Are you segmenting your email marketing?

You are most likely familiar with the term segmentation and in many cases you are already segmenting your email data. This is exactly what you should be doing; however the methods you are using to segment could be limiting your responses. The two most common segmentation methods are intuitive and data driven. Both are effective so you can use either method.

The first mistake that many people make when diving into email list segmentation is being too general. The best segments are drilled down to very specific details. So if you are targeting demographics for your segmentation, let’s say you pick age, each segment cannot overlap another so your age brackets must be specific. There are of course many other demographics you can use, just keep in mind that each segment does not cross over into another one.

To better drill down your segmentation ask yourself the following questions:

1. Who are your customers?

2. What do our customers want from us?

3. Why do they do business with us?

4. Where do they come from?

5. When do they come to us for service?

When doing this analysis you should get as many details in there as possible, be very specific. These questions are the key to producing really good list segmentation. The more details you have the better you can target your email marketing to them.

The most common areas to look at for segmentation are demographics, geographics, transactional, behavioral, and benefits.

Each one will allow you to pull details out to target your email marketing to the right people. It is recommended to have between 4 and 6 segments for targeting. Once you have your detailed segments you can create your A/B testing emails with differing images, copy, headlines, or subject lines. By tracking each one you can better define what works best.

The best part about good email list segmentation is that once you send some test emails you will get your results right away. You will know who opened, who clicked and who purchased in order to decide what changes you want to make before you roll out the emails to all your contacts. Don’t let the process of segmentation scare you off. Once you start diving in you will find it was not as hard as you thought it would be. You and your team will reap the benefits of this effort with improved ROI. Have you had success with email list segmentation? I would love to hear about it!

Contact us today. We are glad to help!