These days, few marketers will argue that email marketing works. We all know it does, which is why the conversation has shifted toward a single question: How can we improve the performance of our campaigns? That’s where email segments come into play. Think about it; your subscribers are made up of people with unique tastes who are in different places in the sales funnel. Why should they all receive the same email?
Plus, segmented email campaigns result in higher click-through rates and conversions; we’ve got the success stories to prove it! Use these four essential segments to start improving the performance of your next email campaign.
Demographics
If you’re new to email segmentation, then creating a segment based on your subscriber’s demographics is a good first start. To be clear, demographic data typically includes things such as gender, age, job title, industry, and income level.
Just because it’s a beginning email segment doesn’t mean it’s not essential. Let’s say that you own an online clothing store for both men and women. If you send your entire email list a promotion featuring a new women’s tee shirt, that’s not a relevant offer to your male subscribers.
Failing to segment based on demographics is an easy way to irritate your subscribers. Even one irrelevant email can result in an unsubscribe, so make sure that you collect this data from your opt-in forms.
Degree of Engagement
Some subscribers have a high degree of engagement with your email campaigns. They open up your emails, click on the links, and they may even download your white paper.
Others are less engaged, and something needs to be done about these subscribers before they hurt your deliverability. By segmenting users based on their degree of engagement, you can keep your highly engaged subscribers interacting with your brand and launch a re-engagement campaign for those who have lost interest.
A re-engagement campaign can ignite the spark once more with inactive subscribers and get them excited about your brand. For instance, you could target these users with a tempting discount to encourage a purchase.
Or, you could simply offer them the chance to alter their email preferences and reduce the number of emails they’re receiving. If your inactive subscribers don’t respond, then you can automatically remove them from your email list for good.
Position in Sales Funnel
Moving a potential buyer along the sales funnel can be a trial. Marketers need to be ready to impress consumers at every touchpoint or risk losing them to their competitors. Fortunately, email segmentation has made this task much easier on marketers. Now, you can segment your email list based on where they are at in the sales funnel.
Why is this so essential? Because it’s a no-brainer that a subscriber who has just opted-in to your email newsletter should receive a different email than one who is currently engaging with your brand and expressing interest in your products.
The path to purchase can be slow going for some marketers, but you can speed up the process by segmenting your email list this way.
Repeat Customers
Email is such a powerful channel for customer acquisition that it is often overlooked when it comes to customer retention. This is a shame, considering how much marketers stand to gain by nurturing their loyal customers.
Consider this infographic from Invespcro, which shows that existing customers are 60-70 percent easier to sell to and spend 31 percent more than new prospects.
Segmenting your email list by repeat customers not only increases the likelihood of a sale, but it also improves the customer experience. By accessing their past purchase data, you can see which products they purchased and use this to cross-sell them relevant products.
You can also send your loyal customers offers that make them feel special. They provide your eCommerce store with valuable business.
Why not show your appreciation and drive a sale at the same time?
How to Begin Segmenting Your Emails
Creating email segments isn’t nearly as complex as it seems. With an automated marketing solution like Springbot, you can easily keep track of your data and leverage it to create highly segmented email campaigns.
Additionally, we’ve made it simple to build custom segments with our Custom Segments feature. You can check out more of our customer segmentation and reporting capabilities here!
