Treating all recipients of marketing or transactional emails the same will reduce engagement (and could damage your reputation). On the other hand, segmenting your lists so that messages can be more relevant, valuable and personalised will see a 14% higher click-through rate and more conversions.
So what should you look at when segmenting email lists?
Your customers have a lot in common, but they are also very different. They may be at different stages of the buying cycle or use different products and services to others. More than likely you can identify a number of different segments of your audience who need different types of content, with a different message, at a different time to drive their engagement with your business. For example:
1. Product activity
Recording how often your email recipients are engaging with your products or services helps you understand their stage in the customer journey and how to communicate appropriately. For example, are they: a new customer; an active or occasional user; inactive; or a non-converting customer?
2. Demographics
Segmenting your lists based on who your recipients are (age, gender, location, occupation and industry) allows you to craft emails that include unique content, improved personalisation, relevance and value – significantly increasing engagement rates.
3. Email engagement
All email marketing systems can record email engagement, so it’s possible to (and you should) create segments based on who is opening all, just some, or hardly any of your emails… AND those clicking your CTAs. For example, sending new communications to your engaged recipients first will not only build your reputation, but also help you test and refine the effectiveness of your content.
4. Email Types
Recipients respond to transactional and marketing emails differently, so it’s important that the list structure includes segments based on the types of email you are sending – for example, joiner packs, eNewsletters, offers, reminders and product updates. Getting this structure in place from the start will significantly improve the usefulness of the preference centre.