk folder, and no business owner wants that.
Through email segmentation, you can send relevant emails that your subscribers are highly likely to read and interact with, which shows the ISP that your emails matter.
Email segmentation can recapture lost profits
69.71% of customers abandon their shopping carts without completing purchase. That’s a lot of lost profits for businesses of any size. But, with segmentation you can strike while the iron is still hot by re-targeting this specific group through automated emails that remind them to come back and complete the purchase. The beauty of email segmentation is that you can meet your leads exactly where they are in the buying process.
You can even segment your group of “almost-shoppers” based on whether they are repeat or first-time customers. Offering a discount to first-time customers will encourage them to come back and give them a final nudge to make that purchase. On the other hand, if they are a repeat customer, you can use their previous order history to recommend similar products. You can even segment your group by the size and value of the cart they abandoned. If a specific group of shoppers didn’t go through the purchase because of high cart value, you can retarget them with a discount or a free shipping offer.
Promote customers down the marketing funnel through email segmentation
The ultimate goal of all businesses is to drive revenue. Most of your email subscribers are very likely at different places in buying stages. Some maybe barely learning who you are, while others are very hot leads who are ready to give you their business. By segmenting your email list into groups based on the different buying stages, you get the opportunity to nourish them with the right content based on their location in the buyer journey. For example, if the subscriber is in the awareness phase, you can nourish them with educational content like whitepapers, ebooks and reports that gives them more information about your brand; if in consideration stage, you can send them emails that include more details about your product.
If you want your email marketing to be successful, you must embrace email segmentation. This technique is a guaranteed way to offer your subscribers the exact information they are interested in, and need, to make important buying decisions.
