Email segmentation is the secret ingredient to a successful email marketing campaign. As a business owner, segmenting your emails ensures you’re sending targeted and personalised content to your leads — which in turn increases the possibility they’ll turn into paying customers.
Segmented email campaigns earn 100.95% higher clickthrough rates than non-segmented campaigns — making email segmentation effective in generating sales and leads.
The way you interact, engage and build relationships with your customers matters. In this guide, we’ll share 10 email marketing segmentation criteria pros use to deliver highly targeted and personalised content to your leads—and get a solid ROI.
How to Segment Your Email List for More Targeted Email Marketing
Demographics
Demographics teach you a lot about how you should market your products or services to different people. Oftentimes, a person’s shopping choices or purchase habits depend on their age, gender, race, or income.
A woman in her 60s is less likely to be interested in purchasing crop tops than a 20-year-old. So, if you have a clothing boutique, skip sending those products. Knowing your audience’s age range gives you insight on which products on your inventory you can send over to their inbox.
When you segment your emails by demographic, you increase your chances of acing a sale and make your email marketing goals easier to achieve.
Day and Time
One of the best segmentation factors to consider in email marketing is the day and time of the week. The goal is to get customers to open your emails. And if you’re sending them emails on a slow day or at the wrong time, your efforts will be all in vain.
For example, if you’re selling coffee, send your emails in the morning where your customers are taking their first sip of coffee.
At the end of the day, you’ll have to know who your target audience is to know which days and time of the day they’re likely to open their emails.
Geographic locationÂ
With geographic targeting, you can focus on sending specific emails to your subscribers based on their location. When you send geo-targeted emails that pique a customer’s interest, solve their problems, and meet their needs, they’re more likely to respond and engage.
For example, if there’s a special event happening near your brick-and-mortar business, only send an invite to those nearby.
Using location-based emails can accelerate in-store activity and make your emails more relevant to your local customers.
Interests
Segmenting your emails by your customers’ interests allows you to send curated content they’ll more likely check out. With user profiles, you get detailed information about your subscribers’ interests and send them personalised emails accordingly.
By simply asking your subscribers to pick their preferences, you get valuable insight into what captures their attention more. This helps you re-strategise your email marketing efforts and make sure your emails always hit the spot.
Purchase historyÂ
This strategy turns one-time customers into repeat customers. Segmenting by your subscribers’ purchase history is another way to optimise your email marketing and helps identify which products to promote.
An effective tactic is to offer valuable content based on the products they purchased. For example, if they bought a health-related product, send them an email with related health and wellness content You can even cross-sell other products that complement their previous purchase.
Show subscribers you care about their needs, interests, and activities by updating them on valuable content (and products!) even after their purchase with you.
Position in the sales funnelÂ
 This segmentation strategy is one of the easiest ways to customise messaging. New subscribers who are at the top of your funnel are just getting to know your brand. Target them with a welcome email series that introduces them to your brand, products, and services.
For existing subscribers, it’s best to analyse which emails they open or engage with the most. This information helps you gain more favourable results in your future emails by showcasing the email types or products they’re interested in.
Found at the bottom part of your email is cart abandonment. These customers had the intention to buy— but something stopped them. Sending out an email series reminding them about their cart, and to proceed with their purchase, increases your conversion rate by 35.26%.
One-time customersÂ
This segmentation strategy focuses on customers who bought one of your products but never came back since. Your email campaigns should draw them back to your brand and get them to make another purchase.
Start by offering discounts on your bestselling products. Or you can send them a reminder to renew their service or subscription.
Amount spent
You can use this criterion to segment the customers that are likely to buy more high-value items from those that are more interested in purchasing affordable ones.
By grouping your customers based on how much they spend, you’ll know who to sell your various products to. This increases your chances of driving sales when promoting your products through email marketing.
Website activity
Website activity refers to how users interact with your website. This strategy lets you know what exactly your customers are looking for.
Do they frequent your FAQ page or product pages? Send them an informative email about your range of offerings. Do they add to cart and never checkout? Remind them of what they’re missing out on.
Sending email campaigns based on their website activity is a great way to connect with your subscribers by personalising your emails.
There are multiple ways to track website activity such as using Google Analytics or other site activity tools like heatmaps.
Subscription renewals
This segmentation strategy is a must to make sure your business keeps generating revenue. Your customers are busy and may lose track of when their next payment is due.
Sending them a friendly reminder about their next payment can be an excellent way of engaging them. When done right, it’s also a great opportunity to upsell or cross-sell other complementary products and services!
Ready to boost your email marketing?
Different email segmentation types help you further personalise the content you send your customers. And when they feel like you know them, you boost the chances of converting them into paying customers.
You may not get everything right the first time, but that shouldn’t discourage you from improving your email campaigns through better segmentation over time.
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